Yet another case for coordinates in subs
harrzack
United States Join Date: 2016-09-11 Member: 222250Members
United States Join Date: 2016-09-11 Member: 222250Members
I've been ragging on the idea that seeing coordinates are is essential part of this game. They should be displayed along with the compass direction. Since so many player want to share their finds, sending coords to friends and posting on the forums is a no-brainer!
Does this make the game "too easy"? No way! This is a big world, and finding your way around "by chance" doesn't even make sense.
And of course one will want to record ones own discoveries and go back. The Buoys are certainly helpful, but not every discovery warrants one.
Does this make the game "too easy"? No way! This is a big world, and finding your way around "by chance" doesn't even make sense.
And of course one will want to record ones own discoveries and go back. The Buoys are certainly helpful, but not every discovery warrants one.
Comments
If you turn off fog, you can see how it loads in terrain when you move. Attempting to load in many chunks rapidly for a proper map might be a very bad idea.
Also let's be honest... the coordinate system already exists in game, if the console command WARP is any indication. It's just a matter of making it available somehow through the game client itself.
THAT might be doable. A display screen with a set of coordinates and a heading to each would be neat. And/or a VR headset that lets you see outside the Cyclops in a enhanced "no-camera" view, with any waypoints displayed on the HUD.
The Seaglide map is very local, it's pulling from already-loaded terrain, just like the Sonar. A larger map would need to be aware of the entire map, in 3d. Seriously, turn off fog via console and you can see what's actually loaded.
I liked the beacons in Minecraft. Beams of light spearing into the heavens. I imagine that would be VERY power intensive (without invoking "it's maaagic" like Minecraft), but having one of those punching up from a Blood Kelp trench helping you navigate if you can see it and/or the sky would be neat. That would need some very rough occlusion to look mostly realistic.
@dealwithitdog: I don't think you've ever played Minecraft with "Rei's Minimap" (or equivalents) as having location info as well as direction makes a HUGE difference in the game. You say you don't see how coordinates are necessary... OK - travel for 3 minutes away from your base - any direction. Take note of what you see - now return to your base. Then do a little fishing or work on the base - change your orientation. NOW - go back and find that spot you went to that is 3 minutes out from your base... Good freekin' luck with out coordinates! The compass will help a little but but you will still struggle - and if the spot you went to had no features - it would be even more impossible to find by "dead reckoning".
Subnautica is an EXPLORATION game in a finite world (unlike space) which has been designed on a Cartesian coordinate grid: 0,0, 0, 0,0 is dead center of this world, at the surface. Coordinates are your Subnautica Friend and need to be readily available - not as an afterthought or hidden on some debug panel.
@Tarkannen: - think it would be just as easy to have them "free running" as in a sort of panel-meter display at the bottom of the screen. In that position, would not distract from the view and always be available as needed, and one less click to turn them on/off.
Combining beacons with another often-requested feature of being able to cycle what is displayed on the HUD would be nice. If the beacons displayed their name along with their coordinates, or distance from them, and could be cycled on and off, navigation would be a lot more friendly.
However, this might go against the dev's desire for you to explore the whole map. Making navigation easier might end up acting like fast travel in big games where you get in the habit of getting "head down" watching the display and not exploring. I know in the real world, as soon as I got a GPS, I promptly lost the ability to navigate on my own, even on simple trips.
If you don't have navigation aids, it forces you to actually commit the map to memory so you can eventually find your way around it like the neighborhood you grew up in. It's very tough starting out, but makes the time commitment much more rewarding when you can recognize individual terrain features and orient yourself automatically. If the devs implemented an in-game coordinate display or waypoint system, I would expect them to make it late-game stuff, by which point you would be navigating well on your own anyway.
Remember, the devs WANT it to be tough starting out, and they want you to experience the stress and nervousness of being hungry, vulnerable, and lost on a big map. The growth involved in learning to fend for yourself, make shelter, and begin to farm excess and stockpile all leads you to have the confidence to strike out and explore more of the world on scouting expeditions.
It has been talked about elsewhere, but plopping down a grow bed and planting kelp vines in it makes an excellent visual marker path system, especially in the dark places, and doesn't clutter the display (except for being able to see them through the terrain because they act just like base pieces). You can start doing this very early on because the scanner is one of the easier pieces of tech to build, and the floating island is accessible almost immediately if you're willing to make the long swim out there.
