Subnautica Map (Navigation)
Falco
Germany Join Date: 2015-06-05 Member: 205271Members
Germany Join Date: 2015-06-05 Member: 205271Members
Comments
My idea is that the map is built by driving along with a properly outfitted vehicle (sonar, inertia navigation system for relative coordinates) And can only be accessed by a special tool or hud upgrade, like the compass. It might be always available when inside a base or vehicle.
The player can then mark positions and areas with different symbols and colors on the map and write text on it.
It would display depths and heights and biome regions like on a satalite view
kinda like this, but with biome borders:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Bryce_Canyon_Swamp_Canyon_Trail_topography.jpg
of course it would still be useless in caves as it only shows the ocean floor, and not beneath...
And besides you'd need to reach the areas before the map of the area shows.
The player then can use this blank coordinate system to draw their own maps (in game) with lines and freeform tools as they swim along the edges of biomes.
Though that'd be too much work for me XD
Another problem in game is that there is no real sense of distance. If I go somewhere, I usually see either the endless ocean, or lots of murky water as I swim towards a beacon, and after a few minutes I arrive. I really great addition to beacons would be that they show your range to them. You can make a complete map with just range and bearing information, after all.
Also the signals you find could just directly add to the map as markers, that are also editable/removable.
Swimmer: Needs to have a tool that lets you pull up a display like a PDA to see what you have uncovered. No points of interest unless unlocked by loading a signal, no signal pings in the open water. Can send out a very short wave ping to see things briefly in the are of the scanner before they fade. Can only hold one signal at a time. Mapped area only about 5 meters from swimmer, but automatic.
Vessel: HUD shows map constantly and will update with movement, ping still needed every now and then as items will fade, ping can reach further and now penetrates surface. Can hold three signals at a time, while driving signals show as pings. Smaller vessels have 10m scan range, Cyclops has 20m.
Seabase: Comm room that must be built allows twelve signals to be loaded overall. Signal pings can be turned on and off at the station. Items are logged and no longer fade until picked up, and now creatures will show up on hand tool or vessel HUDs when ping is sent out. All scan ranges are now doubled, and the map can be marked with custom pings. Beacons can be turned on and off from comm room.
Just one thing, there would be a ping in the open water once you upload the signal right?
What exactly is a "Thing"? Do you mean fish, scrap metal, quartz and things like that?
If you have signals, you might as well just have them as a marker on your map, and be able to turn on/off their appearance in the actual game screen. Would make more sense to me to have just an unknown point of interest on your map, then you go there and discover what's actually there. After that you have it on your map and may remove/edit the marker
What about beacons?
Also how will items 'show up'? It'd be stupidly cluttered if everything just emits signals like pings, maybe you mean like a red arrow pointing at the item when in close proximity, like with the tutorial, but more visible?
I still prefer a more simple approach, both to make it more challenging and because making it too complicated would take some time to implement. I don't think items need to be logged by the system, the player may do that, if they wish, manually.
Do the devs actually look here and see what people want to see by browsing through the thousands of suggestions, some of them repetitive (Because I wasn't here when the first suggestions came along, and I don't intend to read through 50 pages of forum).
I mean some of the stuff I read here is simple, yet very helpful, other things seem very awesome but would probably take a lot of time to implement properly and some other things are just awful ideas in my eyes.
Or do I have to submit some kind of special form or something? Or do they not care at all, and all of this is just wishful thinking, while they do the things that they think are a nice idea? (which are probably nice ideas, but still, some stuff here is just too great and they may not had that in mind before)
Just asking
I think you should be able to upgrade cyclops with a sonar mapping tool, that would map areas around it AND save them to a overall map. The map would be 3D and zoomable, show your position and nearby animals, but nothing else. You could add your own markings on it, tho.
You could upgade base comm room map with the cyclop's one when you dock to it. Base sonar/radar that shows animal has longer range than cyclops radar thing.
The 'things' I mentioned would be stationary objects that aren't alive, which technically would include teeth dropped. But these would be copper, silver, gold, and ect. However they only would show up, let's example as blue, dots on the map but wouldn't be labeled. You would know a node was at that point just not what would drop. However it wouldn't reach into caves when you 'ping' except if you were in a vessel (or exosuit) and the data wouldn't be stored (for gameplay reasons) unless you had a comm room.
As for signals, you wouldn't see the pulsing white dot unless you were in a vessel driving with one to three loaded (interface disc in slot) or if you had loaded them on the comm station where you can choose to have one show up or not, you would still have to go back to load another 1-12 as you explored the signals. As a swimmer, you wouldn't see a pulse and would need to reference your hand held device to get direction and orientation, since a swimmer wouldn't have the HUD space a vessel could have. Beacons such as the pod, vessels, and placed would show up normally since they are transmitting, but a signal is a logged location and not necessarily transmitting. But again a comm tower would let you turn on and off those markers remotely such, as the pod.
As for critters, it could be that the comm tower would have the computers necessary to track and predict the movement of creatures on a ping. As an example they would show up as red on the map for a few seconds. But that capability is only possible with a comm tower built.
The long and short of it is that the comm tower give you much more freedom once built and better capacity to compile a map. It will take longer if you don't wish to and you won't have flexability with the map like if you had, but your call.
