Fog of War?

7,435

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March 09, 2010 04:56 PM

Quote:Original post by Silvermyst
Quote:Original post by Sandman
Remove fog and you lose covert operations completely. You'll also lose out on tactical subtleties, e.g the use of spotters for artillery.

You're removing the "stratego" element, but you may be adding a bit of the "chess" element.

Yes or the tactical turn-based game element - I've never seen one of those which has fog of war, and a lot of the fun comes from being able to see your opponent carry out interesting strategies, which you can learn to disrupt and imitate.

Quote:And maybe the "fog" element could be reintroduced somewhat in that the units themselves may be wolves in sheep clothing.

A 'doppelganger' or 'copy' sort of illusion spell, allowing combat units to be disguised as peons or transports, has been proposed and I thought that was a fun idea.

I want to help design a "sandpark" MMO. Optional interactive story with quests and deeply characterized NPCs, plus sandbox elements like player-craftable housing and lots of other crafting. If you are starting a design of this type, please PM me. I also love pet-breeding games.

Gyrthok

412

March 09, 2010 05:03 PM

Its interesting to note that earlier RTS's (IE: C&C: Tiberian Dawn, Dune 2, Warcraft 1) didn't have FoW but relied on revealing a shroud during the course of the battle. I don't think it really reduces strategic depth for some of the reasons Silvermyst mentioned.

The number of objects a player needs to keep track of in a round is one determining factor, building and defending their economy, army, setting up defenses, coming up with strategic attack/defense plans, etc. Can make it difficult to sit there and stare at your opponents base and troop movements 24/7 and try to deduce their strategy for attacking you. Even if you did do that, your opponent would be free to do the same to you, potentially resulting in active attempts to mislead or distract each other.

That said it would probably be nice to have the choice of having a FoW or not when setting up a new game or some such. That FoW generator idea also seems like an interesting idea, similar to the cloaking fields in C&C: tiberium sun.

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Palidine

1,315

March 09, 2010 05:18 PM

You can definitely do without it.

One other reason it becomes important in many RTS games is the rock/paper/scissorness of a lot of RTS games. Certain units operate as counters to certain others:

Your opponent is amassing a fleet of bombers -> build anti-aircraft turrets
your opponent has upgraded his space marines with extra armor -> boost zergling damage

Without fog of war you know exactly what they are building at all times so you eliminate some of the benefits of having rock-paper-scissors in the first place. It takes away from the risk-reward of deciding which areas of your tech tree to develop, and removes some of the mini-game of tech tree adjustment based on new information acquired. Without that fog, everyone should always be building the perfect counter and so a good match will have both players essentially doing a breadth first traversal of the tech tree which to me seems kind of boring. Obviously you can change how tech trees and counters work to make lack of fog preserve the interestingness of choice.

So at any rate, all I'm saying is that FOW is integral to a lot of RTS games and is very tied in with their gameplay mechanics. If you don't have FOW, that's totally fine and could be awesome, just make sure that it all hangs together with your total game design.

-me

sunandshadow

7,435

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March 09, 2010 05:35 PM

Quote:Original post by Palidine
Without fog of war you know exactly what they are building at all times so you eliminate some of the benefits of having rock-paper-scissors in the first place.

In practice you're still not going to know exactly what your opponent is building at all times. Every second the player spends looking at what the opponent is doing is a second he is disadvantaging himself by not doing anything, so the player in many cases won't spend tine to figure out the details of what the opponent is doing. Also some information, such as what they are researching, isn't going to be available to an opponent at all. Added to that, if the game starts shrouded and there are no flying units, the center of the enemy's base will remain shrouded unless the player goes to kamikaze lengths to get a unit in there to reveal it.

I want to help design a "sandpark" MMO. Optional interactive story with quests and deeply characterized NPCs, plus sandbox elements like player-craftable housing and lots of other crafting. If you are starting a design of this type, please PM me. I also love pet-breeding games.

Silvermyst

113

March 09, 2010 05:56 PM

You could also just tone down the effectiveness of the fog. Give players the ability to start building observation towers with spyglass upgrades from the start; to add scouts to units which will improve range of vision; to cast long-range wizard spells to reveal parts of the map (for a certain duration).

