Field of View (periphreal vision)

[Keflin]

It feels at times that games seem to unnaturally restrict the field of vision. In OpenXcom after I added a mod to increase the field of vision and it made a big difference in game play. Most games I find I am unnaturally turning (and burning precious TUs) to expose areas, and this is just not a natural feel to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_vision

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-maximum-human-field-of-vision

Additionally I might add, I have been "surprised" by aliens standing next to me not only because I did not see them, but I did not hear them nor did I smell them or even get that weird feeling something is near by to me. All of this would be too granular to implement, but a wider field of vision would help some.

[Chris]

You're right, but this is fully intentional - the old X-Com games have quite a strong tension / horror vibe to them and a lot of that is generated by the fact your soldiers can't see very far and have quite narrow view cones. You can contrast that with the modern XCOM games by Firaxis where your soldiers have 360 degree vision and there's basically no horror element at all, and the tension present is a very different kind of tension.

I understand it might not feel natural to you, but an X-Com spiritual success kinda has to go down that route if we want the game to feel like X-Com. The good news is it'll also be easy to mod this in Xenonauts 2 if you don't like it; the vision angle is a value you can set on combatants.

[Dagar]

I have contemplated vision systems a bit, and I'd actually like a system that emulates that

a) you can move your eyes and head around more easily than you can rotate your body, so within a certain angle it should be really cheap to explore.

b) Humans have vision focused on the centre of their vision cone, so things on the peripheral are not really perceived well.

c) different lifeforms see well in different lighting conditions.

d) movement is more easily perceived than a static target, and areas different in texture or colour are more focused on than very uniform areas.

In a Xenonauts-like system, simulating this to a reasonable degree could look like this:

a) when the unit is static or moving slowly, a large portion of its forward area is explored, while when panicked, suppressed or sprinting only a small, specific area is perceived.

b) towards the edges of the vision area, it is less likely (percentage-wise) to spot a threat. This could be extreme in e.g. the case of an unexperienced sniper just staring through his scope, but that would lead to all kinds of wonky extra rules, which I am not a fan of.

c) the brightness of the surroundings play a role in how far you can see and where you most likely spot enemies. At the same time, it makes it less likely to spot targets in darker areas, because the light also draws your vision focus and "overshines" darker areas. Also, that could make cool use of light mechanisms and items like flares, night vision goggles, flashlights, if different aliens had different light levels at which they perceive vision cues well.

d) That could give rise to ambush and hiding mechanisms. In the extreme, e.g. a Sebillian grunt may not even perceive your troops if they stand perfectly still and do not attack, and Psyons panicking your troops to run around or twitch could be even more devastating. At the same time, Ghillie suits and other camouflage (also for Aliens) could become a useful and cool thing.

[Chris]

23 minutes ago, Dagar said:

c) different lifeforms see well in different lighting conditions.

d) That could give rise to ambush and hiding mechanisms. In the extreme, e.g. a Sebillian grunt may not even perceive your troops if they stand perfectly still and do not attack, and Psyons panicking your troops to run around or twitch could be even more devastating. At the same time, Ghillie suits and other camouflage (also for Aliens) could become a useful and cool thing.

Those two things jump out at me as being interesting ideas - the former has occurred to me before, and it's not too difficult to implement a "night vision" visual range that is independent from the day visual range that might be quite interesting. Maybe it would be a good idea to fight certain aliens at night, but not others...

The second idea would be harder to implement in practice, but is a very cool idea in principle - the idea that your soldier could just stand still and not move or shoot and become invisible to certain types of aliens would be pretty awesome. It might be a bit abuseable in practice but who knows - it's something that I might be willing to try out as the game gets closer to release. It'd certainly stop the aliens feeling so interchangeable.

[Decius]

One of the things I have kicking around from my tabletop days is complex 'view areas', my favorite of which started as "a 15 degree sector to maximum distance v1, a 30 degree sector to v2, a 90 degree sector to v3, a 180 degree sector to v4, and a full circle to v5.

 

Then I masked it to 5' squares, clamped it to eight facings, and threw it away for being too complex to implement. I wonder if having a shorter 180 degree FOV and an even shorter 360 'awareness' could feel even scarier than spending TU's on situational awareness.