Customize your map (M/minimap, not map generation)

[Nowhere]

The M-map and the minimap show quite a lot of features like buildings, ores, forests, and ground types.

They all have a fixed colour coding, intensities, etc. In some instances it can be really tedious to find stuff. For example, my current map has a LOT of deserty tiles sprinkled among grass and dirt tiles. And as you can imagine the spotty texture is quite distracting when searching for stone and copper deposits.

The same goes for grassy tiles and forests. Since they blend quite effectively on the map, it can be difficult to make out forest free alleys you can drive through with your car.

This comes from somebody with good colour vision, I could imagine that other player's problems are more severe.

So my suggestion would be an option feature that lets you choose your own colours for different map features and sliders to fade them. For example I would really like to fade the ground textures because they are only partially important for orientation but not as important as them dominating the look of the map. On the other hand I would like forests to be recognizeable more easily so I can navigate around them while driving in the car without having to check the map constantly in order to not drive into forest dead-ends all the time.

[ssilk]

This changes the map view so that it cannot be compared. This is currently an important feature.

I also think this is a bit "wanted": You need to search yourself or - not yet impement - let it search. With bots and stuff.

For colorblinds a different mechanism makes more sense (see viewtopic.php?f=80&t=22760 Support for Color Blinds / Better Visibility ...)
I added it also there.

See also
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6253 Better Display of Resources in the World Map
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=7225 higher contrast pollution colour on map
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9618 Trees more obvious on map

[siggboy]

The worst is trying to find oil wells. It's also difficult to see the difference between Iron and Stone, also due to varying backgrounds (forest vs. desert). Forest is almost impossible to see, but it's important because it limits pollution.

It would be usefull if you could filter certain features and they would be highlighted. It would also be useful if you could set the map to various modes (terrain mode, resource view, pollution view, ...)

We should also be able to set markers on the map; currently the only way to do that is to put down a train station...

[ssilk]

Oilfields not visible. Hm. That depends on the monitor (or kind of colorblindness ), not the game, cause I can see oilfields perfectly, they poke out of the map and jump into your eye. And I've played it on many quite different monitors meanwhile.
Have you tried it also on different monitor?

[siggboy]

Oil fields are tiny dots. Not everybody has perfect eye sight. Some monitors are crap. I guess we can agree that it could be easier to get a quick overview of where your candidate oil fields are on an extended explored map .

[Harkonnen604]

It would be nice if oil wells on map/minimap had some semi-transparent pixels/tiles around them making these dots a bit wider, especially in deserts.

[BlackKnight]

MAP CONCEPTS
You guys have some great ideas. Map enhancements have always been something I have craved (additional features/control) in map view. Also, as someone who has mild colour blindness, I imagine custom control over map colours would be advantageous to me.


PART 1
Map view - think in terms of Predator view. So you have say, three or so modes: (eg) Terrain, Infrastructure/Production, Military. Each mode would, falsely colourize for highest degree of usefulness - just like the Predator's mask does. In addition, under each mode you could then click a configuration button to change the direct RGB values with sliders?

You would also have the option in each mode to disable/enable specific items. Say Infrastructure/Production Mode, you could disable/enable buildings (in order to enhance planning//reducing redundancy/pollution... -- maybe just helping find building types in very large factories) -- (just like you can with the current version of the game with its newly implemented features of being able to toggle on/off items in the Productions view). In Military Mode you would have options like pollution, threats, etc.. all player built infrastructure would be a single colour to help it not be distracting. Same with Terrain view, infrastructure would be simplified as well as threats - but resources, etc might be enhanced/and logically might have accurate colouring.

* At the very least, The option to unify the ground types into one dark colour/or make faded would be exceptionally useful since currently, visually analyzing a factory could potentially be done with much less effort without the distraction of trying to figure out what is ground and what is construction.


PART 2
As mentioned recently on this thread and surrounding posts here: (viewtopic.php?f=3&t=678&start=250#p182199), an RTS mode like the classic Battle Zone could be a late game option that would (with the help of satellites, enhance the map/Game to another level and provide a high resolution view with complete remote control. Maybe it would be a different view mode altogether?-though combining it might also make sense. This would be kind of like the current game when you zoom out to the max (yet it would allow to go out even more), and would have filters to be able to make it much easier to see/manage production remotely. So being a "false view", you could actually hide all items by group or single item for example. It would generally provide a much easier view mode than the current game would at those resolutions (since its current view mode wasnt intended to) and be visually easier to handle on the processor (esp important also due simplifying rendering required by the game at those resolutions).


Thoughts?

[ssilk]

Watching it in this light I added it also to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=18153 Information-Layers (for map and/or normal view)