I definitely think FOW is absolutely necessary. I think too many players are used to playing games that don''t capture the feeling that a real combat commander would have to experience.

True commanders have to take into consideration many things that mst RTS simply ignore such as:

1. Intelligence and reconnoitering
2. Morale and Leadership/Unit Integrity
3. Command and control/Unit cohesion
4. Supply Lines/Logistics
5. Campaigning

And these are just things I think right off the top of my head. If you don''t simulate FOW, then you are merely playing a strategy game like chess. However, I think to simulate a true battlefield environment, no matter the era, then the above things must be considered.

While I think such an issue is more of a game design issue, I think there is a big difference between a strategy game, and a warfare simulator. As I mentioned before, Chess is a strategy game, but it''s not a battlefield simulator. To be perfectly honest, the only RTS''s I can think of that did a decent job are Shogun and the Close Combat series.

First of all, people seem to think that satellites are "all seeing" eyes always in the spot you want them to be. Also, most satellites take bad resolution photographs covering vast areas (thus misstaking small units for rocks etc.).

Second, fow is not meant to be entirely realistic. It is convenient, both at the time of its inventoin regarding hardware limits and so forth and also it is a game. To rave about fow in an rts where 5 men with machine guns can take out a siege tank with bullets while it takes 2-3 hits by the tank to kill one seems ludicrous. Do what you want with your los/fow but don''t bash other games. You must remember they are rts''s not exact military simulations.

Note that I do think that your ideas are "fresh" and strong, I just think your arguments should instead be placed as ideas as opposed to a campaign against or even a flame to those who came up with the idea.

Have a nice day.

In the original post, Diodor said that Z doesn''t have a fog of war... I think you''re confused.

Z does have fog of war, but it''s refered to as "line of sight". What it doesn''t have, however, is the exploration aspect of games like C&C, SC etc etc.

Big difference...

What Z are you talking about?

I downloaded an old Z from the Dos days from an abandonware site and it had no fog of war or line of sight whatsoever. I don''t know if the original version had f.o.w. and I downloaded some cheated thing, but I didn''t miss the f.o.w. at all.

Warcraft III: to be shipped WITH fow
If it''s good enough for a game company like Blizzard, it''s good enough for me.

-------------- Tok --------------
~The Feature Creep of the Family~

I think the way AoK handles FOW is quite effective. The whole game is about buidling up from a small village and discovering the lands around you. Scouting is a very important aspect of AoK and buildings such as outposts allow you to control the map more effectively. An earlier comment was made about sphere of influence. Well in AoK this is done through towers and scouts. Put them around your land to warn you about the enemies movements. Naturally the enemy can destroy the towers reducing your sphere of influence. There have also been comments about buildings. In AoK any buidlings that are discovered remain visible. However if the building is destroyed or upgraded, or if new buildings are built you won''t know about it until you scout out the area again. It also encourages people to think about things other than war plans. To win at AoK you have to think about scouting and knowing the enemies positions. High ground gives a longer line of sight so placing watch towers on hills becomes important. So long as designers put a little thought into it and make changes appropriate to the setting I think FOW is a fantastic dynamic that greatly adds to the tactics required in any strategy game.

FOW is an essential aspect to any strategy game. I think those who don't like it are just plain lazy. People think of scouting as a hindrance, when it's actually a strategy. A strategy! Let's stop thinking about it from the players side only, and think about both sides. By having to scout out enemy locations and resource deposits and troop movements, you are creating a tactical situation. The more effective a player is at scouting and obtaining information, the more likely he'll win. On the flipside, it's also beneficial to limit the amount of information your opponent is able to receive by destroying his scouts early or hiding your troop movements. Without FOW, your just taking out strategy from a strategy game. How dumb is that?? And in certain situations the relief of the map should be shown, but not in all cases.

You also have to remember the viewpoint when playing a game. In isometric games like StarCraft, you can see a lot more of the map at a given time than an individual unit, but remember that it's the unit that's looking around, not you. So while the area seen by a unit may look small to you, scale down to his size and you'll understand. However in 3D games FOW should be done away with, because we have the graphics power to draw into the distance and the camera can be locked to units only so you can see as far as they see and waaay off in the distance objects start out small and scale up as they approach.

