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[dogstile]

What bothers me about embarking is that my dwarves can see everything on the map straight away. I'd really like it if your dwarves had to explore their immediate surrounds, and maybe have a visible path to a map edge (because how would your dwarves start in the middle of a map without exploring to get there)

It'd add to the explorer feel of starting out. I'm not sure how many people would like this, but I think it'd be good. Especially getting sieged when you haven't explored alot of the map.

[Kilo24]

There's a fog of war added in the upcoming DF2010 release to underground areas.  Instead of instantly being revealed upon discovery, you'll need to explore them to be able to see each nook and cranny.

As for the map surface, I think that's handwaved away as being done by scouts or by the settling dwarves themselves (since they'll want  a decent idea of the surrounding environment before they choose a final spot.)  That's a good thing, IMO; it'd be an annoyance otherwise to have to draft then run your dwarves around in circles for a few minutes before choosing your fortress spot, and allowing the option to do that still wouldn't add much to the game beyond making the game beginning a little more cumbersome.

Hmm... interesting.  I did a search on "fog underground explore" and it showed up with a post by Toady on Jan 21, 2009 in Future of the Fortress that I can't figure out how to directly click on, and it also didn't show that post when I looked at the time-based last posts bits in his profile.

[Hyndis]

Already exists, at least with ambushers.

In the vanilla game its just elves and kobolds that do this, but easily moddable for other civilizations.

[Safe-Keeper]

Should be optional, in my opinion, and dependent on the embark area. An embark site in the middle of nowhere should be unexplored, but if you're setting up shop at a road or bridge, or friendly town, more of the map should be visible at the beginning.

Games like Age of Empires II took it too far by having everything be dark in the beginning, 90% of the time, even in scenarios and whatnot where the characters would perfectly well know the lay of the land. If I'm building a fortress to hold an oft-travelled bridge from assault, I want the immediate surroundings to be revealed.

I liked AoK's Explore command, though. DF would probably need this if it was to implement fog of war.

As for the map surface, I think that's handwaved away as being done by scouts or by the settling dwarves themselves (since they'll want  a decent idea of the surrounding environment before they choose a final spot.)  That's a good thing, IMO; it'd be an annoyance otherwise to have to draft then run your dwarves around in circles for a few minutes before choosing your fortress spot, and allowing the option to do that still wouldn't add much to the game beyond making the game beginning a little more cumbersome.

Yeah, it makes sense to know what you're getting into before you decide to stop the cart and say "okay, guys, this is it!".

[dogstile]

Well, I mean, you would know some of the land of course, but i'm saying that in big maps, I doubt the dwarves would explore it all, just enough to feel safe.

Thats all i'm really suggesting, It would be nice to have to explore some of the map on occasion.

[Safe-Keeper]

Having said that, I don't see the problem with an option that obscures everything but the wagon, its dwarves, and the path they took to get to the centre of the map.

[deoxy]

Having all outdoor tiles revealed to begin makes sense, and really, I don't even think it's all that bad instantly auto-scouting underground features...

but I'd really like some kind of fog-of-war that affects creatures, along with some kind of look-out function.  Ambushes makes sense, but invisibility that only disappears if you attack or come adjacent to a creature is a bit much.

[Kilo24]

Well, I mean, you would know some of the land of course, but i'm saying that in big maps, I doubt the dwarves would explore it all, just enough to feel safe.

Thats all i'm really suggesting, It would be nice to have to explore some of the map on occasion.

In general, I don't think the maps are big enough to warrant the minor addition that it would be.  You should be able to get a decent view of the land that, during daytime on a high place, you can get a general idea of all the features over the map.  It's true that the detail wouldn't be perfect (and I'd be more tolerant of the suggestion if it would still have a way to display large features without going into perfect detail), but you should have a much better view of it than the normal game treatment of fog of war has (vision just stopping at 30 ft or so away.)

To do that at the surface is basically a trivial thing that pretty much anyone will do within their first few minutes of starting up a new fortress unless the terrain/creatures are hazardous.  It also requires the player to draft and run some dwarves around, which adds an extra pressure when starting up the fortress.  If it's required, it'll frustrate newbies and annoy people who've played for a while; if it's not required, I guess I can't really see it being beneficial to anyone.  If people still want it, I can't see a simple init tweak like [START_SURFACE_OBSCURED] taking too much effort from Toady, though.

But, let me say that I'd be fine with something similar to this for when the army arc comes in and you're positioning armies around your nearby land (and possibly underground) for maximum effectiveness.  In my conception, that's at the point where dwarves generally won't pre-emptively explore or pretty much already know the general layout from having two functioning eyes.  Of course the size of the embark locations will vary, but that can be construed as the boundaries of your fortress's zone of direct control.

