Flat Maps

[Philippe]

Although I am a big fan of 3-D isometric views, I think having a 2-D viewing option would be a great asset to CMC and very immersive.

At one point last week I think someone else brought this up, and Matt's comment was something to the effect that we could make our own mod.

While I certainly agree (and will probably be one of the map mod makers), I have a few reservations about it, and think that perhaps a 2-D/3-D toggle might work better. The toggle has been used before in other games, and is a pretty simple way of catering to everyone's taste in map reading.

If I understand what the map is going to look like, it will be viewed at a slant to give it that isometric effect.

I'm not sure how well viewing at a slant will work on a 2-D map without testing it, which I obviously can't do since the demo hasn't been released.

I suspect that a 2-D map could be made to work in a 3-D visual environment, if, for example, what was depicted was a bunch of officers leaning over a map table, with the map in two dimensions but viewed at a slant. There is a famous photograph of Von Manstein reading a map that could be used as the backdrop when playing as the German, or a similar one of Chuikov and his staff reading maps in their Stalingrad bunker. But I also suspect that this would be far too busy-looking visually, and that a simple, clean two dimensional representation might be more effective.

One of the things that got me to thinking about the use of a 2-D map option was the positioning of the unit size symbol. I don't much care for having it on the side of a unit, but can understand why if you aren't using Nato symbols or authentic period symbols you might not want to put it above the unit. If there were a 2-D option for the map, it might be better to position the size symbol directly above the unit symbol.

And as for Nato style as opposed to authentic period style, that is probably the province of modders. Though it would be amusing to be able to use different sets of symbols for the Germans and the Russians.