New Fog of War » Forum Post by Frogboy

Hard to tell how it works in the edges just from that video. I would like to see how having a mountain in the fog works with that system. In civ you could always see one tile into the fog by zooming in.

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Is it the dynamic fog of war or the exploration fog of war. In other words, once an area is explored and you have no units in that location to actually see enemy units, will there be a second fog of war that only hides units but still show the terrain?

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Yeah that's some good fog there, seems like there's some nice improvements to the graphics... is there going to be similar improvements to the Sound and music areas? A journal devoted to them would be great.

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It looks good, as fogs of war go. Personally, I still prefer the one from Heroes of Might and Magic 2, it sparkled. Well, it just had some colored pixels in to brighten up the scene, but it did the trick.

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....Not impressive....where is the character (so we know how far out FoW gets removed)?

That was my honest reaction when I saw the video.

Look, before releasing things you must make sure it doesn't give a negative impression. Show it around internally and have people say what they think.

That FoW is NOT fog of war! It's Black Shroud from WarCraft II or Heroes II. I'm sure you know the difference.

The leaves or whatever "jump out". It should be smooth.

If you haven't started on finishing the graphics then the below comment can be ignored.

An other thing that jumped out on me is that her staff is jaggy to the extreme. Put lots of antialiasing on that.

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I'm not seeing what is special about it either...

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Are we talking about the "edge" of the unexplored area here? In this version it's not just a sharp wall, it bleeds over into the tile and has a more gradual look, and it does look better.

But that's all I saw. And Campaigner's right. That's an unexplored area, not the fog of war. FoW is when you can't see already explored territory because you have no current line of sight to it.

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FOW/BS semantics aside (remember when there was that huge "zone of control" vs. "influence" argument, lolz), it looks good! I like how you can see the edge of what lies beyond, as if you're standing on the edge of a huge gloomy forest you haven't explored yet.

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Maybe the point of the video was to show that you can't see into the tile next to you... I know we want the world to be the great scary unknown, but don't you think you should be able to see into the tile next to you?

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Yes, please skip the semantics arguments.

I like the fact that you can see into the edge of unexplored territory. It helps create a sense of mystery and excitement, since you can see the edge of some mountain range, waiting to be explored, or whatever. Much better than some kind of arbitrary wall of black. This seems more like looking out to the horizon, seeing hints of what lies in the distance.

Appreciate the continuing little updates. They help tide us over a bit. I have to keep forcing myself to keep my excitement for the beta and the final game down...but it is hard!

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Gradual transparency is nice but the overlapping tree textures are looking bad.

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Looks good compared to the fog in WoM.

But... I assume the unit is blind and has no field of vision?

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I'm just throwing an idea out there, the other selection marker we saw was green, and was supposed to have an animation. Maybe this is the enemy marker? There's a tooltip when he mouses over which says "This unit is allied with the Empire", and the mouse turns into an attack icon.

http://draginol.stardock.net/images/2de77d45b139_C263/image_11.png

Also a yellow icon and another tooltip on this hero: http://draginol.stardock.net/images/2de77d45b139_C263/image_thumb_6.png

So it's probably not a unit he owns.

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I completely missed that you could slightly see into the neighboring tile. If that's what you mean then cool.

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Quoting Heavenfall,

reply 13

I'm just throwing an idea out there, the other selection marker we saw was green, and was supposed to have an animation. Maybe this is the enemy marker? There's a tooltip when he mouses over which says "This unit is allied with the Empire", and the mouse turns into an attack icon.

http://draginol.stardock.net/images/2de77d45b139_C263/image_11.png

Also a yellow icon and another tooltip on this hero: http://draginol.stardock.net/images/2de77d45b139_C263/image_thumb_6.png

So it's probably not a unit he owns.

aha! that makes more sense. i was thinking this was our dude and i was like why can't he see into the next tile? instead, some guy has now entered into our vision which just happens to be one tile away from where our vision ends and the fog begins.

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Does not seem to be up to your usual and typical excellent standards... but keep at it. You love games.. and have a gamers heart... and that comes through loud and clear 99% of the time.

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I think shrouded next tile thing looks pretty cool.

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Yeah, I think it looks good, and a huge step up from WoM.