Having all outdoor tiles revealed to begin makes sense, and really, I don't even think it's all that bad instantly auto-scouting underground features...

but I'd really like some kind of fog-of-war that affects creatures, along with some kind of look-out function.  Ambushes makes sense, but invisibility that only disappears if you attack or come adjacent to a creature is a bit much.

Dwarves have a spotting skill in the upcoming release.  I'd certainly be fine with the idea of having lookouts atop towers to be able to see nearby wildlife/incoming armies/ambush squads even without sneaking in either a forewarning before they enter the map or to be able to see them on the map, but I do think the terrain should not be obscured.

[dogstile]

I'm more think of maps in a 6x6 or larger have a small, 20 tile fog of war from the sides aside from the side your dwarves came in on.

Newbies don't get effected all to much, vets can explore if they want, probably will, but they don't /have/ to. The point of this is the kind of add realism (yeah, haha) while keeping it acceptable. I don't want some WHOLE MAP IS BLACK sort of deal. Of course, this idea would work so much better if enemy AI would use it to ambush properly

[Pilsu]

Fog of war doesn't mean the whole place starts out black, it means that you can't see enemies that aren't close to your own units' sight range. Now, there are variations like explored areas slowly becoming shrouded instead of instantly obscuring when out of sight but that makes no sense and would be pretty video gamey for Dwarf Fortress.

I'd personally support full line of sight tracking but few machines could reasonably handle the game after that. Managing unit facing would be a gameplay hurdle and allowing them to see behind themselves would make the mechanic silly, undermining it's purpose.

As for the map starting out black, that'd just be tedious.

[sweitx]

Fog of war doesn't mean the whole place starts out black, it means that you can't see enemies that aren't close to your own units' sight range. Now, there are variations like explored areas slowly becoming shrouded instead of instantly obscuring when out of sight but that makes no sense and would be pretty video gamey for Dwarf Fortress.

I'd personally support full line of sight tracking but few machines could reasonably handle the game after that. Managing unit facing would be a gameplay hurdle and allowing them to see behind themselves would make the mechanic silly, undermining it's purpose.

As for the map starting out black, that'd just be tedious.

Damn, beat me to it.
I would say in almost all cases, fog of war relates to the inability to know where the enemies (or friendly, or civilians) are.  Rarely was it about what the terrain looks like (which is generally obtained, even in ancient time, by simple scouting).

[Kilo24]

I'd personally support full line of sight tracking but few machines could reasonably handle the game after that. Managing unit facing would be a gameplay hurdle and allowing them to see behind themselves would make the mechanic silly, undermining it's purpose.

I've heard that argument before, but the fact that Toady's given the spotting skills to detect ambushing units further than 1 tile away could undermine it (depending on how it's coded.)  After all, for a single sneaking creature, it now needs to check all nearby dwarves/creatures that could see it.  If that skill is used to find all creatures, but give a very large bonus to find creatures that actually aren't sneaking, then you could have a fog-of-war effect right there.  For implementation feasibility, it's just a question of how large a hit that is to the CPU (for gameplay, he'd also need to figure out how to show it so that it looks nicely, and whether or not that's what he wants for the game as far as game balance goes.)

I personally doubt it'd be worth it, though.

And, yes, not managing facing is silly, but that happens in pretty much every non-FPS or FPS-like game already (save for X-Com), so DF would be in good company.

[Pilsu]

If all spotting was handled with it, just watching people would hone your hearing and eyesight massively. On the flip side, you'd have dwarves fail to notice critters walking right at them. Making it a skill to begin with makes no sense.

Facing is pretty important in all squad management games. It'd just be out of place if DF didn't track it. I suppose it'd still be an improvement if line of sight was handled properly. As in, dwarves seeing far away instead of a few feet ahead of them and height and obstacles being taken into account.

[Kilo24]

If all spotting was handled with it, just watching people would hone your hearing and eyesight massively. On the flip side, you'd have dwarves fail to notice critters walking right at them. Making it a skill to begin with makes no sense.

All you need to do is arrange the modifiers so that it conforms with reality (something which most of DF's skills are currently pretty shaky on.)

Make within 10 or so tiles with no intervening terrain an automatic success for unskilled dwarves spotting non-sneaking people, then just have the skill just tack distance modifiers (like, say, an unskilled dwarf has something like a 150% chance to see an adjacent creature, -5 percentiles for each additional tile.)  I'm not sure if it should be strictly linear though (since you'd have absolutely no chance to see a creature 31 tiles away.)  Add substantial modifiers in for size, let sneaking work by giving a large ambush-skill-dependant penalty on the spot check, and penalize people with eye damage/only one eye, and you've got what should be a pretty good system.

Normal sight shouldn't give experience (but lookout duty probably should.)  And spotting sneaking guys should.

[bombcar]

The ambushes that are in the game give a hint to what is probably to come; line of sight for enemies, but no "darkness" once an area is seen.

Perhaps this would give reason to build towers.