PIP Bridge View?

[okipokute]

This has probably been suggested before, but how about a picture-in-picture style view of the bridge during space combat? The size and transparency should probably be custom settings up to the player, but it'll essentially be a scaled down 3D render of ship interiors (not available at launch, of course).

It could serve as a sort of advanced "character portrait" for the ship that lends more meaning to hull and shield strength numbers. Watch the camera shake as you take torpedo hits, sparks shower as your subsystems fail, and debris fall as your hull is critically damaged.

This also leads to another idea of say, bridge officers getting knocked out by ship damage. Might be an interesting mechanic if it isn't in the game already.

For best effect, the camera should be moving to capture predefined dramatic angles, maybe even skip down to engineering in case of a potential warp core breach.

[cmahecha]

Hi. Yeah, this has been brought up before. And it was mentioned on one of the interviews with someone at Cryptic, that they had looked at the option, but the game they are making would not really work well from that view. I guess lots of stuff to look at.

But if a lot of people keep asking for it, they may add it in the future :P

I know generic crew members will be hit by damage, no word on whether bridge officers or the captain can take damage from a space battle.

The camera angles could be a good idea if there was a way to record your battles so you can play them back later. That way, different camera angles would be good, and even bridge view might work. Play back a fun battle, and watch it from the captains chair point of view.

[okipokute]

I prefer the 3rd person external view as the main view. It's the most practical tactical viewpoint.

But I'd like to have a small window, maybe at a corner, to peek into the bridge during battles as well, thus the picture-in-picture descriptor.

[billybob442]

This is a very innovative approach to the whole "can we have bridge view in combat?" question. Just give them both at the same time!

I'm not sure how feasible it would be in terms of processor load - having to render two simultaneous scenes - but for those with the video cards to handle it why not?

[okipokute]

Yes, and that's the reason I feel the settings need to be customizable by the player (even turned off for those who don't want it or can't run it).

Also, with only a fraction of the viewable screen area, the graphical settings (texture, polygon, AA) can be greatly reduced to lighten the processing demands (perhaps as a rendering quality slider specifically for the PIP view) without the player really noticing. Most of the time we'll be focusing on the main view anyways. And for people who have beefy enough computers, they can turn it all the way up if they really wanted.

[Elta_and_Zletha]

This has probably been suggested before, but how about a picture-in-picture style view of the bridge during space combat? The size and transparency should probably be custom settings up to the player, but it'll essentially be a scaled down 3D render of ship interiors (not available at launch, of course).

It could serve as a sort of advanced "character portrait" for the ship that lends more meaning to hull and shield strength numbers. Watch the camera shake as you take torpedo hits, sparks shower as your subsystems fail, and debris fall as your hull is critically damaged.

This also leads to another idea of say, bridge officers getting knocked out by ship damage. Might be an interesting mechanic if it isn't in the game already.

For best effect, the camera should be moving to capture predefined dramatic angles, maybe even skip down to engineering in case of a potential warp core breach.

And the point of this would be.... what???

I fail to understand why people need to be inside the bridge all the time.

[okipokute]

And the point of this would be.... what???

I fail to understand why people need to be inside the bridge all the time.

People want to see the bridge because that's a lot of what we saw on television. I'm proposing a way in which Cryptic can pay tribute to that significant element without sacrificing gameplay.

[Faerlzress]

This is a pretty slick idea actually.

[NamelessRedshirt]

I concur with this idea, it allows for the best of both worlds.

[okipokute]

I hope we eventually get to see something like this.

*crosses fingers*

[Sublime]

And the point of this would be.... what???

I fail to understand why people need to be inside the bridge all the time.

Immersion.

[Replica]

I would love to see this as a mod. I don't think a high enough percentage of potential subs think that it is vital to game play, so I doubt that Cryptic would ever be able to spend the resources internally to get that made, but it would be good to see Cryptic release the ability to make mods. A generic PiP bridge view would be straight forward enough to base off of incoming damage types and direction, and outgoing orders from the gamer. The tough part would be putting the custom characters into that PiP.

[bobalobabingbong]

And the point of this would be.... what???

I fail to understand why people need to be inside the bridge all the time.

To add a bit of the bridge drama to the game. It doesn't need to be fancy, but think Starcraft (I think it was Starcraft, lol), when a portrait comes of of an officer telling you things, then goes away once he is done. I kinda like the idea of a little window of my one of my BOs telling me something important pop up on the side of the screen.

[dbarelic]

SW Galaxies space combat had interiors and that was awesome to walk around in a YT-1300 aka Millennium Falcon. But I must admit as the devs had said several times, combat in bridge view just is not as easy as in third person view. However, I did like having the option to zoom in to bridge view to just fly around and explore. So I do hope that after launch they work on implementing a bridge view along with other ship interiors.