This will give veteran RTS players that familiar fog they expect while at the same time giving you a chance to put a new spin on it.

You either believe that within your society more individuals are good than evil, and that by protecting the freedom of individuals within that society you will end up with a society that is as fair as possible, or you believe that within your society more individuals are evil than good, and that by limiting the freedom of individuals within that society you will end up with a society that is as fair as possible.

Silvermyst

113

March 09, 2010 06:19 PM

Quote:Original post by sunandshadow
A 'doppelganger' or 'copy' sort of illusion spell, allowing combat units to be disguised as peons or transports, has been proposed and I thought that was a fun idea.

And you could give quite a few units the ability to hide. Sure, you can see that forest over there, and it looks quiet, but elves may be hiding behind the trees. That rock formation may look natural, but it's actually a massive stone golem, ready to attack whichever player's unit disturbs his rest. Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat and Warhammer: Dark Omen (still my favorite single-player RTS games; I have to figure out how to play them on my current PC) had ratmen lay in wait underneath trap doors in the ground, ready to pounce on you once you had entered their trap. (It also used a very good line-of-sight system.)

You either believe that within your society more individuals are good than evil, and that by protecting the freedom of individuals within that society you will end up with a society that is as fair as possible, or you believe that within your society more individuals are evil than good, and that by limiting the freedom of individuals within that society you will end up with a society that is as fair as possible.

sunandshadow

7,435

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March 09, 2010 06:56 PM

Quote:Original post by Silvermyst
That rock formation may look natural, but it's actually a massive stone golem, ready to attack whichever player's unit disturbs his rest.

Ooo that's a great idea. We had already discussed traps but units as traps are much more interesting than structures as traps, which was my original assumption.

I want to help design a "sandpark" MMO. Optional interactive story with quests and deeply characterized NPCs, plus sandbox elements like player-craftable housing and lots of other crafting. If you are starting a design of this type, please PM me. I also love pet-breeding games.

Luckless

3,283

March 09, 2010 08:32 PM

Quote:Original post by sunandshadow
Quote:Original post by Silvermyst
That rock formation may look natural, but it's actually a massive stone golem, ready to attack whichever player's unit disturbs his rest.

Ooo that's a great idea. We had already discussed traps but units as traps are much more interesting than structures as traps, which was my original assumption.

If you do go with this route, you have to include a function to randomize the extra elements on the map. If you don't then you get people who really memorize all the elements of a map, and are more likely to detect that 'pile of stones' as a unit that had been moved into place.

On the subject of fog of war, I personally like it. If the men I'm commanding can't see something, then I don't want to know it. Otherwise it feels like cheating. I also don't want my opponent to be able to see something if he doesn't have a spotter there.

Now I will agree that having to explore the land to find things is annoying in most cases, especially in multiplayer where we play the maps often.

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Wavinator

2,020

March 09, 2010 11:33 PM

If the game's slower paced I like fog because I like the intelligence gathering aspect. Running spies into enemy territory in Civilization was quite fun because the pace was slow enough that I could enjoy looking around and thinking about what I saw.

Without fog you may be looking at a game that feels like a throwback to the 90s. But I'd personally give it a chance because there'd be the possibility that you wouldn't simply win because you countered an opponent's specific unit.

What about a compromise? The gap generators which filled in fog only at your base in Red Alert might be a way to go. It would be neat to be able to throw a warehouse or tarps over things you deemed really sensitive, and cool to do it just as a ruse.

--------------------Just waiting for the mothership...

Dragoncar

517

March 10, 2010 03:03 AM

With the tactical turn-based games the units are determined before combat so by the time you see what they have you can't change your army to be different.

With RTS's now adays you can assign control groups to buildings, so you could sit watching the enemy and still be pumping out units to counter, and once your ready move away from viewing them to attack. Also by removing the fog you stop people from being able to suprise the opponent and hence having to counter act the suprise.

Personally I like the fog, but still want to be able to see the terrain and buildings of the enemy.

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