Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Author Topic: Hide Miasma, and mayyybe smoke?  (Read 1395 times)

PTTG??

  • Bay Watcher
  • Kringrus! Babak crulurg tingra!
    • View Profile
    • http://www.nowherepublishing.com
Hide Miasma, and mayyybe smoke?
« on: March 28, 2009, 11:29:58 am »

I would like a way, potentially in Adventurer Mode, and DEFINITELY in Fortress Mode, to show/hide miasma and smoke. You see, I just don't think that even several dead sheep, let alone a single dead butterfly, should be able to smell SO BAD that it creates a vision-obscuring cloud. That isn't to say that it shouldn't be visible, but one way or annother, I'd like to be able to tell what's in smelly tiles without Loo"K"ing over them one by one.

Now, I have less of a problem with smoke being opaque, of course, because it might be in real life. In fact really, really thick smoke could hide things even from Loo"K"ing. Later on, It'd be nice to have Fog that can do the same thing, effectively turning any unit into an ambusher. Though of course you should still be able to give orders regarding hidden tiles, i.e., forbidding everything in this smoke-filled corridor, or "collect the plants in this bank of fog".

If I had to put this under an arc, I'd say the Lighting arc, especially if night could hide things as well. I just needed to put this out there.
Logged
A thousand million pool balls made from precious metals, covered in beef stock.

Derakon

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Hide Miasma, and mayyybe smoke?
« Reply #1 on: March 28, 2009, 12:17:53 pm »

For the time being it might be sufficient to simply blink miasma and smoke. You'd need to blink it faster than the miasma/smoke normally spreads to make it clear that this wasn't just the stuff entering and leaving the square over and over again.

Of course, really this should be handled by transparency...
Logged
Jetblade - an open-source Metroid/Castlevania game with procedurally-generated levels

profit

  • Bay Watcher
  • Finely Crafted Engravings... Or it didn't happen.
    • View Profile
Re: Hide Miasma, and mayyybe smoke?
« Reply #2 on: March 28, 2009, 12:28:55 pm »

This has already been suggested, within the past 4 weeks.   

But its still a good idea =)

I dislike it when misma covers my stockpile I am trying to look at.
Logged
Mods and the best utilities for dwarf fortress
Community Mods and utilities thread.

Pilsu

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Hide Miasma, and mayyybe smoke?
« Reply #3 on: March 28, 2009, 04:06:43 pm »

There's no reason to hide units in smoke as long as the game features no other forms of fog of war

That said, I'd rather like not being able to tell where enemy units are if none of my dwarves can see them. Line of sight would of course need to be reworked and hearing utilized in some imprecise fashion
Logged

AncientEnemy

  • Bay Watcher
  • The Answer is always POUR MAGMA ON IT
    • View Profile
Re: Hide Miasma, and mayyybe smoke?
« Reply #4 on: March 28, 2009, 04:52:39 pm »

That said, I'd rather like not being able to tell where enemy units are if none of my dwarves can see them. Line of sight would of course need to be reworked and hearing utilized in some imprecise fashion

that would be cool but I think implementing a LoS system for hundreds of dwarves (or hell even 20) would be extremely difficult without using massive amounts of processing power :/

Jakkarra

  • Guest
Re: Hide Miasma, and mayyybe smoke?
« Reply #5 on: March 28, 2009, 06:28:38 pm »

that would be cool but I think implementing a LoS system for hundreds of dwarves (or hell even 20) would be extremely difficult without using massive amounts of processing power :/

yeah, we dont really need any more Processor NomNomOmNomNom, may people run slowly as it is.
Logged

Footkerchief

  • Bay Watcher
  • The Juffo-Wup is strong in this place.
    • View Profile
Re: Hide Miasma, and mayyybe smoke?
« Reply #6 on: March 28, 2009, 07:36:12 pm »

Of course, really this should be handled by transparency...

And DF supports full PNG transparency now.  Hopefully someday we'll be able to set a color and maximum opacity for flows -- in the raws for material flows, and in init.txt for hardcoded flows.
Logged

Pilsu

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Hide Miasma, and mayyybe smoke?
« Reply #7 on: March 29, 2009, 09:51:45 am »

that would be cool but I think implementing a LoS system for hundreds of dwarves (or hell even 20) would be extremely difficult without using massive amounts of processing power :/

They already have LoS. Granted, it's 360 degrees around them but it's there
Logged

Footkerchief

  • Bay Watcher
  • The Juffo-Wup is strong in this place.
    • View Profile
Re: Hide Miasma, and mayyybe smoke?
« Reply #8 on: March 29, 2009, 10:03:48 am »

They already have LoS. Granted, it's 360 degrees around them but it's there

Hmm?  I can't tell if you mean "it's not restricted to a 90 degree arc in the direction they're facing" or "it's just a sight radius with no accounting for stuff that should block vision."  The latter is the case, and I'm not sure it can be called LOS given that no lines are being calculated.

Dwarves only seem to use LOS for checking whether they can hit a creature they've already targeted, which is of course much less CPU-intensive than doing LOS checks to their entire surroundings.
Logged

Derakon

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Hide Miasma, and mayyybe smoke?
« Reply #9 on: March 29, 2009, 11:08:25 am »

They'll also do LOS to check if that goblin on the other side of the wall will interrupt their work.
Logged
Jetblade - an open-source Metroid/Castlevania game with procedurally-generated levels

buman

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Hide Miasma, and mayyybe smoke?
« Reply #10 on: March 29, 2009, 11:17:13 am »

The effects are useful to let you know what it's occurring. You're never going to mistake miasma for cats.

Blinking or transparency would be awesome however.

Logged

Footkerchief

  • Bay Watcher
  • The Juffo-Wup is strong in this place.
    • View Profile
Re: Hide Miasma, and mayyybe smoke?
« Reply #11 on: March 29, 2009, 11:19:15 am »

They'll also do LOS to check if that goblin on the other side of the wall will interrupt their work.

Do they?  I figured it did a quick sight radius + connected components test.
Logged

Derakon

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Hide Miasma, and mayyybe smoke?
« Reply #12 on: March 29, 2009, 02:06:32 pm »

If that were the case, then there would be fewer issues with a fortress entrance that's just a staircase into the earth, since the dwarves would start fleeing from the goblins long before they got near the entrance. As it is, the goblins will leap down the stairs and dwarves a handful of paces away will react with horror.
Logged
Jetblade - an open-source Metroid/Castlevania game with procedurally-generated levels

Footkerchief

  • Bay Watcher
  • The Juffo-Wup is strong in this place.
    • View Profile
Re: Hide Miasma, and mayyybe smoke?
« Reply #13 on: March 29, 2009, 03:06:04 pm »

If that were the case, then there would be fewer issues with a fortress entrance that's just a staircase into the earth, since the dwarves would start fleeing from the goblins long before they got near the entrance. As it is, the goblins will leap down the stairs and dwarves a handful of paces away will react with horror.

You might be right.  Short-ranged floodfills might figure in somewhere too -- Toady had mentioned that flying creatures at least use those for targeting.
Logged

Jakkarra

  • Guest
Re: Hide Miasma, and mayyybe smoke?
« Reply #14 on: March 29, 2009, 04:30:44 pm »

i have noticed that with the addition of 40D11 we should have a lot more power to be given over to little things like this, i dont personally use it myself, but with the extra speed that it brings (which im unsure of its source) we could theoretically have many of the featurespeople keep suggesting.

this is all hypothetical, however. feel free to correct me, and PLEASE tell me why 11 runs much faster than 10?

Love, jakkarra
Logged