Oh yeah I like the spies thing too. StarCraft does this with the Zerg Queens, which can tag enemy units. I think it would be cool if you could mind-control an enemy unit and convert him into a suicide bomb, send him back into the enemy base and blow up if he's ever attacked when discovered. However with events these days, that prob wouldn't be such a good thing to implement anymore

_________________________________________________________________

Drew Sikora
A.K.A. Gaiiden

ICQ #: 70449988
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Blade Edge Software
Staff Member, GDNet
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quote: Original post by Gaiiden
Without FOW, your just taking out strategy from a strategy game. How dumb is that??

Lol! thank you. I got a chuckle out of that.

quote: However in 3D games FOW should be done away with, because we have the graphics power to draw into the distance and the camera can be locked to units only so you can see as far as they see and waaay off in the distance objects start out small and scale up as they approach.

But couldn''t this get problematic when trying to relate the viewpoint of potentially hundreds of units, to the single player? Hmm... then again, if you still had a overviewmap available, and in clicking on a map location you got a perspective based on the visual information available to all your units there...

quote: I think it would be cool if you could mind-control an enemy unit and convert him into a suicide bomb, send him back into the enemy base and blow up if he''s ever attacked when discovered. However with events these days, that prob wouldn''t be such a good thing to implement anymore

It''s already been done, to an extent. In Red Alert II: the "yuri" unit, as its attack, takes control of any single selected enemy unit within a certain range. One taken control of, the unit will be under Yuri''s power until either is killed, or Yuri takes over something else. The "Crazy Ivan" unit''s attack is to plant dynamite on a targeted unit, which detonates after a given time. Its the combination of these two units and certain level dependant "critters" that make the much feared "exploding cow attack" possible.

-------------- Tok --------------
~The Feature Creep of the Family~

quote:
FOW is an essential aspect to any strategy game. I think those who don''t like it are just plain lazy.

Plain lazy is not ilegal. Why can''t plain lazy people enjoy a strategy game? Anyway, I''m rather click lazy. Generally scouting is a matter of how fast you can click (fast clicking all your units into doing what you want them to - time to scout), not how good a strategist you are.

quote:
People think of scouting as a hindrance, when it''s actually a strategy. A strategy! Let''s stop thinking about it from the players side only, and think about both sides. By having to scout out enemy locations and resource deposits and troop movements, you are creating a tactical situation. The more effective a player is at scouting and obtaining information, the more likely he''ll win. On the flipside, it''s also beneficial to limit the amount of information your opponent is able to receive by destroying his scouts early or hiding your troop movements. Without FOW, your just taking out strategy from a strategy game.

Actually this is adding tactics to the game, not strategy. Scouting in RTSs is generally hand controling a small number of units.

quote:
How dumb is that??

I always prefer to think about dumb things. If I come up with a good idea, there''s a better chance noone has thought of it first.

Still, what off chess? No FOW, and more strategy than Starcraft, Homeworld and Age of Empires put together.

quote: Original post by Gaiiden
stuff

I agree with you that being able to see everything on the map takes a large amount of the game away. My problem with the Fog of war is that I don't think it is a terribly nice solution to the problem (the problem being making the player unaware of what goes on outside his visible area). It is a little too unrealistic and ugly looking for my tastes.

1. Terrain should be visible, or at least roughly known.
2. Visibility of units and terrain should be elevation dependent. It is completely moronic to think that a bloody great mammoth tank sitting on top of a hill is just as hard to see as a lone infantry unit in the middle of a forest valley. Games with 'real line of sight' like Starcraft are almost worse in this respect - you can park a small army on top of a hill and your opponent cant see it unless he has air units.
3. Visibility of a unit should depend on how well that unit is hidden, not some abstract and frankly unrealistic "View range" parameter associated with the onlooker. I can understand why it is done like that (easier to compute) but I think now we have more powerful computers we should consider doing things the right way around, not making the same stupid simplifications just because that is the way we have always done it.

Using Starcraft as an example, I personally find the intelligence conflicts based around cloaked units vs detectors far more interesting than marching some peon around the map to see where a bloody great mountain is. You can turn the fog of war off completely and you still have to have good intelligence.




Edited by - Sandman on December 19, 2001 10:43:22 AM