Cheers,
J
Technically, we shouldn't really have a reliable compass, since there's no way to know with our limited tech, if the planet actually has a magnetic North and/or South pole.
For all we know, the lines of magmatism could run horizontally through the planet instead of vertically. and constantly change.
In order for you to have a reliable set of coordinates, you'd have to place markers/becons at a minimum of Four places some distance from the lifepod, to act as ping markers for your computer pad to generate longitudes and latitudes.
There are no satellites in orbit for us to bounce signals off for GPS and there's no sextant blueprint in the game.
Once that is done, the player gets XY coordinates.
A third beacon 1000m opposite those would give XYZ coordinates. Like if you choose west and south, and a third to the northeast, you use the pulses the beacons emit to track your location with gravity GPS.
This reminds me a bit of scanning in EVE Online, where 4 probes can pin down a signature.
The best part, is that they could hide the coordinates system from the player, and use this in its place, attach the compass and GPS to an arbitrary direction the player chooses. A bit late now, but new players could have fights about which way should be the new North! Mountain? Aurora? Floating island?
First - all I'm suggesting is to display coordinates as a running display at the bottom of the screen. No extra clutter, no Buoy-name-distance-data... And don't forget - this IS a game to be enjoyed, and if we can suspend disbelief and allow that a compass "just works" - how does this "spoil" or make the game too easy?
As an exploration game, not having any way to note where you are is just dumb, and does NOT make for a "challenge" but creates endless wasted time trying to get to a previously visited spot. Plus you don't HAVE to use the coords - they are just data.
I've only got about 150 hrs in the game, and I can tell you that aimlessly wandering around, not knowing WHERE you are or if you've been here is NOT fun.
Simply adding the coordinates display would take little coding as they are already being generated. Your choice as to what to use them for, but at least they would be there.
If you really want coordinates, look in F1. But beacons are the intended method.
Beacons are intended to find a location again that you've marked, but it's not ideal for navigating multiple locations. I don't really care to carry 10+ beacons around in my inventory nor have my HUD lit up with blips just to navigate the world. I do use beacons, but I wish they were a bit more informative. The signals the game generates can pinpoint exact coordinates and show us distances, while the beacons we make ourselves can't even do that. It's likely because system-wise signals are coded to show fixed points on the map to give us exact locations. But that doesn't quite make sense gameplay-wise, since there's no indication of a GPS satellite or functional navigational array on the Aurora for the PDA to pinpoint these locations.
Bottom line is the coordinate system already exists in game, so let's merge it into the gameplay. Make a GPS/Radar build option that can be unlocked say, from the Modification Station. This way it doesn't spoil the early game to make it easier but gives us a better late-game option for navigation. Maybe it could tie into the Scanner Room as an upgrade since it seems to have a radar of sorts already for tracking. Just a thought!
This would even make sense for 0,0,0 being very near your spawn point. Your PDA, or the lifepod, could establish the base point upon impact, and every movement since then is plotted from there. You woke up several hours after planetfall, and it's not unbelievable your lifepod could have bounced or drifted before the "gravity tether" thing took hold.
And there is already one of those in the game..., Hit F1 and yer all set.
Also like @Mirality said earlier, too many beacons clutter the display HUD. It would be nice if we could toggle beacon pulses on and off to keep the noise down - such as when you no longer need to return to your Lifepod once you're completely self-sufficient with bases.
@DaveNY - You are missing the point entirely. Going to the debug panel will NOT be part of the finished game. Just give the game some data on where you are, in and of itself is not a cheat. If YOU go out of the game and go to a forum or You Tube and acquire some coordinates of a special place - THEN that may be considered a cheat... it also depends on what you get at the location. If a friend sends a coord of a cool vista that he/she has found - and would like to share it - how in the world is that 'cheating'??!
If you go out of the game to get info on where wrecks and awesome stuff is located - THAT may be considered a cheat. All this also depends on how you define 'pure' in the game... and it IS a game to be enjoyed!
Beacons are great but a bit heavy handed for recording every cool thing you see in the game. Being able to make notes on where you are can be easily done and don't require any extra coding in the game.
