I''m working on a 2D, overhead, tile based, shooter. Basically,the player just goes around shooting stuff. I was thinking about implementing a Line of Sight system where the player will only be able to see what someone would normally be able to see from that position (you wouldn''t be able to see into the next room, for example). I have all the technical and programming issues down, but i''m wondering if it''s a good idea. It will be more realistic and challenging, but it also might be frustrating (especially considering that this is a shoot-everything-you-see game.. not a tactical shooter or anything). Anyone know of any 2d overhead games that use it to good effect? Any opinions?

I think this could get very frustrating, ie being shot at from behind. How about you just make the exact position of enemies not in los unknown, maybe blur what cannot be fully seen?

Stuart

Hmm.. possibly show the level but shade the parts that can''t be seen? the more i think of it, the worse the idea sounds. It''ll be very difficult to point the player in the right direction by showing the key in the next room he needs to get to.. and yeah.. the enemies will pop out of nowhere.. hmm..

I use the effect but with 360 degrees field of vison in my game Fiend. You can find it at fiend.cjb.net

There is a shooter called Taipan Kakki that uses the effect aswell.

there was an action rpg a while back that used a system like you describe, I believe it was either Nox or Hexplore.

Ah, i see.. very nice looking

I think it would be kind of cool. 3D shooters limit your line of sight with no problems (ive been shot in the back many times), though it may be a bit differnt in 2D it could still work.

The idea of blurring things that would be out of your peripheral vsion sounds cool too.

What about having different modes that the player can enter. A sort of assault mode, where you are very focused on what is in front of you, and an observation mode when you constantly look around, perhaps making shooting more and less acurate respectively? I find that in 3d shooters, the worst part of the design is actually how you observe your surrounds, ie you can''t glance over your shoulder without actually turning around. By having an observation mode in a 2d game, this could perhaps fix this problem???

Stuart

If you decide to do this, you''ll actually be making it less realistic in my opinion. True in real life we can not see into the next room and in a 360 degree view, but we do have other things that help us make up this picture. For starters, we have accurate "3d" sound. So although we cannot see behind us, we can certainly hear if someone is coming from behind. This will not be possible to implement in your game. In fact we have 4 other senses in real life to help us besides vision. So because in games we are really only given 1 proper sense, it needs to be augmented to make up for the fact that the other 4 are largely or entirely absent.

One possible refinement would be to restrict actual vision to LOS, but have some sort of sprite for a non-visible sound source - so the player can see there''s something there, and pretty much where, but not identify it directly. (Nethack uses something similar)