Star Citizen - Star Map - MobiGlas
Star Citizen, right... it's in Alpha. Yeah, we know. I got this message from CIG the other day, "It's in alpha, it'll all be fine once it's out."
Well, yeah. That's probably true, CIG can address the bugs and sort out the fps, but will it be a NEAT user-experience? Will it be CLEAN?
The wrist-phone MobiGlas currently owns the Star Map app, but is this the right place for it? Looking at a galactic Star Map when your land-bound is pointless. Using the Star Map on your wrist during flight is a really disorienting experience. Here's why.... you're taken away from the current game view to 'some external god view' of the same game world. Then you're thrust back into the game, having to reset your experience and start searching for the Destination you've set. It's real clunky.
Despite my #wehatemobiglas meme, I don't think CIG is ready to kill its wrist machine, nor should it. There's no reason why you shouldn't carry around GooglePlanet for the place you find yourself in, be that planet or moon or asteroid or space station or truck stop.
But a far better place for a Quantum Transit-enabling Star Map (and one that the players are already used to) would be the ship's HUD or Heads Up Display itself. Every ship has a HUD and every ship has a Quantum Engine. With every HUD you can show the Current Targeted, that's its job. You can easily Switch Target, and that can be adapted to Star Map. Your HUD already gives a graphic representation of the Target top-right of the screen.
The HUD is owned by the Player's Helmet or a ship's Holoplayer interface via the seat connection.
While I understand that CIG is very proud of its hierarchic system-viewing software or Star Map app, in ship this shouldn't mean tacking it onto an elite ship's 3D radar that cheaper ships might not have. Plus in most cases Star Map just gets in the way of gameplay, sitting there bright as day in the middle of your gaming screen. This shouldn't mean 'leave Star Map buried somewhere on your wristphone'. Put Star Map where it already belongs. Here's how it might work...
CONTENT ONCE I'M WORKING AT CIG in Los Angeles - I have some great ideas (ask anyone who's worked with me in the games industry on MediEvil PS1 and GhostMaster PC and The Simpsons PSP for example). I just grind at all aspects of the game I'm a part of until that thing works better and feels smoother, in the game view.
PS: This same HUD functionality could be used to drive narrative elements (assigned via MobiGlas) like Find Next Target in a narrative situation where CEO-X will be traveling to his private planet G-3254 in two hours time, a seek and destroy mission. Or an info-gathering mission. Or... :)
PPS: this game obviously has yet to deal with its PROFOUND issue of how one manages what one has acquired, one's role described by one's ownership list. His armour, his weapons, his dress sense, his ships, his stash of commodities and bargainables... and I refer the interested parties to my much-earlier post about Hyperspace Commercialisation which I suspect/hope CIG may have to confront somewhere down the pre-release line.