Cool way to display custom maps/ stuff to help with makin campaigns

[TheBuilder]

Hey Virgil I had a thought of how to make your site even cooler, though it would probably take a lot more programming than its worth, but here it goes anyway:


     Each person that has one of their maps posted will get a page.  On this page there will be a picture of the Milky Way Galaxy.  Hopefully one that is better than the one you used for the Story Mode.  In a column to the right or left of the picture would be a drop-down box.  In the drop-down box there would be a list of planets/maps.

     When a person selects a planet/map, a planet grows in size in the picture.  It would grow in size from a dot/pixel/whatever to the same size of the planets in Special Ops Mode.  Once a planet reached full size its name would appear above it.  When a person places their cursor over the planet a thumbnail of the map would appear, just like in story mode, it would also disappear when the cursor was taken off the planet.

     There would be a second drop-down box below the first one.  In this box would be a list of series'.  When a series is selected, all of the planets in that series would appear in a predefined pattern on the picture of the Milky Way.  The creator of the series would get to choose how the planets order themselves on the screen; be it a spiral, rows & columns, a border effect, etc.

     The planets would have lines connecting them in chronological order.  By choice of the creator, each map could, when beaten, show the person a code/password.  This code/password would be created & added to the end of mission graph, (this would happen when someone downloads the mission/level/map).  This code/password would be saved by the page as one that would unlock the next planet in the series for that person & only that person, (would have something to do with the IP address of each person).  Planets that aren't unlocked yet for that person, (IP address again), would have an input box over them.  They also would not show a thumbnail when scrolled over.

     It could also work a bit like what you've said for CW2.  Someone could make a bunch of missions for say the different states of the United States. Each mission would have one "character" of a code that would unlock a mission of the whole U.S.  The same could be done for Canada and Mexico.  Once the Canada, U.S., and Mexico missions have been beat, you could combine the "characters" you get from them to unlock a mission of the entire North American Continent.  Repeat this process yet again for all of the Continents, and you get all of the "characters" needed to unlock a mission of the whole planet.  This same principle can be applied to missions that a person wants to be on the same planet.

     With that all in mind, think on this; rather than make a whole new page for this just make it so that each persons profile page has this along with all the other options they usually have.  You could also add an upload map option there so that when a person uploads a map it is automatically linked with their account.  The map, (once approved of), would be added to the first drop-down box's list.  The owner of the page could then add it to a series.  Some kind of series editor would be needed to do this, (yet another option on the page).  In the series editor someone could make a start a new series, edit an existing one, delete one, (though not the maps in it, their code/password links would be gone though).  You could add to, take from, and rearrange the maps in a series, also choosing whether they are code/password linked or not, (those that aren't would just show up the same but would not require a code to activate any of them).

    By the way, each planet would have a name, and then each mission/level/map would have a name, just in case a planet has more than one map designated to it.


I got the idea for this while thinking up a way to turn one planet, Earth, into a giant mission fest all in itself where you would have to fight for every "state", (be it one of the United State, or an individual country like Iran/Turkey/India), and then fight for the entire area that the previous missions covered. Repeat the process for every state, then every country, then every continent, then the whole earth.

Yes CW1 and Virgil's ideas on CW2 are what inspired this, but it was also part of me working on my campaign.
Here are some pics to understand what im imagineing here:



ANY QUESTIONS?

[Kamron3]

Maybe in the future... but I don't think this can be done with the current coding of the game and would take massive amounts of time to do anything like this.

Good ideas.

_k

[Aurzel]

very inventive visual aids, they brought your idea together nicely i'd say, this is most likely something for cw 2 though as you've said but i definately like the idea, if the galaxies were meshed together we could have an overall look with everyone's combined maps and literally populate a galaxy with levels

[djcian]

kind of reminds me of how your worlds are shown in spore.  in fact it is exactly like spore.  is this where the idea came from?

also after awhile there would be so many levels that you could not possibly have one universe for all of them so every author would have to have their own galaxy like TheBuilder said. 

[TheBuilder]

never even looked at an articale for spore, heard and seen it but never considered playing it. though that is weird that they r the same,

[knucracker]

Thanks for these ideas...
I have considered a similar interface for an in-game custom map viewer.  Honestly, I have to date hesitated building a custom map viewer directly into the game.  My thoughts were that some other folks might want to start their own web site that hosted custom maps.  If so, I didn't want the game to be hard coded against knuckle cracker and a certain system I had in place.

But, I have begun to reconsider this as an inbuilt custom game browser and viewer would have many advantages.

[TheBuilder]

thank u virgil, my conceince is clear