Introversion

my fault for the broken links. doing that USED to work, and since they were still in my cache, they were showing up so I assumed it still did. anyway, I can see advantages to both europe-north and europe-south. I do like the way I divided the nations in my map though. adding the middle east to europes territory, although fairly nonsensical, does kind of balance out the territory sizes nicely.

:/

The real way to address this, would be to get rid of the flat map and make it a globe. personally, i think a globe hovering on the screen, nukes launching themselves up into the sky would be a completly cool fucking game. program missles to launch themselves on the shortest path to target, except giving themselves a 33 percent lift from blast off to about 100 miles up in the sky..

now that would be pretty.

wtf. i want a globe.

I really agree with you, DrFreedom! I also think that a globe would be nice, however the beauty of the game will be lost in a certain way. the 2D map is more close to the actual military maps. Moreover the units placed on a globe would look very ugly when it starts to rotate... My conclusion is that DEFCON with a globe would be easier to play and more realistic, but will not be as appealing as it is now They only have to change the damn trajectories and everything will be just fine

P.S. Oh no, hellcatv, not the knights who say "ni!"...

Scythe of Death wrote:I really agree with you, DrFreedom! I also think that a globe would be nice, however the beauty of the game will be lost in a certain way. the 2D map is more close to the actual military maps. Moreover the units placed on a globe would look very ugly when it starts to rotate... My conclusion is that DEFCON with a globe would be easier to play and more realistic, but will not be as appealing as it is now They only have to change the damn trajectories and everything will be just fine

P.S. Oh no, hellcatv, not the knights who say "ni!"...

i disagree. i can not see any reason why, you could not have a globe, and a flat screen view that you could switch back and forth from as needed. take the graphics from the globe, make the north and south poles the top of the map and stretch. mercator projection. google maps figured out a way to do it.

I didn't say it is not possible . the units just will look ugly. Think of a silo, that is appearing into view from behind the earth when you rotate - a triangle that faces the camera all the time with its one angle inside the earth and one other angle streching in space.. Anyway.. the whole point of the two dimensional DEFCON (which I like) will be lost.

But just because I'm curious, I would love to see how it looks like with a globe

The difference between the polar projection and the globe is that the polar projection will happen if we all get our heads together and do the work and the globe will never happen unless someone sits down and writes an open source version of DEFCON with globes in C++...which would take man-years of effort

and is not bloody likely from what I've seen of the world

hellcatv wrote:and that is how we know the Earth is banana-shaped

ni!

http://forums.introversion.co.uk/defcon ... php?t=2812

I'd just like to let you know that it was this post of yours that inspired me to throw away 3 hours of my life making this mod.

I figured there'd be at least one monty python fan 'round here

one major decision to make is how far do you go with your polar projection.

the farther south you go, the more distortion you hit, obviously. I think the images in the first post stop at the equator.

so if you include the entirety of the southern continents, they're going to each be twice the size of all the other continents put together.

edit: and for a globe, there's an obvious way to do that without ruining the artistic styling.

just copy the style of the globe on the title/menu screen, remove the transparency.

instead of making the units/buildings appear as sprites, and thus appearing the same from any viewpoint, project them onto the globe as flat textures. missiles also, just have them (and their trails) be flat on the globe, not rising off the surface of the sphere.

personally though, I do prefer the artistic style of the game as it is now. I just wish there was some way to keep the missile arcs while fixing the issue we seem to have with them.

hellcatv wrote:I figured there'd be at least one monty python fan 'round here

Scythe of Death wrote:P.S. Oh no, hellcatv, not the knights who say "ni!"...

You were saying...?

There are plenty Python fans over here!

The map from my simulation thread... that's what we need - at those angles.

Every single bit of Cold War nuclear strategy I studied had polar projection maps...

A True DEFCON game is a two player affair between teh USSR and USA/NATO - perhaps three players, NATO, USA and USSR - although the Nato player would not have as much as either the USA or the USSR.


Anyway, the polar projection means that Russiand and American bombers each have a better chance of penetrating each other's airpsace (as was the case) - and missiles come in from teh North.

I recommend having the map as the example I used in another thread, with the USA on the left, and the USSR on the right - the missiles will arc because they are coded too... but that's ok, it will look cool, and they still more or less go over the poles. It also means Russians subs will be deployed historically in the Pacific and Atanlic, and shows the importance of US naval operations.


Players can use the credit system to 'buy' realistic force ratios... ok, so it's still not historical or simulation, but at least it looks cool - AND, even in the film WARGAMES, you will see that one of the maps switches to a polar projection when they think the RUssians are launching a massive strike against Las Vegas.


If I knew how to make maps, I'd do it myself - on the large scale, for a full 8 hour game of USA vs USSR...

denzil wrote:There are plenty Python fans over here!

Count one more

djdemo wrote:The map from my simulation thread... that's what we need - at those angles.

Every single bit of Cold War nuclear strategy I studied had polar projection maps...

A True DEFCON game is a two player affair between teh USSR and USA/NATO - perhaps three players, NATO, USA and USSR - although the Nato player would not have as much as either the USA or the USSR.


Anyway, the polar projection means that Russiand and American bombers each have a better chance of penetrating each other's airpsace (as was the case) - and missiles come in from teh North.

I recommend having the map as the example I used in another thread, with the USA on the left, and the USSR on the right - the missiles will arc because they are coded too... but that's ok, it will look cool, and they still more or less go over the poles. It also means Russians subs will be deployed historically in the Pacific and Atanlic, and shows the importance of US naval operations.


Players can use the credit system to 'buy' realistic force ratios... ok, so it's still not historical or simulation, but at least it looks cool - AND, even in the film WARGAMES, you will see that one of the maps switches to a polar projection when they think the RUssians are launching a massive strike against Las Vegas.


If I knew how to make maps, I'd do it myself - on the large scale, for a full 8 hour game of USA vs USSR...

A polar projection is just as distorted as a traditional map.

The reason for polar projections use in Cold War Strag was the way it displayed the territory between the 2 warring continents. There are 6 waring continents in Defcon.

They should just fix the code or we have to accept it for what it is, an nice little RTS with little real world military stradg and a flawed phsics engine. If you want more realistic sims you'll have to step up to something a bit more complex, or take this for what it is, a good fun RTS

sorry about the spelling, i'm drunk

harleydanger wrote:The reason for polar projections use in Cold War Strag was the way it displayed the territory between the 2 warring continents. There are 6 waring continents in Defcon.

But for those of that want the polar project there will only be 2 players - 4 at most if you throw in Europe and China.

They should just fix the code or we have to accept it for what it is, an nice little RTS with little real world military stradg and a flawed phsics engine. If you want more realistic sims you'll have to step up to something a bit more complex, or take this for what it is, a good fun RTS

Other than getting a job at NORAD there is nothing more complicated... not even in the paper war-games, although I do have hte http://boardgamegeek.com/game/20627 series - which is good, but you don't get the same reaction from watching the missiles slowly arch their way towards America on the screen.

At least hte polar projection allows for the correct flight paths of the bombers, and creates a large AIR-combat zone above Canada and the North Pole, and the Navies still have the crucial fight at the GUIK gap, with sub hunting in the poles.


Those that want this map are not looking to change the six player game, they are looking at a way to try and re-fight the war that never happend.