Legacy GM Zoom Effect - Heat Signature

  • Thread starter atxgamedesigner
  • Start date
A

atxgamedesigner

Guest
I'm trying to figure out how the zooming is done in the game Heat Signature.
If you haven't seen that game yet, you can check it out on youtube.

I'd love to be able to zoom in/out on the world that I have.

I'd also like to know how he was able to get such a large game world (galaxy) that seems so seamless.

There might be some smoke and mirrors going on, but it looks like he has a huge playable area that requires no loading. Is this done by splitting the world into chunks?
 
T

TDSrock

Guest
Often times when referencing things instead of saying, go look it up on youtube, you could provide a link to exactly what you mean. As there are probably multiple games called "Heat Signature".
 
A

atxgamedesigner

Guest
My apologies for not posting a link - I figured this game would be widely known in the GM community, as it was created by a very successful GM user.

I don't quite understand what you mean by layers and "fades between certain numbers". Could you give more information this, or point me in the direction of some documentation.
I did some searches on layers, and the only thing I could find was documentation on image depth in GM, which I don't believe is what you are referring to.
 

RangerX

Member
Imagine you have multiple maps. One universe map, another that's closer lets say Galaxy level, another one closer lets say planetary level.
When you zoom in/out, it transition from one map another and when well done it looks "smeamless" like what you see in that game.
 
A

atxgamedesigner

Guest
Hey RangerX - thanks for the clarification.

So on these different maps - are these individual rooms that you would transition between?
One room for the universe map, one for the galaxy, one for the planetary?
Sorry I need my hand held a bit on this concept - but I greatly appreciate everyones help!
 
S

seanm

Guest
Tom Francis has some blogs talking about Heat Signature and the scaling system he used.
 
S

Snail Man

Guest
I believe it all takes place in one room, and some of the objects simply stop drawing when far away enough. Others draw simple icons to represent location. From what I've read about the vapor background, it is drawn by having many different layers, as you zoom out, the furthest one fades out while the "topmost" one fades in: that way vapor is always drawn at a meaningful resolution that's not too scaled up or zoomed out
 
Top