Heat Map

[JeP2k3]

Hi, so ONI is indeed close to perfect but I'm having trouble with one aspect of the game, heat,  and I thought I'd submit some ideas I had for improving my understanding, and maybe other's, of the way it works in ONI.

 

The thing is, I find the heat layer confusing and not precise enough when trying to identify WHAT in my base is emitting heat. I think if you added some heat treshold, rather than being all a blur, it would be easier to identify what is a big heat dispenser but quiclky dissipating, and what is just a medium source a little more spread. You can see in this example : https://www.espatial.com/features/hot-spot-heat-maps , comparing the two, that Dallas is not really noticeable in the blurred map, but in the one in plain colors, it stands out a lot more. I think a bit of both world would be best, the only example I found online is cheap but you get the idea :

 

 

An other idea, but it seems like a lot more work (I'm not minimizing the work on the treshold idea would take, but still it would be more I think), would be to have colored arrows, or maybe little moving dots, showing what temperature is going where, and I'm sure a heat or cold source whould stand out a lot. But I know it's a lot of work.

 

I think the gaz layer would benefit a lot from those ideas, but really, what I have the most trouble with in the game is heat, heat souces, heat propagation, what type of mineral will withstand heat or cold... It's a lot of concepts working as one and usually I'm overwelmed by all that and my bases start failing because of it.

 

Good day, and thanks again for such a great game, I can't wait to see what you have in mind for it until release, it's been a blast to see it grow !

[yoakenashi]

I had an idea like this once. Check out the example screenshots in the comments for this topic:

What you're talking about is essentially narrowing in on specific temperature ranges. I agree, sometimes it's hard to differentiate between 40°C room temperature and that 45°C machine that's causing all the heat.

[JeP2k3]

I was thinking about the decor layer, and I think that, when pointing at a tile, the UI could highlight what in the vicinity is emiting heat or cold. I know it's a LOT more complex than that, and in any given tile there could already be a good number of elements having a temperature and a temperature exchange (objects on the ground, pipes and liquid or gases inside, etc) but I really think something could be done to help us detect quicker the heat sources and anticipate temperature changes.

[impyre]

I like the idea of a heat-slope map. I'm going to try to create one from my thermal overlay using a program to see if it would be as useful as I think. I'll be back later to share.

EDIT: I guess another alternative is just having settings for the overlays that we can change. Let us change the ranges of values we want displayed. If you chose 1400-1800 for example, you could see where your magma was cooling off... if you chose -50 to 0, you could see heat seeping into your cold biome, etc etc.

[JeP2k3]

Yeah perhaps. Another thing that could do the trick could be showing heat "movement" as we can see the gases ones.