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Rethinking the Atmosphere Overlay


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Something I've been thinking about for a while, thought I'd throw it out there.  Consider this room.

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We can tell there's a healthy amount of Oxygen in there to breath.  We can also see some CO2 building up in there, too.  Hard to tell much else, though.  We can make a guess that there is probably a trace of another gas in there, causing a lot of turbulence at the O2/CO2 interface, but  that could be just the normal interaction of that interface.  We can't really tell.  So naturally we'd switch to the Atmosphere Overlay to clear things up, right?

 

Well...

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Unfortunately, this tells us even less than standard view.  You'd expect that the gases would be color coded, but they're not.  The O2 is coming up teal, and the CO2 is coming up red, but that's only because O2 is breathable, and CO2 is not.  We already knew that information, it's not relevant.  We also have no indication of what our mystery gas might be, if it's even there.  Also worth noting, vacuum doesn't look any different than the CO2 does, despite the substantial difference in implications of both.

Frankly, the Atmosphere Overlay doesn't provide any relevant information, and what information it DOES provide is redundant.

Excuse my rudimentary skill with Paint, but this is more of what I had in mind when I first saw the tooltip "Atmosphere Overlay".

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Here, we can easily tell what gases are present.  In addition to a clear identification of where the line is between CO2 and O2, which was absent in both of the other images, we can now also see that there is indeed another gas present.  Chlorine.  Not drawn here (because I'm not even remotely talented enough for it) would also be a series of lines across each region of gas, like the elevation markers on a topographical map.  Say, every 500 g or so?  These lines are also able to mash themselves together when enough of them are adjacent, as I tried (and failed) to differentiate -- the line between the Chlorine and both other gases should be noticeably thicker than the line between the CO2 and O2, because the pressure difference of the CO2 and O2 is much smaller than it is compared to the trace of Chlorine.

This format would give significantly more information than the current Atmosphere Overlay, and should convey it in a manner that is very easy to understand.

 

Thoughts?

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I've come to the same conclusion as you. The only use of the current oxygen overlay is to quickly check oxygen pressure around the base from a broad view. Your solution would make it much more valuable and you explained it very well. Basically it uses the standard view but highlights the gases and puts the materials and items into the background.

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I really don't see why the atmo-overlay can't be like the gas overlay in alpha. That worked quite well. You might need more subtle colouring to distinguish gases but I don't see how that's a problem. Polluted oxygen could be a slightly more greenish tint for example.

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If the atmosphere overlay could retain its current functionality in addition to distinguishing between the unbreathable gasses that would certainly be useful, but I have a feeling that if we do see that it would be as its own overlay.

 

Really, I have the most trouble telling gasses apart when I'm working in an area with multiple biome wallpapers that meet. It would be great if as you dug out the map any open areas that connected to the starting area changed to match it.

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32 minutes ago, mdallicardillo said:

Really, I have the most trouble telling gasses apart when I'm working in an area with multiple biome wallpapers that meet. It would be great if as you dug out the map any open areas that connected to the starting area changed to match it.

I think the biome color filters should go completely or be removed when digging. They really do look naff when the original terrain is all dug out. They do mess with the color of gases too.

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17 minutes ago, Moggles said:

I think the biome color filters should go completely or be removed when digging. They really do look naff when the original terrain is all dug out. They do mess with the color of gases too.

i have to agree with this, it really is an eyesore and like you said it does mess with the colour of the gasses.

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8 minutes ago, BlueLance said:

i have to agree with this, it really is an eyesore and like you said it does mess with the colour of the gasses.

I'm not even sure why it needs to be there at all. The wall paper could just as easily be invisible and provide exactly the same effect as a hidden value.

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I don't think it should all be the same from an art standpoint, the different background tints help the cold biome look cold or the caustic biome look warm, but certainly when you've mined out a large cavity it makes very little sense to have intersecting lines of different backgrounds.

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10 hours ago, Risu said:

It was replaced when polluted oxygen lost its toxic gas status. No point having an overlay that brings attention to what you shouldn't breathe when it does nothing bad.

. . . except there is really a point to it: In this game you are constantly setting up various machines and filters for the various gasses, and knowing which gasses are in an area informs how to best process it.

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Another point I neglected to outline in the OP, is that pressure also matters.  The [Popped Eardrums] status is just one example.  Acceptable pressure for plant growth could be (but currently is not) another.  Calibrating an Atmo Switch.  There are reasons why knowing the pressure in an area at a glance is important.  There is currently no way to do this -- you have to mouse over a sampling of tiles to access this information.

This is where those pressure lines I mentioned would be useful.  If you've ever seen a topographical map, there are a series delicately thin lines every so many feet of elevation, and how close together or far apart they are drawn illustrates the slope in the area.

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3 hours ago, CobraA1 said:

. . . except there is really a point to it: In this game you are constantly setting up various machines and filters for the various gasses, and knowing which gasses are in an area informs how to best process it.

But is knowing this information actually fun? Remember Klei is making this game. They are not known for going easy on players.
Frankly having the detailed information of a gas under the mouse is making it too easy already.
 

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Knowing this infomation is fun.  Having an easy way to know what gasses are where allows for better decision making.  Better decision making leads to more game depth which leads to fun for people who are seeking interesting systems  interactions; which seems to be the type of play that KLei is going for.  The difficulty should come from mastery of the the game systems not from placing UI hurdles in the user’s way.

 

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On 11/13/2017 at 6:35 PM, Q the Platypus said:

Knowing this infomation is fun.  Having an easy way to know what gasses are where allows for better decision making.  Better decision making leads to more game depth which leads to fun for people who are seeking interesting systems  interactions; which seems to be the type of play that KLei is going for.  The difficulty should come from mastery of the the game systems not from placing UI hurdles in the user’s way.

Totally agree. And this gets into a concept that a lot of players miss when talking about making things more complex or more simple: The concept of depth vs complexity. Depth = interesting choices. Complexity = more stuff, whether interesting or not.

Making the game too easy would be reducing the game down to oxygen and carbon dioxide. Getting rid of the extra gasses would make the game simpler, but at the expense of having to figure out how to deal with them using the tools the game has given you. The extra gasses add interesting choices to the game, which in turn adds the depth we expect from Klei's games.

Making the gasses harder to distinguish - makes them harder to distinguish. Not sure I see the interesting choices there.

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