Strategy

Another ideal genre

Like RPGs, strategy games present another ideal platform on which three monitors can be very helpful. One of the key issues with strategy game interfaces is how to present as much information to the player as possible without obscuring too much of the game screen. You’ve got a mini map in one corner, your resource bar across the top, other random bits cluttering the main screen. Again, what if you could shove all that information and more off to the side, freeing up your main screen? Or what if you could simply see more of the map, which would allow you to direct your troops more effectively?

IG3

The strategy game we looked at was the Imperium Galactica 3 demo from the Parhelia disc, an as of yet unreleased space strategy game from Philos Labs and CDV. IG3 is a game in the vein of Star Trek: Starfleet Command where you control a small number of ships in tactical combat in 3D space. You’ve got large ships that carry fighters and small bombers to harass enemy capital ships, smaller frigates that carry laser turrets, plasma torpedoes, and such, and artillery platforms that can bombard enemy ships from a distance.

IG3 Demo movie

In game battle

Widescreen space combat

The demo came with one level, and two different modes of using the three monitors. You can simply stretch the game across three screens, which looks incredible as you can get the feeling of the vastness of space. Or you can use a different mode which has the standard game screen in the center, a pulled back view of the battle over in the left monitor, and a zoomed in view of the targeted ship you’re attacking over in the right monitor. This allows you to monitor a battle on three different levels – a standard view of your own ship, a meta view, and an in-your-face action view. The game can even follow bombers in on their attack runs on capital ships. The well designed Imperium Galactica 3 demo gives a taste of what is possible in the strategy genre using three monitors.

Afterburn stretches far

The three view mode

Another regular stretch shot

Let’s play make-believe

While daydreaming about using Surround Gaming in a more high profile strategy game like, say, WarCraft III, I thought up some other features that developers could use with three monitors. A number of races in WarCraft III feature static scouts that allow you to keep vision over an area for a certain amount of time. Imagine you’re the Night Elves and being able to use one of your monitors to constantly keep vision over an Owl Sentinel that you’ve placed on the map. Imagine being able to tap a key and being able to cycle through all the Sentinels you’ve placed on the map on one of your extra monitors. You’d recon all those areas without taking focus off your own town or units. You’d be like a rent-a-cop flipping through security cameras at a casino. Orcs could do the same if their Troll Witch Doctors dropped Sentry Wards all over the place.

How about setting your other monitor to list all your unit producing buildings, and what’s currently queued up in each? It’s the same idea as the Westwood sidebar, only extended to show more information and be accessible while you’re looking at any point on the map. How about setting one monitor as a chase cam on one of your groups of units. You could send out an attack party from your town, set a chase cam on it and keep an eye on it over in the left monitor while your center monitor stays focused on your town and you continue doing town maintenance. If your party gets ambushed? Flip control over to your left monitor and handle business.

Of course these are nothing but the pipe dreams of a gaming editor who sees huge possibilities for multi-monitor strategy games, but one can dream, no?