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[V9.1] Ground Combat - Fog of War


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Currently, explored areas turn gray when you are not actively looking at them, but unexplored areas are pitch black. This can create a confusing mix of visible tiles and black tiles depending on the line of sight. Instead of pitch black unexplored tiles, I propose, at the very least, unexplored tiles could have a grid pattern. The grid could be as large as the current tiles, or smaller to set it off further.

I would hope a grid pattern in unexplored tiles would make such tiles less jarring. Currently, the blackness feels very inexplicable given the lovely hand painted graphics. Alternatively, maybe a cloudy black to gray effect is called for. Something to either imply fog, or which leans to the unknown depths and fears of the people who cannot observe those unobserved tiles.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I suggested something similar a while back, old forum I think.

I thought a sketched map overlay with buildings drawn on as boxes would look good and help give an overview of where things were on the map.

White on black to look like a blackboards drawing.

This was partly in response to people who thought that their troops would at least have some idea where things were due to checking maps or looking out of the Chinook windows.

It could be handled in the same way as the submaps for the levels are.

Each submap has a selection of unlit options so you can have a blank, one with a square with "small building" written on it, another saying "factory?" etc.

Other areas like hills could have a few concentric lines and "small hill" while a patch of forest could have a sketch of a group of trees.

It doesn't need to be fancy.

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Would the UFO be marked out then? I'm not sure I would enjoy that feature. Not even if it as possible to obscure the UFO location. Might be interesteing if you only saw it for submaps that was already partly visible or soemthing.

I'm just afraid its going to be a buggy feature (not just with with the UFO pretending to be other submaps) since the unrvealed fog of war seems to not be ontop of the map but instead see through it to the background. I'm simply judgeing by the error messages and stuff that has sometimes gotten stuck in the blackness behind the map. Dunno how badly I havemisinterperated that though.

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I don't think the UFO would be marked out, you wouldn't know from looking at a map of the place beforehand, and I don't know live satellite surveillance in 1979 allowed for such feats. However, a crack team of special alien fighters going into a combat zone without proper beforehand information seems wrong to me, so I'd vote for inclusion if it is feasible, doesn't cause bugs and doesn't collide with already programmed stuff.

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No the target wouldn't be marked out as a UFO.

It might be marked out as something else though, especially if Chris does manage to get tiles set up for ships that have crashed into buildings or other scenery.

There would be no point having it only visible for submaps that can be partly seen.

Once you have played a few missions you could easily identify those buildings from the part you can see.

Any feature that is added could be buggy, that is a reason to test it and make it work rather than a reason not to include it.

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Alright buggy was the wrong word. Difficult to manage? nah, that's not good either. Well nevermind that part of my objection then.

As a gameplay mechanic I simply don't think it would be fun. For the same reason you (Guaddlike) think it would be pointless to only have it on submaps that are already partly visible, I expect it to be easy to spot the location of the UFO after a few missions.

You already know what you shot down. So just look for an area or void of apropriet size/shape. If that doesn't work start excluding those that are definetly wrong and you will have atleast reduced the possibilities.

Edit: And if you are going to workaround that problem by makeing lots of submaps that have the same size and shape of the UFOs/targets you are going to limit the level design too much for a "cool feature" imo.

Edited by Gorlom
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There should probably a "decoy" placeholder of whatever object/building there was before the crash in the place where the UFO actually is. This would reflect a "looking at a map" scenario. So the box might well read "School", but lo and behold, there's gonna be a looong holiday for some lucky kids as soon as you get a visual contact on where the school was before.

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[ATTACH=CONFIG]767[/ATTACH]

I was thinking something along those lines but much better drawn :P

The FoW could have a texture of some kind over it as well to alleviate the bland blackness.

Probably beyond where Chris wants to go with it though.

That's a good one, and fits with the unexplored nightmare zone effect. I think that's better than a straight map. There could even be overlay changes when you hear off screen gunfire and alien noises.

Having vague reckoning of building location always fits with my old desire for cities to have pre-known street layouts, with only the interiors being unknown.

Edited by Bibidibop
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Looking good! The angle is a little bit off, but otherwise it looks awesome.

Could probably put the streets in too, since that would be a known thing from the troopers pre-mission briefing.

Very interested as to Chris' opinion of this.

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The chalk outline is a neat idea, it would help plan the mission a little better. I may rather see the chalk outlines on the as of yet unimplemented mini-map though.

What I would love to see on the main map is a blending of the explored map to the unexplored black over the distance of one or two tiles. In my opinion, it's the jagged difference between explored and unexplored that makes the black look so jarring.

Dunno how feasible it is to do though. Maybe the graphics engine doesn't support something like that; doing it in and around buildings may not be straightforward; and there may be visual incongruities if an enemy is in this blended edge and is shown in full color/brightness/sharpness. They'd stand out too much that way.

I've attached an amateur shot of what I mean:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]770[/ATTACH]

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My opinion is that this would be a lot of work and I'm loathe to change anything about the tile system any more because we're already got our hands full getting them done as is.

