Fog of War

Any ideas how the fog of war is handled?

I wonder if there will be something like thick clouds covering everything unexplored that go away when you explore. Would look pretty stupid I think. Also a black cover is silly. I mean you can see the moon and asteroids, but in front of you is a black wall. :roll:

I am also wondering how they will tackle this one. Fog of war has always been a challenge to integrate in RTS games, in a way that looks good, makes as much sense as possible and also provides good gameplay.

I am actually kind of hoping for a traditional fog of war but with a planetary spin on it. And what I mean by that is, orbital spy satellites.

Once you research this technology, it becomes much much easier to see what is going on. Of course, satellites can be shot down, so this creates another level of conflict to manage at that stage in the game.

I cant see why FoW should be hard to implement. Do it like it is done in FA or SC2.
Just dont hide the map completely, thats just annoying, especially if you are playing on procedural maps.

That raises questions like: a unit is really not able to see a big *** enemy building or unit that is "right in front of it", relatively speaking?

But it actually makes sense for procedural maps. Contrary to custom built stock maps.

Yep, finally "explored" fog of war.

With shaders you can even make it three dimensional (maybe).

But I'd also be fine with no FoW whatsoever (meaning you'd have to constantly scout manually and have a very high Situational Awareness to have an edge).

I prefer traditional scouting with units and radar, though.

What was wrong with the way TA did it?

Demigod had rather pretty FoW, and we got some of the Demigod guys here at Uber...

Yeah, that's true

Enemy units will not be shown but the rest of the planet is just normal (no black fog of war or clouds)

One nice thing about client/server is you won't be able to cheat the fog of war. The server simply don't be sending you information about those units.

I really hope there is no fog, instead just have enemies not visible.

Do you mean that you want to be able to see the whole map, just without units out of your line of sight?

I think they should definitely hide terrain, as having to discover the terrain will be even more fun on procedural maps. I would always leave maps exposed in TA and Supreme Commander so as not to give advantages to people who memorized the maps, but when the maps are generated dynamically, that advantage is already gone.

Reward the player who explores.

Oh right.

Hypothetically, you guys might want to look into making sure resources are hidden from players as well? (e.g., if they haven't explored that far...)

I'm reminded of some efforts to block cheating in Minecraft... I think one idea was that the seeds to generate ores/resources were kept hidden or otherwise altered, but I can't seem to find that particular mod...

I suppose hiding metal deposits is harder, but it should be easier to hide the seeds for planets (if that is only sent to the player after they have arrived in orbit around the planet...)

That said, I don't play competitively, so I'm not sure this is really that valuable of a feature.

I know that in certain RTS you had to explore in order to find new resources. It could work instead of just showing it directly, as the first who find it's has a tactical advantage.

That's true, but one thing I like about always visible terrain is that you can easily chain the metal extractor building commands. You can send out one construction KBot that builds all the metal extractors while you can focus on other things.

An automatic scout function would be cool. When you order it, a unit will try to uncover as many black areas as possible.

Shout-out for line-of-sight FoW?

It was VERY hard for color vision impaired people like me to play on (Painted Desert was a nightmare, and don't get me started on Comet Catcher).

<3 <3 <3

Client-Server architecture for RTS should have been here a decade ago... but ok. I can wait for another year.

I hope this project won't get too overfunded, because Kickstarters that are overfunded deliver later on average, and the more they are overfunded, the later the projects ship.

But I don't mind Jon and his crew getting filthy, FILTHY rich (I'm talking Notch winning the lottery jackpot three times in a row rich) with this game after launch. :mrgreen:

why just not make this a pre-game option...

-Not explored
-Explored
-Explored, no fow

Warlords battle cry did this for instance, a game probably influenced by TA:Kingdoms

then there just needs to be a meta-game standard...