3D 4X , or wheres the Z

" I dont think modern system would have a problem processing the z axis info and it would make space more like space."
Yep, the systems aren't the problem anymore. The tricky part is to design an interface which doesn't leave the user confused and... well, as you wrote yourself, ships going where no cursor has gone before and stuff. Had the same problems when playing ORB (which is RTS and not TBS). I'm looking forward to a well done 3D-TBS-4X (<-- looks like a serial number) myself. What about galciv 2? (*winking to frogboy&co.)
It surely would allow for interesting new strategies and stuff... might be hard to make the AI understand it, though.

for the original question, i dont know of any recent 3D map space strategy games.

as for galciv 2 being a 3D map, i will have to disagree. if you only had to keep track of a few dozen ships (this includes yours AND the AI's ships), then a 3D map would be fine. but with galciv, think of how many ships are in play at any one time on a "large" map. sure, a 3D map could easily be implemented into galciv2, but it would make the game unplayable.

the computer wouldnt have trouble makeing sense of a 3D map with 100+ ships on it, but you have to remember humans are the ones buying and playing the game.

try to imagine a 3D map, not hard, right? now add a few dozen blips to designate the solarsystem, still not hard right? now add 100+ blips to the map for the ships in play -remember to use at least 6 different colours so that way you know who owns what ship, not only that, remember to add 10 or so lines on this map to show where your trade ships go. this of course is for a 3d map, so try imagining rotating this giant map with all these multicoloured blips on it. this would be just for a large map, think of how many blips you would have to keep track of on a huge or a gigantic map.

It can be done.... I'm not sure how much it adds to the game though...

Ascendancy was the first strategy game with full 3d map. It was also one of the all time stinkers, with literally THE WORST AI ever slapped into a strategy game.

MOO3 borrowed the 3D concept for its galaxy map, though it uses 2D for the tactical combats. MOO3 actually topped Ascendacy as the worst-ever 4X game ever put out.

Seeing a trend here?

Be careful what you ask for. You just may get it! LOL

GalCiv is good game because it observes the KISS principle. They didn't muck the game up with "cool ideas", sticking instead to solid game mechanics.

I wouldn't have a problem with a 3D game. I've been a world class Descent player. I can do six axes of motion with one controller in real time. Trust me, 3D tactics in a turn-based game wouldn't even lead me to pause. BUT... what about the AI? That's a whole other story. See Ascendancy remarks above, then be very afraid of the gameplay you'd end up with in a fully 3D environment. Be very, very afraid.


- Sirian

you mean Descent, the first person shooter game where you have to fly through mineshafts and spacestations?

I don't know that the wretchedness of the Ascendancy and MOO3 AIs had much to do with 3D. The 3D starmaps always struck me as essentially gosh-wow for the interface anyway. Crappy AI is crappy in any dimension.

Gal Civ 2 will use 3D graphics, but we won't be letting you go over and below things, and not just because the pathfinding code would probably just quit.

Gal Civ 2 will use 3D graphics, but we will still be ignoring the fact that space is infinite, because it's a lot easier to tell where your ship is going if you only have to worry about one plane.

Bah!
I'll believe space is infinite when I see it!

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Can I complain that the Galaxy is also square and not circular at this point?

I have a 4x where the strategic level is done 2d but the ship/fleet battles are done 3d. Granted there are vertical limits.But unless your trying to "runaway runaway" your fleet battle doesn't need that much hieght to move in. (and if you are trying to runaway the Ai senses this, and asked do you wish to leave the battle area). I use the space above and below by splitting my fleet, have one half go up and right and the other half down and left and the corkscrew affect on the enemy Ai can sometimes make it crash it ships into each other as they "track" attack mine. Coooool cobat move.
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Not circular??? Not spherical!! LOL

If memory serves, MOO1 was played on a 3-D map. Sure, you could not rotate it and zoom in and out, but the star coordinates were placed in a 3-D "space". I recall stars next to my home system that took longer to get to than stars that appeared to be further away.

I concur with your assement of Ascendancy... atleast I only paid $2 for it. As for MOO3, Amazon eventually paid me $2 to buy it from them, so the universe is now in balance.

Had a quick look; and I can't find my MOO1 manual, but I'm pretty sure MOO1 and 2 are both 2d

I also think MOO1 was 2D, but nebulae slowed you when you got through them.
Civ2 ToT could do a bit of 3D: You had up to 4 maps, so it was possible to have a submarine map, an earth map and an atmospheric map. You could get some variations on this, but had to be in the same map to initiate a fight, so the behaviour along the z-axis was very different from the x and y axis.

The big point is the user interface. One thing to remember is that spatial location in 3D is a skill not everyone has, whereas reading a map is a common skill. People are sometimes unable to represent things in a 3D space, thus a 3D map would really need a very slick interface to get it running.
I think 3D doesn't provide much. Your mouse being in a 2D plane, you'd have to project on a plane in order to click on the map anyway, or use more than move and click, which would get awkward fast if you want to select an empty zone of space as your destination.

CariElf:
Pathfinding could be tweaked so that it is not a problem. The more you have dimensions, the more often a straight line is a feasible path. Thus twitching the algorithm from a computation intensive A* to a straight line + random walk when hitting an obstacle (or a bit of A* to go from the last empty space on the line to the next one) would probably work well and fast. The more you add dimensions, the easier it gets because the number of collisions decreases.

I think 3D doesn't provide much. Your mouse being in a 2D plane, you'd have to project on a plane in order to click on the map anyway, or use more than move and click, which would get awkward fast if you want to select an empty zone of space as your destination.

