By which I mean, if you face directly north, then you should have East on the far right and West on the far left.
Instead I see South on either the right or the left, which means I can be moving towards something on my compass, just slightly off-centre (as I try to navigate around a cliff, for example) while thinking i’m moving towards my destination, but actually it’s nearly 180 degrees directly behind me.
This makes the compass almost useless for navigation unless you are pointing DIRECTLY at your target.
Oh, it’s far from being useless.
There was a time where I even played without the icons in the compass, just by using the map, the compass and the sun.
Doesn’t it?
You said it’s useless for navigation.
I said that I often just used it for navigating. No icons, just directions and the map.
If you can’t use a compass, don’t blame the compass.
It shows us a 360° perspective, while you’re expecting a perspective of 180° or of a degree similar to the field of view.
I don’t say that it wouldn’t be better to have it that way. It just would be different than now. I could live with both.
Thinking about it twice, I even would suggest an option to switch between the current 360° compass and a compass that just shows what you see, which depends on the field of view setting. I would be interested how it would feel like.
I am not sure how you can be confused as to what direction you are going. If you are trying to go north, but the “S” is in the center, you are not going north at all. You are saying you can’t understand the HUD, not a compass.
Try to use the HUD as a display showing what direction you are going, as it relates to the orientation of the map and your destination on the map. If your destination is north of where you are at, then you would want to travel with the N close to the center of the HUD mark. If your destination is also on the HUD, then keep your target as close as possible to the center mark of the HUD and not “N”. If your target is closer to either edge of the HUD, and not closer to the center mark, you are not going towards it, but away from it.
As you get closer to your destination, and you don’t have it directly in the center of the HUD mark, it will change where it is at on the HUD, but the direction the HUD is showing you are going does not change as you pass the destination. The HUD always shows north at the top of the map and south at the bottom of the map. And the center mark of the HUD is the direction you are facing as it relates to the map.
And by every single other word in my post, you can intuit that i’m talking about nagivating towards icons, not literally navigating by cardinal directions.
Even then, though, having it tell you that east is 20 degrees to your right when it’s closer to 90 degrees is still deceptive and not really that useful.
Just because it’s not actually completely useless doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be fixed to work properly.
If i’m trying to go North and the N is in the centre of my compass, the S shouldn’t be visible it all.
The fact that it is, (even though south is directly behind me) is a sign that the compass isn’t working right.
In every other game with a flat compass in it, it works like that.
This one, however, will put S at the far left or far right of your compass.
THIS MEANS that it will also put icons that shouldn’t be visible because you’re facing completely the wrong direction, on your compass too.
Thus tricking you into believing that a location on your compass is 90-degrees to your left or right, when it’s actually directly behind you.
Sorry if there was a misunderstanding on what the issue was. I thought made myself clear enough in the initial post.
If I’m looking straight north, the opposite and furthest position of it is south.
On a 360° compass like in GZ the furthest away position of the north in the center is at the left end and right end, as you have to turn 180° to get there.
That’s just logical.
This might surprise you to learn, but real-life compasses are round. This allows you to see all 360 degrees of at simultaneously. Video-game compasses, by contrast, are flat horizontal lines that display things within 180 degrees.
The reason for this should be patently obvious.
Neither the player-character not the player themselves have a 360-degree field of vision.
Things should map on the compass to roughly the direction they are in the players FOV. If they’re not within your field-of-vision, then they should not be visible on the compass.
This is the basics of navigating by a flat video-game style compass, as dictated by every other game that has ever used them.
if you want to use a 360 degree compass then show me a 360 degree compass.
As in, draw a damn circle on my UI and display a real compass.
Having a flat compass that doesn’t map to your FOV and so displays locational icons and markers in the wrong location relative to the player is of no benefit to anyone.
It doesn’t make it easier to navigate and it doesn’t add realism either, because real compasses don’t work like that.
Who cares?
It’s a videogame that doesn’t have to be like every other videogame, nor doesn’t any videogame dictates Others how they have to be. This compass is a legal thing and it works how it’s supposed to work.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against your idea…or to be true… of my idea of giving another option for the compass like you described, but it’s no fault and no issue.
Would be better if it worked like literally every other videogame flat line compass, though. TES games, etc.
Just because “GZ is GZ” doesn’t mean the devs have to re-invent the wheel, just for the sake of originality. I mean, it’d be NICE if they learned from other devs and didn’t make all the same mistakes that every other dev has already made, learned from, and gotten away from.
It’s about like those explorers who figured they’d avoid hiring experienced people because “there are too many experienced people in the industry already”…so they came up with a bad design for a submarine, used a wireless game controller to operate the thing, and got people killed trying to do some tourism down on the wreck of the Titanic.
Sometimes there are good reasons to go with established norms, instead of doing something new or different…that simply isn’t the right way to do it.
I like the compass just the way it is and there is nothing wrong with it. The forum has a few that would like the HUD to be on/off toggled and that includes the compass.
It is the easiest compass to understand and keep track of everything as it relates to which way you are heading verses things tracked on the HUD and as you get closer to them. That includes while fighting a named machine. I will run away from a named target enough to run over a hill then run along the back side of the hill out of sight of sensors on the machine. When tracking the named machine, it is always on the HUD so easy to know where it is at as you use the terrain to hide from it. A limited view of the compass would mean losing track of the target when not facing it.
I like to buy and play games that are different and do things differently. That includes using different keys outside the “norm” to do the same thing. Like pressing the “E” key for use and not always the “U” key.
More important for me in the beginning was the fact that it showed nearby safehouses.
Walking down a road towards west and seeing that a safehouse is nearby in the north for example.
This wouldn’t have happened if the compass was limited to the angle of what I see.
But it would be interesting to play the game with an other compass or without a hud, too.
i did this a couple years back to find all relay becons, walk the entire map, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, then found out that relay becons come back, after joining others map, lol lol lol
walk the entire map, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, then found out that relay becons come back, after joining others map, lol lol lol 