When the islands first rose from the planet's surface, we were terrified. Some called it the end of times. Others sought to arm themselves against some invisible threat. Years have passed since that amazing time, and we have grown accustomed to these floating giants above our heads; many of us have even made our homes upon their soil. But time is always changing that which we take for granted. The world is picking up speed again, and changes are once again coming to our small world. Skykick is a full 3d strategy game, with players maneuvering small numbers of aircraft via intuitive flight path controls, with the aim of course being to shoot down their opponent. Ships range in scale from small, single person fighters, to multi-hundred foot long cruisers and battleships.
Some rough sketches to show what I'm currently working on. I talked with Strangelet about the game and I got cued into this idea of using a movement disc similar to Homeworld. The origin of the XZ disc would be the center of the aircraft, and the disc would be parallel to the ground. So the player would move their spline's end point across the disc, and hold shift to move it up and down relative to the disc (like in Homeworld). By default a straight line is drawn from the selected aircraft to the end point. A pillar extends from this point to the XZ plane, to show the change in altitude. Additionally, a second pillar extends from the midpoint of the spline, indicating where the draggable point is.
Here's where I have two ideas; one, that this point could be manipulated in a manner similar to the end point; the second is one I thought was pretty neat. It involves a secondary movement disc, drawn perpendicularly to the spline. The player can then drag this disc along the movement path to indicate where they want to place the extra point. Then, they rotate the camera so as to drag the point around on the secondary movement disc. This is the idea illustrated here (if you can read it, I'll make a better drawing in a bit).
What say ye, multitude of thy internets??