I understand what you mean, but a mouse can be used to do exactly that. Select a location on one plane and by holding down either mouse button, you could then use it to project up or down to a new Z location. Space then becomes a stack of little 3d cubes stacked above or below your current plane, any location has a unique x,y and z co-ordinate. As for spatial orientation, I be an ex-military pilot and I think 2d is a real bummer. LOL LOL LOL

Ugh no thanks. As was said about Ascendancy and MOO3, it didn't work very well, and there doesn't really seem to be any real benefit. It's time spent doing that when they could be programming other stuff, like the AI for instance!

If you wan't 3d try a first person shoot em up.

The reality is given x and y dimensions of most galaxies totally dwarf their Z dimension. The exceptions being the center of some galaxies and where two galaxies are colliding. So it's really not all that much of a stretch to view the top down 2 dimensional galaxy for a TBS video game of this genre.

3d where ships can move anywhere is very difficult to achieve on a gigantic map.

Think about it 25 x 25 x 25=15,625
That's 15000 more sectors!!!!!! 3d only works well where travel is limited to specific destinations ie planets or fairly small maps.

wow.
again you can be pretty harsh with people who suggest changes to the game or generally disagree with you.
how about if you don't want to hear people discuss changes to the game, you go hang out in a different thread?

wow.
most galaxies lie on the same x,y plane?
I suppose all the planet orbit their stars on the same plane too, right?

think about other stuff 5 x 5 x 25 = 25 x 25
or if you have to live in a cube 8 x 8 x 8 = 512

but still, I'm not sure why the number of sectors is relevant.

Just because one cannot think of a way doesn't make a thing impossible.

I take a little of that back.
I like your idea of 25 x 25 x 25

I'm picturing starting with that flat map,
then adding 1 sector of z to suare each existing sector.
Next, we ignore empty sectors but raise the system containing sectors to different z levels inside the cube.
This new map has the same number of systems, but with new travel distances, influence proximities, and additional empty sectors for whatever use.
That would be cool.
The interface is nontrivial, but not impossible to do well.
as for destination setting, the interface could limit selections to merely the current sector in focus...
to quickly navigate the cube to view or select another sector, the 3d interface to Railroad Tycoon III is sweet.

holding the right mouse button down and moving left right spins the world on the axis of your point of view, while moving up and down moves you closer and further away from the center of your POV. You can also zoom in and out by scrolling the scroll wheel or grap the map to move it on the current X-Y by pushing in the scroll wheel.

I don't know if that sounds complicated, but it only took a few minutes before it felt intuitive to me.

Yes on both accounts. In the solar system, it's called the ecliptic plane. Crossing it defines seasons (autumn and spring).

Holding the space button to move up or down? I find this very tedious. Ooops I went too far. Push the button to go down a bit. What visual feedback to you provide so the user knows that he reached Z = 12? It's probably possible to move along a plane, click/right click/shif click/whatever to switch from xy to xz plane and back and then move therein.
I for myself just want to say that I'd find a 3D map very hard to navigate, and there are ergonomic (scientific) reasons to say that a lot of people would be unable to orient themselves inside such a map. Thus you'd get a game that many would be unable to play, independently on whether or not they like 4X.

so... there is a plane, but the planets aren't on it?
I think I must have gotten on the wrong plane...


I'm sorry but I don't buy it.
I'm pretty sure that when I look up at night I see stars in every direction.
I'm also aware of some stars being visible from the southern hemisphere, Aussies, please let me know if your entire sky is filled with these things.
If it turns out that they have a skyfull too, that blows the theory that I was simply looking up( or down) the the intergalactic plane.

It seems to me that at least on the scale of the galaxies represented in this game (6 to 1000 systems)
that the universe is VERY 3d.

In our galaxy, at least, most stars are in a plane. It's a "thick" plane, though, so we do see stars in every direction--but there are far more stars in the plane than than any other direction. (The "milky way" in the sky is that plane, and consists of zillions of stars, so far away that you can't see them all properly.) However, there are LOTS of galaxies for which this rule doesn't hold.

The way I've always envisioned things in Galciv is that the map doesn't show every star. It only shows the most promising ones, the ones which as far as humanity knows have the best chance of having habitable planets. The color shown doesn't correspond to the actual physical color--it's just a code to let you know which stars are worthwhile (which explains why Stellar Cartography is needed). It would also make sense for almost all the stars to be in 2D then since the in-plane distances would greatly exceed the out of plane distances.

I think we are only dealing with 1 galaxy containing star clusters. If we consider our own Milky Way Galaxy, we are dealing primarily with a disc (leaving aside the central bulge) that has a diameter of about 20,000 p.c. and thickness of around 1,000. So for a typical 20x20 (x-y) game grid you'd only need 1 cube in the z-direction. Enough to be confusing but not to add much to the game. Collapsing to 2-D isn't a bad choice then. However, we really should be in a circular 2-D Galaxy.

If you look along the galactic plane ('the milky way') you see many, many more stars than looking out in the other directions.
In the bright conditions most of us live in, you only notice the nearby stars (within a few hundred pc) so the overall structure isn't apparent.

p.s. Yes, I am an astronomer in real life.

"In the bright conditions most of us live in, you only notice the nearby stars (within a few hundred pc) so the overall structure isn't apparent."

exaclty! and that's about the scale the game is played on, isn't it?

I'm not that excited about 3d, but I didn't like the arguements people were using against it. Cool things could be done with it.

My preference for the game would be a flat 2d map that represented the surface of a toroid allowing for loop back to the other side of the map (like pac-man)