You could be in the open water and ping, but if there was nothing in range then nothing would show up. If you loaded a signal, if you were swimming no there would not be the white 'pulse'. If you were driving it would show up like it does now. But as a swimmer you would have to pull up your PDA and it would, in my eyes, show up as a 3d arrow that would show which direction and orientation you would have to take to be heading to the signal.
Later, when I have visited more than 75% of the area, then I have to found a blueprint, that makes it possible to make an Object to map out.
Of course, that might detract from the players own exploration... just a thought. A topographical map is defiantly needed.
The mission was to terraform the planet - I highly doubt they just plopped down on some random planet. Perhaps the player can recover orbital scans from cores ejected from the ship's computer.
If you want no map, ever, then your vote is correct. If you want a map only after exploring, and building a device to make and/or view it, however expensive that may be and if you need a blueprint or not, then your vote should be option 2, 3, 5 or 6
Helmet mounted displays are a thing even today. You also have a compass and your vital signs on your hud, too. I doubt it'd be too difficult to just show up a location, too.
Also coordinates are just a bunch of numbers. You could store millions of them on a usb drive or flash memory card, even today. Why limit it to 3?
I think a separate cave mapping system would be neat! Maybe a separate tool and, like the blueprints, can be saved in some inventory system?
Gameplay for both reasons. Yes you could put the map on the diving mask...but the diving mask is already getting a little cluttered at that point. As to limit of three, it is just to load them up because until you have a comm tower you wouldn't be able to control how many 'signal pulses' you have going off. At this point I found three on top of the cyclops, base beacon I put down, seamoth, and lifeboat pod was more then enough clutter going on in the sea and I was getting confused about which signal I was trying to head to. I bumped it up to 12 for the comm tower because I also put in you could turn them on and off remotely at that point.
As for just having a pulse go off for the diving helmet it was more for the fact of why bother? Once you are close enough the pulse becomes a distraction while swimming around. Most of the signals if not all of them are no where near the starting location, and while it is an assumption I doubt you would want to swim vs use a vessel to get to them.
Detailed 3D mapping is absolutely vital to finding one's way around in Subnautica. At the moment, four cardinal compass points and a handful of beacons isn't much to work with. Even a distance-to-beacon HUD readout would be a huge improvement.
Ideally, a submarine should have several sonar systems; Navigational (active), Sidescan (active) and Passive. The purpose of the first two sonar systems are self-explanatory as they would enable the generation of detailed terrain maps whenever the Cyclops enters a new area. The practical applications of Passive sonar in Subnautica would be best applied to tracking the position of 'large specimens of marine life' (you know who I'm talking about) and acoustic analysis of all marine life within a certain radius of the sub or installation. Might also be useful to have a visual 'waterfall' display of the acoustic profile unique to each species.
Because 'Science'. Science is cool.
Marine Science, even more so.
Can't wait to use the Cyclops to nuzzle up close to some Bleeders, then turn them into chutney. Five thousand watts in a tight beam will do that.
That might be a bit much. There was an older game called 'Sub rebellion' that used sonar to paint a wireframe over the surface that let you see terrain even in darker and murky water. In the video you can see it being used.
Sub Rebellion (PS2)
I'd rather have something like that and it being saved. It's silly to NOT save it, logically speaking. And it wouldn't help a whole lot in navigation either. If you want to see the terrain just look out the window.
Looks like starfox, just with submarines XD
Hardly a simulation.
Well I was more pointing to the mechanic, which would be simple enough to convey everything needed without being overly complicated or hard on processor power. No, the game definitely was not a simulation...but it was still fun in it's own cheesy way.
During EVA a map which is integrated into the HUD should be very late game or we scrap that and you have to rely entirely on your stationary 3d holo map, the beacons and your sense of direction.
How this wiuld work is you would have to create a laser scanner, place it, and scan. This scan takes time and does 2 passes. It would record all points that it sees and ignore points that are different in second scan , moving fish or moving seaweed. This would of course add some noise to the scan and you would have to relocate and axan again. Max distance of 150ft or so per scan.
You would want to place this above the area your wcanning for better resolution, so weighted positional anchors would be needed to suspend scanner vertically at location.
With personal skill, you can tell what the biome is just by the way it looks and the noise in the scan. Aaaand would not accodently reveal secrets of the map unless you scanned it and analyzed the scan yourself.
I imagion a basic top down 2d map of the scan comilation on your pda, and a holographic room in your base, or sub that can display the 3d version and let you seek out details.
You would be able to make markers for interesting things you see and use pda to waypoint your way to it.
Initially, I want a top down map accessible from the PDA, but one that only reveals what you have actually discovered. Vehicles would add / progress as TerraBlade noted.
As many have requested before, I want a Command Center fragment scanned from the Bridge of the Aurora (that is not immediately available). From this could be built a 3D map module (among other things) for a Moonpool, or larger, sized room. This map would go beyond top down to be fully explorable as TerraBlade described. This map would be built from your Sonar mapping and anything already on your PDA. Syncing PDA to vehicle, or Base to PDA, would update one another. Ideally, advanced functions of the map, like custom notations, specs on Biomes, Outpost and Beacon management, would become available after scanning an AI or Mainframe module from the Aurora that expanded your current AI's abilities. These could be additional modules for the "Command Center" that would all work together (and sync with analyzers, scanners, workbenches, signals, etc to benefit other areas as well).