Recently I was thinking about 3/4 view and top down view games after playing a Metal Gear clone and I was about to enter the next room when I noticed something. Even though logically this is impossible, I can always see the enemy in the next room. Now, in order to activate the map in the game, you have to log into a computer and store a copy. Now this explains being able to guess what the next room looks like, but seeing the enemy is just silly. So is it better to only be able to see an enemy in another room if he enters your field of vision, or should it be like this game? -------------------------------------------- This is the polish virus. It is not an executable, but if you would kindly format your entire harddrive, we would be happy.

I think it depends on what you''re aiming for. For "pure realism" definitely go ahead and restrict LOS, adding some other cue for enemy detection if gameplay requires you to sneak past them, or otherwise just letting the player deal with the enemies as sie sees them.

But if you want something that is more readily accessable and allows for more "flow" in the action, go ahead and stretch reality a bit and let hir see the enemies. More information means that the player will avoid sudden, unneccessary frustration from blundering into traps, can form plans better and more quickly, and make them more complicated. Lots of puzzle games where you control a character, for example, are totally dependent on the omniscient top-down perspective. You could barely form any strategies at all without it.

The same would go even for a more action-oriented game, too. If you are trying to escape pursuit and must do so by using the level structure to your advantage, you''ll either need all the info right in front of you or have the place memorized in your head as well as you would any map in a deathmatch game, or else you''ll get a frustrating defeat resulting from a failure of memory skills; and it should be fun, not like an exam, after all.