JoshParnell wrote:Acceleration lanes are more pilot-friendly (although still dangerous to large ships). In addition, left-right layout should allow easier understanding of directionality. Left is incoming, right is outgoing, like American traffic laws.

I tried that and flew into the right half of the gate.
I ended up flying backwards.

How do you tell which one is the real left on a completely symmetric object of unknown orientation? =P


The gate fields have an animation moving outside-to-inside.
Can you just reverse this animation for the gate half that would propel you "backwards"?

If you look at the exact same gate half from the other side, it would show the current animation, not reversed.
Front- and backside of every gate field would have different (animated) textures...

The gate animation would then point you to the correct side regardless of your current orientation.
.

I think this might be a case where some colored/shaped navigation lights might help (Red X / Green ->).

That's what the "animation" suggestion would achieve... without adding extra stuff. =)

Gazz wrote: How do you tell which one is the real left on a completely symmetric object of unknown orientation? =P

I had this issue too, but I thought that maybe I was missing something. Glad to know I'm not the only one.

Red/green coloring could work for most people (and it's not a bad idea). But it would be a problem for LT players with some forms of color-blindness, so it shouldn't be the only distinguishing characteristic.

Gazz's notion of reversing the animation would be an attractive solution. The logic for choosing which one to show based on your current orientation could be a bit fiddly, though. ("Left" and "right" only work if you know what "up" is.)

Another possibility would be to make the incoming animation darker than outgoing. That could run into the same orientation issue, though.

I favor changing the geometry of the "frame" of the accelerator so that each panel has some angle that points in the direction of travel. This makes it immediately obvious from all orientations which way you'll go, with zero extra logic required for animation.

Save those precious cycles!

Added to the list since others still seem to have issues with this.

Flatfingers wrote:Gazz's notion of reversing the animation would be an attractive solution. The logic for choosing which one to show based on your current orientation could be a bit fiddly, though. ("Left" and "right" only work if you know what "up" is.)

With the animation thing, there would no longer be a left and right one.
Only a visibly correct one... and the other.

Orientation only refers to which side of the field you are looking at.

(added PICSHURE to the OP. With colours!)


Come to think of it - there's another solution, too. Remove pitch and roll from the game. Then left is left! =)

It still requires a little extra logic for deciding which animation to show, though. Changing the shape of the physical frame to point in the direction of travel avoids that cost.

I expect that cost would be pretty trivial... but accepting trivial hits has a way of adding up. Why add run-time logic to what can be cured with a one-time art change?

What runtime logic?

A single gate field has two sides. Two surfaces. Front side shows this animation, back side the other one. Always.

The "backside" of a textured surface is transparent because no one wants to waste resources on how the inside of a solid object looks. =)

I had an issue at first with this as well. But then realized I was upside down in relation to the gates. So now when I'm going to use a gate I just look at the guidance beacons on the station to see what my orientation is (e.g. if the guidance beacons are on top of the station docking port...you are upside down). No more issues here for me.

Yeah, sorry about that - I've been meaning to add lights. Derp. Will do so eventually