So I'm an idiot; I forgot halfway through posting that you gave an example to start off the post. No one here should feel great surprise.

Active/passive radar. Noted and copied to "cool stuff" folder for liquiddark. I don't know about LOS; the issue, as you probably know, is a little more complicated than just having a dang big hill in the way or not - radio waves are long-wavelength and this affects every aspect of their behaviour. Care to elaborate on what you think an LOS system should try to get right?

thank you.
ld

Edited by - liquiddark on January 18, 2002 12:55:57 AM

Radar will not pass through hills, but it will pass over them, so airplanes (except those that fly low) are not hidden.

When using low frequency radar systems, wavelengths of up to 1,000-10,000 meters are possible (if you want a reading, for broadcast of low-def signals you can use bigger waves). At these lengths, resolution is weak (identification of targets is not possible), but the waves pass through trees, buildings, and other small fodder. At higher frequencies, wavelengths drop down to 10-100 meters. These wavelengths give high-fidelity feedback, at the cost of diffraction when striking building sized objects (around the 70s) and tree-sized objects (around the 20s).

Heavy Gear II did include reduction in laser weapon damage over long ranges. Good fun.

George D. Filiotis
Are you in support of the ban of Dihydrogen Monoxide? You should be!

Liquidark- Radar comes in various wavelengths, but generally speaking, the average radar system doesn''t see through anything other than atmospheric effects. So by LOS I mean actual LOS, disregarding weather effects.
But my point is that sensor systems in games should be a lot more than they are now. In most games, if you are within the range of a sensor, you are visible, no matter what the terrain. In real life, radars tend to be placed on top of hills, but in a typical RTS you are actually rewarded somewhat by placing a radar tower in a deep valley behind some trees, because that makes it harder to find and destroy. Anyone attacking a fortified position (in such games) can take any route they please, because no matter what route is taken, the radar will spot you as soon as you are within the range circle; there is no advantage to using terrain to hide behind.

You are right in the sense that radar can be tuned to a wavelength that can see through anything, including hills, but show me a military helicopter pilot who doesn''t use the terrain to hide from radar when in hostile territory. If it is a reality for the military, then why is it not a reality in the games that we buy?

I don''t see how the tuning effect is a moot point. Why not allow players to turn down the frequency and just see occasional blips at longer ranges (those blips will not be identifiable, but they will be there). A player can subsequently turn up the frequency when recieving an attack (assuming the radar tower is on a hill as you suggested) in order to effectivly rally troops to the largest oncoming threat.

By blips I mean that when detecting units and being unable to identify them, they may turn up as gray dots on the player''s mini-map. At higher resolutions a blip will not only be coloured, it will be resized according to the amount of feedback it gives, and may be characterized further depending on what it is. e.g. aircraft main be a circle with a hole in, heavy armour may be a square, infantry will come up as a triangle.

George D. Filiotis
Are you in support of the ban of Dihydrogen Monoxide? You should be!

There are two table top games tha tI can think of that also tried to factor this in. The first was an old game called Star Cruiser that was a Naval battle simulator. There were two factors that you had to consider; Active and Passive Signature. Silgnature referred to your target''s aspect. The physical aspect (the passive silhouette) reflected how large of a target you presented to your enemy. On a ship, if the bow was facing your enemy, then you had a reduced chance of being detected as opposed to if your port or starboard sides were facing him. The active silhouette was how much "radiation" you were giving off. If your ship was fulkly powered up with all weapons energized and you "pinging" the enemy with radar bounces, then you would be lit up like a comet in the night sky (not literally of course). Conversely, a ship would have active and passive sensors. Passive sensors emitted no radiation to detect something, and consisted of energy wave detectors and telescopes. Active sensors would actively "ping" the space to have it bounce off a target and read the echo reply back. However, that also made you extremely visible yourself.

Also, in StarGruntII, all units had a silhouette based on it''s size. This determined its base stealth, and also determined ow easy it would be to hit.

