Hello. I think a minimap can be added to Starbound. Because planets are round, you can add some way to orientate in planet's side. (even if despite being round they're flat ) I mean that there can be two minimaps. First fully showing discovered blocks (just like the minimap in Terraria) and second, being just a big circle with arrow showing on what place on this circle you are. Because my explanation can be a bit hard to understand D), here is an illustration: Sorry for bad English.
Mini-maps are already planned. As you can see on the upcoming features list: http://starbound.gamepedia.com/Upcoming_features
I don't think round maps would be possible, unless of course they add the feature that if you dig deep enough you can go to the other side of the world
@Arcstar99 Oh, thanks. xD I didn't know about it. @theXavier I was thinking only about a big circle with arrow moving around its surface, to show only the "side" of the planet. I wouldn't show any blocks or anything else, so I think digging to the opposite side of the world isn't required to make it...
I know that, I'm just saying that that would cause some major clipping issues. The worlds of Starbound are more like film strips than planets, you can go horizontally without an ending but there's a limit when you go down. If the minimap was round, then we'll have issues. assuming the world was round, each block you go will be placed facing the center in a different angle. so if you dig a tunnel straight down on one place, and another a few blocks away, and dig to the same direction as the other tunnel without connecting it, the map would show that they intersect.
No, no no, I meant something diffrent. The map is flat. Blocks are orientated on flat map. Blocks would be showed on rectangle map. Round map would bit just nothing more than big circle with arrow moving on it's surface. It would just assign every horizontal block to a point on surface of this circle. I'm not sure if I'm understandable.
I like the idea. One gives a neat idea of where your surface location related to the world and the other is a perfect mini-map, with depth and all. Being able to switch between both with a button and zoom in/out on the squared one. That whould be great.
The round map could be a picture of the biomes as they circle a planet. There could be predefined art and it all just links together in a circle. Doesn't need to display more than that.
Alright so something like this? I think it will be like the catterpillar track. I imagined it with three layers first is the imediate area around the player, second would be the background and the last layer terrain on the opposite side of the planet. But since this is a little bit overambitious they could make only the first layer that kind of blends into the holographic texture of the interface, with aproximate locations of the players displayed on the whole thing. Alright, I do have one question that's kind of on topic. Was there any word on structuring the galaxy map a little? Like the ability to zoom further out? Because the galaxy is soo terrifyingly huge? It could be fun to have some aditional tools on the galactic navigation map to maybe paint the cubes with colors marking teritory and naming them, adding notes etc. Constelations and bookmarks are handy but with so many of them and the main hook of the game being exploration something like this would be an insane addition to the game...yup. -excited rant over-
Hello Together, I think a Minimap would be nice. After reading the previous Posts, crept the shadow of an Idea in my mind. I also read the Link mentioned above, here the important Part of it: And the shadow of this Idea grows. While I started the game, to make a few screenshots, I got a clear view of this idea. But before I begin my explanation, I show you how it could look like. For My explanation i use the detailed view. The upper rectangle shows the Main view of the map. A less detailed view of your surroundings. The area shown is greater than what you can see straight. So a typical minimap. The lower rectangle provides some aditional Informations. Planet-Picture: It shows the same Picture that you would see on the Navigation-Map. Eventual a Ring could be placed around the Picture. Which would show the biomes of the Surface. Compass Needle:The red part of the compass needle shows your Position on the planet. Degree value of your position (left Number): Shows your Position on the Surface. Like the compass needle, just as a Number. Biome Info (in the Middle):The name of the current biome, in which You are located. Possible with a matching image in the background. Height scale and number (on the right side): It would show your current vertical position. Centerpiece: Here I have added the current weather conditions, to fill the empty space. Now let me explane how the Compass Needle, the Degree value, the Height scale and the Height scale number could work. Normally, a planet is a ball, with latitude and longitude. But in Starbound planets are flat, and only give the impression that they were round like a ball. How this happens, probably most of you know, so I will be brief. First, the compass needle and the corresponding Degree value: The length between the beginning and the end of the map serves as a circumference. If we divide the length by 360 degrees, we get the number of blocks that we have to go until the compass needle moved one degree. Thus, a position indicator on a round display would be possible. Because the different planets sizes change only the distance between two numbers of degrees. Example: Planet size is 3240 Blocks from left to right. 3240 divided by 360 = 9 blocks. So if we walk 9 Block to the right, the degree value would switch from 0 to 1. And if we go 9 blocks to the left, it would switch from 0 to 359 And now the height scale and number: The height scale is simple, it shows the vertical position of the player, between the top and bottom edges of the map. To the left of the height scale, the vertical position is displayed with a number. This number indicates a value from 100 to -100, from 1 to 100 for the upper half and -1 to -100 of the lower half. The center point is 0. In order to calculate these numbers take the total height of the map and divide it by two. The result shows us how many blocks are above and below the midpoint. We then divide the result by one hundred, and get the difference in height between two height scale numbers. In other words, we know how far we have to dig up or down before the number continues to rotate one point. Example: Total Height is 1000 blocks. 1000 divided by 2 results in 500 Blocks for each half. 500 divided by 100 = 5 blocks. If we are on Height scale 0 and dig 5 Blocks up or down we will move to Height scale 1(up) or -1(down). Finally, I would just point out that I have thought about the plans of the developers (see above quote). Therefore, you could insert any part of the minimap as Item upgrades, for a standard map. Which can then be found on planets or received as quest / mission rewards. Finally I'm done with writing this post. It took a little longer than I expected. But that doesn't matter, just let me know what you think of it. Have a nice day. Joy and Happiness Panthera Pardus