Buzu - that could probably be done actually. You'd just need an overlay tile with a gradient on it (well, one for each direction). I'll have a think about it.

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  • 1 year later...

I've attached an amateur shot of what I mean:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]770[/ATTACH]

That's a very sexy way to show the Fog since it blends with the painted artworks, itself looking hand-made, if it was possible to have a convincingly pseudo hand made look to it that was easy to do by the team that would rock!

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I don't think the UFO would be marked out, you wouldn't know from looking at a map of the place beforehand, and I don't know live satellite surveillance in 1979 allowed for such feats. However, a crack team of special alien fighters going into a combat zone without proper beforehand information seems wrong to me, so I'd vote for inclusion if it is feasible, doesn't cause bugs and doesn't collide with already programmed stuff.
I proposed this a long time ago. First of all, the plane(s) that downed the UFO should be able to provide a very accurate location and probably some excellent aerial photography of the target zone. Second, the approach to the landing zone would no doubt provide and excellent view of the situation from the helicopter. Also, in case you're wondering about night missions, they did have fairly good night vision equipment in the late 70's and there is no doubt the Xenonauts would have it. I've always been in favor of displaying the location of the UFO and a basic layout of the area on the map. Finding the UFO should not be a problem the trick is finding the aliens.
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I like the FOW, in that it builds tension, suspense and it rally changes your tactics if you don;t know where the aliens are. For Xenonauts, if I could complete the mission by staying on part of the UFO for 5 turns, andI could see where the UFO was, why would I explore the map. I'd just attack the UFO from the start. That renders a lot of the map space on a lot of missions meaningless.

That aside, I agree with the logic of your points. Yes, flyovers, chinook entering the area, satellites, getting information from the fleeing locals etc. would all make sense. Even if you say that the game map is an abstract for a larger area, it would still be located. In my mind it balances out why the UFO never, ever gets to use craft weapons against your Chinook or why they don't wait for the Chinook to land and sit waiting to kill everyone on the first turn.

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In my mind it balances out why the UFO never, ever gets to use craft weapons against your Chinook or why they don't wait for the Chinook to land and sit waiting to kill everyone on the first turn.
Well, I'm actually hoping the AI will attempt to do exactly that. Granted they won't be setup around the landing zone waiting for your troops to drop the ramp, but I'm hoping AI will move aliens aggressively toward the first soldier they spot and try to take positions to nail them WAY before they reach the UFO. We'll see. The AI hasn't been nearly as aggressive as I thought it would be so far. Even under the worst circumstances the AI probably has two entire turns where it can move rapidly to take up position AWAY from the UFO.
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I don't think the UFO would be marked out, you wouldn't know from looking at a map of the place beforehand, and I don't know live satellite surveillance in 1979 allowed for such feats.

As far as I remember, early 197x orbital recon systems did not translate realtime video (too much energy needed at that tecnology level).

Foto-recon satellite was just a very big foto camera - it did foto shot when radio-commanded, and several orbital passes later (when over home country) drops down a landing capsule with films.

So, time between "we need foto" and "we have foto" was about several hours.

Normally a sattelite carried about a dozen capsules. Too expensive for everyday foto, but good enough to ensure pre-war army concentration or prepare a cruicial strike.

Image quality allowed to distinguish objects with size about meters: you can recognize a car but not human, you can distinguish cruiser from submarine but not Ford from Toyota.

Late 197x systems I did not see - they were too secret.

So, I think, RL-wise, map of mission area is possible.

It was already suggested earlier (and not only by me) - http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/4436-Map-Screen.

But I think its too difficult from game-develop point of view.

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As far as I remember, early 197x orbital recon systems did not translate realtime video (too much energy needed at that tecnology level).

Foto-recon satellite was just a very big foto camera - it did foto shot when radio-commanded, and several orbital passes later (when over home country) drops down a landing capsule with films.

So, time between "we need foto" and "we have foto" was about several hours.

Normally a sattelite carried about a dozen capsules. Too expensive for everyday foto, but good enough to ensure pre-war army concentration or prepare a cruicial strike.

Image quality allowed to distinguish objects with size about meters: you can recognize a car but not human, you can distinguish cruiser from submarine but not Ford from Toyota.

Late 197x systems I did not see - they were too secret.

So, I think, RL-wise, map of mission area is possible.

It was already suggested earlier (and not only by me) - http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/4436-Map-Screen.

But I think its too difficult from game-develop point of view.

I think you might be right about real time imaging, but it doesn't matter. In the case of a downed UFO there are MANY alternative recon options that could have been used even in the 70's. Aerial photos in all three spectrums (IR, Radar, Visual), coordinates/reports radioed back from the interceptor, and the a basic Mark 1 eyeball of the copter pilot and Xenonauts approaching the landing zone. Any way, this is a pointless discussion as we are probably way too far down the road for this to be added.
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  • 2 weeks later...

Sorry for bump, I was leaning towards a minimap to give you an idea of the area but I like this a lot better. I hate not knowing where the edge of the map is and wasting movement points running soldiers into the edge of the map just to go the other direction.

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