A suggestion for visualizing fog of war

I found an old discussion from August about FoW but no one with this suggestion...figured making a new thread would be less annoying than starting a new thread.

I think fog of war is something really hard to do beautifully on a 3d planet. That's probably why you don't see it in the trailer. At the same time, you need a visual indicator to show where you can't see or you just have enemy units seeming to appear out of nowhere.

I have a solution: clouds
(edit: I realize calling it fog is misleading. I just did that for the joke. It was a stupid joke anyway. So I've replaced the word "fog" throughout this post with "clouds.")

Close up (try to ignore the haziness and quaint terrain. I'm just looking at the clouds):


And over a randomly generated planet :mrgreen: :


Light cloud cover to reveal terrain, heavy cloud cover to hide everything (edit: to clarify, I mention this just to have the option available. I also prefer revealed terrain).

Simple no? I imagine it would look lovely spread over planets. You could use it to show atmospheric effects too.

Some questions people have raised:

What about volcanic planets? It wouldn't neccessarily be water vapor on every planet. It could be clouds of ash or dust or other types of air. The color and thickness of the clouds would serve as an indicator about the environment of the planet you're on.

What about planets/moons without atmospheres? On planets without atmospheres you could use a different effect. A FoW effect that would look lame on a normal planet would look just fine in space. I would recommend a traditional shadow type FoW for those worlds.

Clouds don't fit with the aesthetic of the game. Well, personally I don't see that. The only answer I can give is that it all depends on the artists.

Clouds would be hard on the computer/Uber doesn't have the resources to implement something like this. I wouldn't mind seeing this come in post-release and/or as a disable-able thing. And they wouldn't need to be animated necessarily, although it would be cool.

Unfortunately it gives a very 'high-fantasy' mood to the game, which is probably not the goal here. I've seen it used before and it looks really cool, but not in this setting.

(tbh I don't see why we'd hide terrain at all; I've mostly found that feature to be annoying and giving a silly advantage to people who memorize all the maps. And even with random maps it's just annoying to have to go scout around to see what's happening, especially in the space-age)

I think that would be cool! It wouldn't make much sense on a lava planet or maybe metal planets either. Though water vapor could condense around a metal planet conceivably. They just need to match the art style of the fog with that of the rest of the game and I think it would be fine.

I can see how you would feel that way given the quaint image I choose, but I really don't think that's the case. Fog gets used in sci-fi settings all the time. (btw that was the only image I could find that showed the fog itself the way I wanted. I wasn't picky about the landscape)

The maps are mostly random, so no unfair advantage, and although I prefer having the terrain revealed myself it's good to have the option available. I made a suggestion in another thread about venus-type planets where obscuring the ground makes more sense, which is what gave me the idea in the first place.

On lava planets you would just use black fog for volcanic ash. On desert planets it would be dust clouds. Etc.

Concerning metal planets or moons with no atmosphere...that's a bit of a problem. By no means unsolvable though. You could maybe use a matrixy sci-fi digital noise effect. That sort of thing would look awful on a regular planet but just fine on a moon.

I wouldn't mind but wouldn't it be a pain to optimize with all that fog all over every planet? I think it would look pretty cool though but it needs to be experimented with.

We could always just call it cloud cover

I kind of liked sup com where you knew what the map looked like but you couldn't see buildings and units.

We could just have a few transparent clouds flowing around the areas that are out of your line of sight.

I suppose you could black out the terrain on worlds at the beginning, but after you start getting into orbit, it would become a little silly.

Make it an option.


As for visualizing the fog of war, why not just let it go gray or monochromatic like in most games?

That's a good idea.

Perhaps whether they flow would depend on your graphics settings?

I can't imagine undefined grayness or blackness spread across planets looking very nice. It works on flat maps but I think for PA doesn't work. And monochromatic doesn't work for a few reasons, first because there are grey planets, second because players might be colorblind, and third it doesn't fit the aesthetic of the game.

The benefit of fog/cloud cover is that it looks natural and so blends with the environment and doesn't detract from the beauty of the landscape in areas you have no vision, while at the same time being an intuitive and highly readable indicator. It adds to the aesthetic of the game instead of compromising it like FoW in most games does.

I dislike clouds, have you seen the smoke in the trailer? The style doesn't lend itself to clouds/fog.

Also how does monochrome make any difference to people that are colour blind?

Yes that is a problem. I do love the smoke in the trailer. But I think they could work it out. They might even be able to do it with solid clouds.

I'm not exactly sure but I've heard a few people complain about it. I think it's only a problem when the maps are certain colors. Feel free to ignore that point since I don't have a source to back myself up.

Total Annihilation showed how awful monochrome fog of war was- try discerning your visual range on metal and ice maps.

well the ice planets were a pure white in contrast to the mono-chrome grey shading.

And TA metal worlds were never entirely gray, the floor had a mixture of colors that were easy to see the difference, unless it was a quick look.


So any monochrome filter for the fog of war would also have to make the areas appear much darker to accommodate worlds where the color is gray and white.

Also TA wasn't exactly a "pretty" game. It had a much grungier look. Can you imagine that bright and colorful planet in the trailer being 70% covered in grayness?

Well it is a trailer :roll:

It's how the game is going to look. All the concept art coming out is the same bright and colorful stuff. To sully such lovely colors with a monochrome filter would be wrong.

Well it doesn't have to be black and white.

You could have black and blue.

Or white and yellow. :lol:


But yea, it is just a suggestion.

Grayed area should be just fine. Clouds/fog require atmosphere at every planet (including gas giants), which is weird. Having different fog-of-war visualization at different planets even more weird.

It's a pure game mechanic, it should be most informative and least distractive. Which means - no animation, no fancy clouds, no anything else. Just gray mask is conventional and fine.

I don't care if anything like that would be ever implemented as long as it's turnable off for simple gray mask. But I really doubt that UberEnt has resources for fancy graphics.

I would favor making it optional. I also wouldn't mind if it were added post-release if resources are an issue.

And just so everyone knows I've updated the OP a bit to address some things.

I think that it does not matter as satellites will take away the shroud. I also think that a telescope mounted on a satellite would be useful (and cool) as it would be a great asset when conducting a planetary assault.

I like the idea. Artistically it could be managed (and look a ton cooler than just graying out areas). Done right, it wouldn't even be resource-heavy.