i am trying to decide if i should include fog-of-war and lighting in my rpg. it is a 2D tile-based game, and i have created an algorithm to determine which tiles the player character can see, and also one which allows for quasi-dynamic lighting (i.e. a tile can be a light source, which means it brightens nearby tiles). the maps'' tiles are displayed in a different shade depending on how much light is near them, and tiles with no light or out of the player character''s line-of-sight are blacked out. the only exception is that tiles which have already been "seen" are greyed out if you can''t see them currently, so you still have an idea of what the area looks like. of course, any items or enemies/NPCs in these areas aren''t displayed. this is nifty because (a) it is kinda realistic as opposed to seeing everything automatically, and (b) it allows me to include some challenges based on what you can see, and have thoroughly explored. i think it is great. however, do you people think this will annoy other players (because they can''t see all that much at any given time)? are there any pros/cons to this anyone can think of that i might have missed? thanks! --- krez (krezisback@aol.com)

I think that it is great that games include this, because as you said it includes realism to it and makes it very cool, because it tells people it was worked on and is not just a pretty cool game that some dudes just wanted to publish right away.

I can''t think of any cons about it, it just spices up the game. The only thing is that if it is buggy... it''s no good... it works great? THEN USE IT :D

Cheers!

What kind of game is it? The idea (which seems REALLY familiar to me, eg Warcraft III) is great as long as technology doesn''t play a large role. I the game is in the future, it stands to reason that, short of individual unit jamming technology, most of the map should be visible through sensor networks, et cetera.

it is a fantasy RPG (i hear you all moan, but hopefully i will manage to make it stand apart from the thousands of other RPGs in a fantasy setting)... i know the term "fog of war" generally refers to RTS games, but i didn''t know what else to call it. it is the same thing, more or less, though: if the main character can''t see something, then the player can''t either because of their top-down perspective... but already-explored areas can be seen, but through "memory" (i.e. greyscale, dimmed a bit, and it doesn''t display whether there is a beastie who moved there since last time it was "really visible").
the closest thing to "technology" would be perhaps crystals of some sort (or maybe some spells) that allow for long-distance vision, or something like that...