I would like to see the names of players on the mini map. At least for the players in my squad. Im often in the situation where I needed to know which teammate is where. Unfortunately, if they are far away, you don't see their name in first person view. Thats why I think it s a good idea to have player names appearing on the minimap. It would help a lot for example on vehicletraining. Plus for comms it will be more easy to organize the team on any other map. And now I don't want to hear anything about how poorly the minimap code is implemented. This I already heard plenty of times.
The names are too big for the size of the minimap. I suggest numbering squadmembers and displaying numbers, or moving this entire recognition business to the big M map.
Firstly, we need to make sure that the new minimap well even feature players on it. I was under the impression that it was going to be much slower to update, do it didn't make as much sense to put speedy infantry on it.
We could use a small shape next to the name - a triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon and septagon respectively, possibly with slightly different colour fill-ins. That way you could just paint those symbols on the map - and they'd take up about as much as the "B" or "A" do right now. That is, if there's scope to do this.
without infantry the minimap is pretty much worthless. even if it only updates once a second (and thats what id consider really slow) dont even dare to think about that. we need MORE information, not less ...
There's that glow that's coming - that's extra info. Beerdude would know more. I think he's posted about it before. That's where I get my info.
you mean for targeting? thats cool and all, but how is that even remotely helpful as commander? if theres no way to tell that your team is clusterfucking at a certain point, you cannot yell at them anymore for being worthless ... ... how am i supposed to passive agressively say "guys you realize that fancy colored window in the top right? its called minimap, you might want to have a look so you can see the 5 apcs approaching our base" if i cannot tell if they are doing jackshit in base or jackshit somewhere else? no, no, player positions are vital. player names not so much - but the number thing would add information and the better informed your players are the better choices they will make. empires is a lot about information, a lot more then many other FPS.
I'm really surprised this is the first time you're hearing about this. It was on the forums not long ago.
removing infantry from the minimap was on the forums? im talking bout friendlies, maybe im misunderstanding the whole thing?!
I remember not long ago making a big stink about something that turned out perfectly fine. Let's just trust the devs for a bit, flasche. Most of them have been around to know just how much these things are needed.
im sorry but after mootant im a bit sensible about bad jokes concerning absurd balance changes because "trololol im dev" - it was in an official part of the forums, how am i supposed to know it has come down to the level of the rest of it. so because i didnt get a joke, i am not allowed to voice my concerns just because someone is a developer? i am deeply sorry but thats not the rules i will abide to. i hope my language disability didnt turn the intended sarcasm into hurtful scorn (right word?) - if, it was unintentional.
Why not just display names when you hover your cursor over them? You get the info your looking for without 20 names cluttering your map.
I like the idea of little numbers in the minimap, you wouldn't be able to read anything on the minimap if it was full of people if you used their names. The big map could either have what teefs suggests so it doesn't clutter it up or simply display people's name next to them. I think the big map is big enough to accommodate that, well except for when the server is nearly full... so yeah the hover thing may be better, or simply an option to switch between the two.
No, I'm just saying that, like you, I did a similar thing and got pretty het up over something that turned out to be okay in the end. Granted your posts aren't as boring or long as mine, but I thought I'd just save you the hassle. Like you, a minimap with no team overview sounds like something that would easily break the game, so after saying that...all I can trust is that the devs realise that, and won't let that happen. Or possibly used another method instead.
I don't get it, it can still get players positions. Most of the time you don't need a constant update of where everyone is, just an idea of where your people are and who keeps asking for air support. It being updated every other second or whatever would work out just fine. The only real thing that might be a bit sad is you can no longer use it to tell where the enemy is looking, but that is a minor thing that I'm sure not many bother with.
That was with regards to the feasibility of implementing the minimap in HTML5 on a canvas. We'll try to optimize and refactor the minimap and keep it mostly as-is for now, but we're not going to port it to the new system.
Oh, so we're generally going to keep the current mini map for the time being? Just from hear say on the forums, I was under the impression that most all gui-related feature-adds were waiting to be implemented in the html5 gui that beerdude is working on. Obviously, plans can change, so I appreciate you setting us straight.
i'm relieved. a quick strategic overview is THE core functionality of a minimap - without player positions it would be completely disfunct.
Minimap in HTML is simply too intensive, we have to feed massive amounts of data to the JavaScript, which kinda dies. I've tried a bunch of tweaks, perhaps I should try and send only the things that have changed (which is still 64 players + 20 vehicles and who knows what else could be tracked at least 10 times a second). I've also worked on getting a SeaDragon-like VGUI2 control working correctly for minimap usage, but it's still kinda buggy when zooming in and out, so that's annoying. But that could probably be used to replace the existing minimap code and allow for slightly easier improvements. Still, a HTML5 Canvas still reigns supreme for what you can do with it