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Is there log entries whenever enemy/changes happened/intruded within your ZOC (or line of sight)? I am more interested in having that implemented.

This feature is what I called love.

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Quoting Goontrooper,

reply 10

Yes, please skip the semantics arguments.

It's not semantics, it's mechanics. FOW shrouds a tile that's been previously explored. An unexplored tile isn't fogged, it's just plain unkown. There should be a visual difference between the two. Would be nice to see an illustration that demonstrates any difference. In EWOM I didn't like how explored areas where so heavily fogged. I'd like to see the terrain. I think a minor indication to show that there is no line of sight is all that is needed. Not a thick obscuring fog.

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Quoting WhiteElk,

reply 20

Quoting Goontrooper, reply 10Yes, please skip the semantics arguments.It's not semantics, it's mechanics. FOW shrouds a tile that's been previously explored. An unexplored tile isn't fogged, it's just plain unkown. There should be a visual difference between the two. Would be nice to see an illustration that demonstrates any difference. In EWOM I didn't like how explored areas where so heavily fogged. I'd like to see the terrain. I think a minor indication to show that there is no line of sight is all that is needed. Not a thick obscuring fog.

this.....

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Quoting WhiteElk,

reply 20

Quoting Goontrooper, reply 10Yes, please skip the semantics arguments.It's not semantics, it's mechanics. FOW shrouds a tile that's been previously explored. An unexplored tile isn't fogged, it's just plain unkown. There should be a visual difference between the two. Would be nice to see an illustration that demonstrates any difference. In EWOM I didn't like how explored areas where so heavily fogged. I'd like to see the terrain. I think a minor indication to show that there is no line of sight is all that is needed. Not a thick obscuring fog.

Yes and the mechanics are whatever they decide to call them. They are designing it. That was my point. Who gives damn if they call it Fog or Unexplored or the void or whatever?

I do agree that there should be a difference between explored areas that we can't see and unexplored areas. I just don't really care what they call it as long as it is somewhat intuitive and supports gameplay.

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I can't see anything special here.

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Quoting Goontrooper,

reply 22

Yes and the mechanics are whatever they decide to call them. They are designing it. That was my point. Who gives damn if they call it Fog or Unexplored or the void or whatever?

I do agree that there should be a difference between explored areas that we can't see and unexplored areas. I just don't really care what they call it as long as it is somewhat intuitive and supports gameplay.

No, the mechanics in question already exist. They're pretty standard across the genre (and some others). Taking them and mixing up the names doesn't do anything except create confusion about what's actually being implemented. Fog of War and unexplored area are different things and fundamentally don't do the same thing. The difference matters.

They could also replace HP with muffin baking ingredient points and change the entire UI to use middle click instead of left click if they really wanted to, but all it'd do is confuse people. There's a reason why people don't do that: existing names and conventions are really helpful at letting people pick up the game and quickly understand what's going on.

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Quoting Tridus,

reply 24

Quoting Goontrooper,
reply 22

Yes and the mechanics are whatever they decide to call them. They are designing it. That was my point. Who gives damn if they call it Fog or Unexplored or the void or whatever?

I do agree that there should be a difference between explored areas that we can't see and unexplored areas. I just don't really care what they call it as long as it is somewhat intuitive and supports gameplay.

No, the mechanics in question already exist. They're pretty standard across the genre (and some others). Taking them and mixing up the names doesn't do anything except create confusion about what's actually being implemented. Fog of War and unexplored area are different things and fundamentally don't do the same thing. The difference matters.

They could also replace HP with muffin baking ingredient points and change the entire UI to use middle click instead of left click if they really wanted to, but all it'd do is confuse people. There's a reason why people don't do that: existing names and conventions are really helpful at letting people pick up the game and quickly understand what's going on.

I think the point was that we all knew what Brad was talking about anyways.

If we're walking down the street and I say, "Hey look at that guy's briefcase! It's pretty snazzy!" then you respond with, "That's not a briefcase, that's a valise. But yeah, pretty snazzy!" In that situation we both knew which object I was talking about. The difference matters, but so does context. In this (brief)case, Brad was showing us a 12 second video of one clearly defined thing he wanted us to look at.

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