Ok - if knowing where you are (by coordinates) is to be considered a 'cheat' - then SEEING where you are (by vision) is an even bigger 'cheat'! I guess to be totally 'pure' in the game we should paint all the view screens black and just ramble around in the dark and get out of the sub from time to time to see if anything interesting has shown up.
Sheesh!
Exactly my thoughts on the subject. "Signals" give an exact distance, including the beacon signals to other lifepods. Why can't our OWN lifepod's beacon show distance? Why don't our craftable beacons show distance? Why don't the Seamoth and Cyclops beacons show distance?
I'd feel better about hauling beacons around to mark locations with if the Seamoth had a little of its own built-in storage — INSIDE the Seamoth, accessible while inside the Seamoth, and in it from the start, not an upgrade — that I could carry a few beacons or spare power cells around in until I need them. Four to eight spaces would be plenty. The storage upgrade on the outside should be much larger than it is; if I can carry 48 spaces of stuff in my wetsuit, an outside storage locker bolted onto my Seamoth ought to hold a lot more than four.Even the storage bin in the lifepod holds 32, and it's about the exterior size of the Seamoth's bolt-on locker.
...Doh! Of course having now GOTTEN another one, I sheepishly remember that it's not four spaces, it's four by four, sixteen spaces.
...Which, nevertheless, is still only a third of what I can apparently stuff inside my wetsuit.
Inventory hammerspace is a gameplay convention with which I have no complaints. Right-sizing for gameplay purposes and internal consistency would be nice, but that's something I leave entirely to the devs to work out according to their plan.
I meant like the storage modules on the Seamoth. You can add 4 of them and get 4 storage compartments, each equal in size. I thought it reasonable to expect the same result on the PRAWN, especially since the storage modules are common and interchangeable between the two vehicles. It might be inappropriate to bring up outdated gameplay mechanics, but until recently, the depth upgrade modules did stack, on both the Seamoth and Cyclops.
Cheers,
J
You should post that in its own thread.
This sort of navigation plz. It would make perfect sense. It would seem a believable solution for an Alterra PDA that is set in emergency-mode. In the beginning, in your lifepod, the PDA obviously starts in emergency mode, which could set the 0, 0, 0 coordinates right where the game begins.
Also:
- Beacons need to show distance
- We need a way to turn the beacons on/off. Through PDA or a separate base module. Or both, or something.
But I was dismayed as this time around I couldn't find the alcove where the thermal vents are for my base! After several minutes searching the area in game (and comparing data online) I found out that the assets didn't load. After quitting and reloading my save file, I was able to find both the Wreck and my lovely alcove with thermal geysers. I decided to log the coordinates so I can find it in future playthroughs: if anyone's interested in the sweet spot, the area is located at coordinates -375.0 -160.0 -725.0.
The point I'm getting at is that while beacons are great for marking points of interest that you come across, they're not great if you're not able to find those areas again easily on future playthroughs (or if something happens and you lose progress in your game). And since the world map doesn't change at all between each new game, it only makes sense to have a better method of navigation to help replayability. If we had in-game access* to coordinates via some method, it would make exploration and navigation more natural. Plus, with coordinate data access you can share map data and points of interest with other people, like I did just now with you guys!
*Before it's mentioned again, yes pressing F1 displays debug data including coordinates. It can't be assumed that information will be available once the game officially launches, since it also has access to debug tools and developer gameplay options that shouldn't be available for a retail game.
Fixed.
Knowing exactly where things are hurts replayability, and prevents exploring
a second time and rediscovering wonderful places.
Also fixed.
I understand your point and agree with you, but even without exact navigation the game still plays similarly every time. The Aurora always crashes in the same spot, and technology fragments/creatures/wrecks are always found in the same biomes. If the game had the terrain to be procedurally generated and everything was loaded randomly with each new playthrough, I would be fine without coordinates. However, since that isn't the case (of which I'm fine with it being as it is) and biomes/wrecks/bases are always found in the same place with every playthrough, predetermined pathing is going to happen to every player eventually at some point.
That's why I say make coordinate displays an optional upgrade for players that want it, and those that don't want it can just ignore it. You don't have to have a Compass or a Thermometer to enjoy the game, but they're very nice features which help add to the gameplay value.