Cylindrical Earth

[Frederf]

Originally Posted by Nisgeis

Nope. From the first post:

The OP then went on to talk about one thing he had seen, which was the map. The thread title is a bit misleading though.

Ahem, I intended for this thread to spend a little time on each subject merely titled in a cozy way about the first topic, but since this thread has been utterly dilluted with worthless crap, it's probably best to make a new one for at least the next topic.

Originally Posted by Hitman

I think what confused many people is that in SH3 the map is cut and you can't do a full turn around the earth, while in SH4 you can scroll the map and get again to the point you started from.

I have no problems with a projection map, but it is a pity that the projection used is not adjusted to compensate the curviture of the earth. The are such 2D maps, called "Mercator projections" and it would have been a nice thing to have

SH3's map was weird. You could sail around the world but only 3-4 times (IIRC). When you sailed east you could arrive back at your original coordinates but you weren't technically in the same spot you started. The map was actually a really wide flat world where the Earth was repeated about 5 times over. If you kept sailing one direction you'd reach the end of the map after a few times around the globe.

SH4's map didn't have that but it had problems connecting across the 180° longitude, where radio stations wouldn't reach over the line and there was that attack map torpedo graphic bug.

Mercator projection IS A CYLINDRICAL PROJECTION. All projections of a 3D globe onto a 2D plane distort information. There is no magic projection that makes the distortion go away. The real fix is to separate the mapspace and the worldspace.

Originally Posted by martes86

But all along I thought that we got plane projection in SH3 and 4, and that SH5 was getting an all new system, but it seems I was terribly mistaken.

I think I heard it from you or from whomever you heard it from. I guess I was mistaken too. If SH5's world is different from SH4's it is not drastically so.

Originally Posted by guynoir

they didn't feel like they could do proper justice to the later years

In that sense, I'd rather it end in '43 than paint an inaccurate picture of the end of the war

Off topic but I agree with this view completely.

Originally Posted by Webster

as a UBI dev, when you can lose your job for saying the wrong thing or even speaking about an "off limits" subject that you and i dont see as a big deal then no they cant always defend themselves. sometimes defending themselves can cost them their job.

Let's just say I have antagonism toward the "development process" based on the results. There may indeed be a bevy of gold-hearted programmers allowing themselves to be overlorded by stupid management but fat lot of good that does us. I've seen a few game developer communities where the devs are free to have an open and honest relationship with the customers and it has always been positive. However your usage of the word "respect" borders on abuse of the English language. Every time it's used it has less and less meaning. If a concept cannot be expressed in a way that avoids the word "respect" it's a pretty big clue that said concept is full of hot air.

Originally Posted by paul_kingtiger

A global game world is not an easy thing to create and plotting a great circle on a Mercator projection (while easy enough for a Navigator) requires some training to do. I can see why they have chosen not to.

It does screw up distances though at high latitudes which is a problem for a Uboat sim. But to do it, we'd need it to be automatic (some programming work here) or/and a more extensive set of navigation tools.

It's not easy for the layman but trust me that math and programming-savvy types consider it only a moderate hurdle. If the SH devs want to make a modern sub game where you might sail under the polar ice cap, they will have to reinvent the wheel AGAIN. Going back and having to rewrite your stopgap code has got to be more costly than just doing it right the first time.

Originally Posted by Chad

As a indie-programmer, when I created a world, I could make it spherical, but to add water and other such effects, it had to be flatted, like Millers cylindrical projection, as the water code I was using called for a plane that used a bit of trigonometry to simulate the waves. I have no idea how to curl it back up into a sphere or anything like how earth really is.

You confuse the worldspace with the actionspace. The water rendering only happens in the action space which is small enough where doesn't have to be spherical apart from horizon dip effect. One can think of the actionspace as a small stage touring the globe. The stage doesn't have to mimick the globe in shape exactly, just enough for the required local effects. Shipping traffic outside of the actionspace, inside the worldspace, is not bobbing up and down in a liquid, but simply a small statistical model likely not involving more than 6 variables such as position, type, speed, and heading.