Sometimes I wonder if in RTS games, units automatically hit each other and always do a preset amount of damage. I think it would be more realistic to have units miss, and also to factor in Armor ratings. Even if you hit, your weapon will not be powerful enough to breach the armor. In otherwords, 20 light infantry against one tank shouldn''t do squat (if the infantry have no AT weapons).

But you are right, intelligence gathering is a neglected area in many RTS''s. I think that RTS''s are so fast paced, that other than the intial foray of a recon unit to scout out certain spots, that having recon units does little help. By the time they discover something, they are already gone.

I noticed that alot of players equate more realistic = less playable. I don''t think that this s necessarily true, nor does realism necessarily distract from gameplay. Game must strive to balance a model of reality that extracts the most crucial elements while still maintaining enough ease to create a model in the first place. What''s the use of creating a 1:1 map?

The key is in finding the things that can be eliminated which would be distracting to a gameplayer, but still remained true to the spirit of the realworld counterpart. Think of the realistic shooters. Some people detest them, as they just want to run around and gun things down. Some people love the one-shot one kill gameplay that the ybring though, as it makes the experience much more harrowing.

It''s the difference between chess and checkers. One game is very simplistic but the other is much more complex and involved. The more complex the game becomes, the greater the depth of gameplay can be. Some gamers will prefer checkers, some chess. But there''s definitely a place for more realism in games. Fun is a subjective term, and some will prefer more realism or depth of play to simplicity.

Well said.

Dave Mark
Intrinsic Algorithm Development

A healthy dose of realism can work wonders for some games, but I think a lot of amateur designers get too worked up on the "it''s not realistic! It must be changed!" concept and forget that the aim is to make it fun, not to make it real. This radar idea however looks, to me, like an aspect that would make the game more fun, as it presents another choice for the player, a tradeoff between taking a risk to gain something or playing it safe.

[ MSVC Fixes | STL | SDL | Game AI | Sockets | C++ Faq Lite | Boost ]

OMG! I am so incredibly pleased I found this topic.

My current project is an RTS, in which Intelligence is a key element of gameplay. You develop and use different types of comms equipment, and equip your troops. Then, to control and recieve ''observations'' from them, there must be a path from the unit back to your base (via comms outposts).

However, the enemy can intercept your signals (if they have the required technology) and can therefore find out where your units are, and where you are ordering them to go (for the purposes of setting up an ambush).

Of course, after that, the idea of radio silence comes into play. You can get a unit, assign it a number of waypoints, and then tell it to go silent. That way, you don''t recieve the intelligence until the unit''s ''mission'' is completed, but the enemy can''t detect him either. Furthermore, you then have to tell the unit what to do if enemy contact is made (e.g. keep distance, engage, radio in).

Wow, reading some of this topic has really fired up my enthusiasm for this project, it seems like it could be well recieved!

If anyone has any comments or suggestions, *please* post them, it will help me immensely. Or, for that matter, if anyone wants to help.

Superpig
- saving pigs from untimely fates
- sleeps in a ham-mock at www.thebinaryrefinery.cjb.net

Sounds like an interesting project. With an untried concept like that, it will be a fascinating challenge; I''d love to hear more.
Have you thought about the radar issue that I mentioned? The radio silence idea is great, but have you also applied that concept to your radar systems?
One suggestion, if you haven''t already thought of it: You say that you will be able to locate enemy units by their radio emmisions, but how exactly will this work? In reality, you would need two or more of your units to detect the signal in order to triangulate the enemy''s position. I suggest you follow the same model, i.e. if a single unit picks up a transmission, it will only be able to determine the direction it came from, not distance (this is one of the drawbacks of passive detection). Maybe this could be represented by a directional line appearing briefly on the map when a transmission is detected. Then, when two of your units pick up the signal, you will get two intersecting lines, pinpointing the location of the enemy.
It could be tricky to get the balance right in a game like this. I would suggest weighting things so that being located when you don''t want to be will be seriously bad news, pushing the focus of the game towards stealth and dirty tricks.