Just a quick update – having realised the dev/debug value of plotting routes in the GUI map system in-game, I decided to bring implementing the local system map forward. This will be the ‘RTS’ like tactical scanner/map for the immediate space around your ship(s). As such, it will show everything in immediate scanning range, waypoints, courses plotted by the NavCom and so on. Which is great for me as I can then see the results of the visibility culling code, movement of ships/fleets/flocks, the states of the NPC pilot AI’s, all in a nice GUI!
It’s actually turned out easier than I thought (meaning it’s turned out as easily as I planned!). I simply created a new GUI panel, derived from the ‘Map’ class in the code, and then told it to render the entire local scene graph and ‘boom’ – one scanner! It’s also proved useful already – showing me some NPC vessels teleporting, and also getting stuck in some odd repeat/cyclic navigation loops.
More to follow…
why do the local and galactic map views have different pieces of code?
wouldnt it be easier to have the same functional construct (without extra derivates) render the map?
data that has to be shown could then be delivered by the same routine that determines what to render in normal view
:think:
That’s exactly how it’s set up. Each map view inherits from a base class which has all the common GUI/user interaction code. Each map then adds any specialisations needed for that particular map view, and renders the in-game data passing flags into each scene graph to apply a different visual style to each object.The galaxy scene is a special case, as it’s non-dynamic and has to cater for 200,000+ stars – so it’s not your typical scene graph 🙂