Core Design

We need a way to entice players to reach various points on the map. Giving new players milestones to reach will encourage them to keep playing. In particular, we should add some images and text to advertise some key locations. For example:

  • Next to Rigel Aurelius, we should show an image representing the Battle Arena. When clicking on the system, we could show some text describing the Battle Arena.
  • Next to Charon we should show an image of the Fortress of the Charon Pirates and describe it as their home base.
  • Next to St. Katharine's Star we should show the New Victoria Arcology and describe it as the capital of the Commonwealth.
  • Next to Sanctuary we should show the Cathedral of Domina.
  • Next to Jiang's Star we should show a Sung citadel and describe it as a the capital of the Sung Slavers.
  • Next Point Juno we should draw the Point Juno stronghold and describe it as the last Commonwealth Fleet stronghold.

Implementation

We need the following features:

  • A method to position an image on the galactic map (by coordinates), tied to whether or not a given node is known or now. NOTE: For our purposes it would be OK to have this hard-coded in the topology definition, but for future expansion we might want a way to programmatically specify this (e.g., at system create time).
  • A method to associate descriptive text with a node (which will show up when clicking on the node).
george moromisato 22 Oct 2017:

I decided not to do this for a couple of reasons:

1. Rather than creating new images, we should implement a way for arbitrary station images to show up on the map. Unfortunately, this was much more work.

2. This would have conflicted with expansions like TSB and TBR, which add lots of systems to the topology.

3. These images would be redundant since we can show stations and information when you click on the node.

What I've done instead in 1.8 Alpha 4 is to reveal key stations (such as the Battle Arena) so that they show up when you click on the details pane.

assumedpseudonym 23 Oct 2017:

 I’ll need to take notes on how you did that when the new alpha comes out. I’ll need that for a few stations.