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[Belteshazzar]

One thing that has bothered me about Dwarf fortress is how you apparently can survey everywhere in real time, even when you have not actual control there. I know creatures seem to have a line of sight. Perhaps this should be extended to the player as well by adding in the somewhat greying fog of war to represent areas not currently under observation. Perhaps completely unexplored areas should be blacked out like unrevealed stone. This would make actual exploration parties interesting. It would make me feel less like Lex Luthor with cameras everywhere and more like the embodiment of the group's will.

[Capntastic]

Blacking everything out might be cool, depending on how it looks.

Currently, you cannot see some enemy units until your dwarves see 'em.

[Draco18s]

It'd have to be done right.

[Yourself]

quote:Originally posted by Draco18s:
<STRONG>It'd have to be done right.</STRONG>

To elaborate on that, it'd have to be done so that it doesn't kill the FPS.

[valcon]

Yeah, if you took the adventure mode line of sight and applied it to even 5 dwarves, let alone 150, your computer would not just drop to 1 fps, it would drop to 0, then laugh at you, then spit on you, the catch on fire and shoot out a giant protest banner and start marching, flaming smoking and spitting out burnt chunks of wire, across your desk, while laughing at you.  It wouldn't be pretty.

[Sowelu]

That sounds annoying as all heck.

Remember, dwarf mode is an accelerated timescale.  What are the odds that NOBODY EVER wanders to the east half of the map and notices "Hey, there's often deer here" in a whole year?  I think it's reasonable to know all that.  Also:  I assume the area was scouted out aboveground before the settlers arrived.

Line of sight should really be a lot longer.  Especially if on a hill...  I mean I can understand getting ambushed sometimes, but when those goblin hordes arrived, you should know where they are without having to send someone into crossbow range, then micromanage them back away...

Games that are heavy on scouting, are heavy on micromanagement.  Don't tell me you've never been annoyed at how much micro it requires in an RTS...Setting a hundred waypoints to make sure you didn't miss some important resource right next to your base...

[Draco18s]

quote:Originally posted by Sowelu:
<STRONG>That sounds annoying as all heck.</STRONG>

So...to quote myself...
It'd have to be done right.

[Belteshazzar]

I would never suggest that we do something the wrong way. But how would we go about this the right way. I don't play the adventurer mode much so I don't know how exactly it implements line of sight other than it seams to. I am not sure how exactly it would be implemented in Fortress mode (without killing the framerate) so this is why I asked about it. As to the complaint against the hassle of scouting and micromanaging in  an RTS I must say you must have played some crazy RTS because no game I have ever seen has Gwarf Fortresses level of micromanagement. I admit that controlling a single dwarf can be awkward right now but should be fixed in the army arc or the commands refining.

[irmo]

quote:Originally posted by Draco18s:
<STRONG>It'd have to be done right.</STRONG>

Screw that, let's do it wrong.

[Tormy]

*bump*..because the "fog of war" idea came up here:

http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=27101.msg329463#msg329463

Perhaps the player should be able to see everything on the surface, however if we gonna have diggers for example, the player shouldn't be able to see any "underground activities". Example: AI diggers/tunnelers.
Option to turn it on/off in the RAWs is needed.

[Sowelu]

Yeah, a classic problem in Fog of War implementations is:  What if you don't know how good your vision is, or your vision is kind of variable?  Witness that old classic DOS "Capture the Flag" game.  You stick a guy sitting on a rock and looking around, and sure, if the clumsiest member of the other team RUNS past, he'll see him.  But what if the other team's stealth monkey is creeping in his sneakiest mode through the tall grass?  You don't know!

Though, I guess for tunnels and stuff... fog of war is pretty much boolean.  Personally I would prefer to only have fog of war when there was an actual siege going on.  Justification 1) It makes sieges seem more dangerous, but also lets you know exactly what your limitations are, strategically.  Justification 2) IF there are tunnelers that aren't during a siege, it should come as even more of a surprise if fog of war is applied without letting you know you're missing anything!

[chucks]

Bumping.  Came up in http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=36596.0

I feel that imperfect knowledge of the map, scouting, etc. should fall under the heading of the fog of war.  Blizzard had the fog of war for starcraft and warcraft 1, 2, 3 locked down, and I would love to see this in DF.  Also, the aspect of specific observer/detector skills (ie, scouting or perception) and height of the observer should increase their line of sight beyond the range of a typical peasant.  Specialized buildings such as watchtowers or lighthouses could also add distance to the LOS of units within the structure.

Anyway, these links describe the concept very well, and I don't care to waste the effort to repeat others:
http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Fog_of_war
http://classic.battle.net/war2/basic/fog.shtml

[Tenebrais]

According to the dev notes, this is being partially applied to the new underground.

I also think I'll be able to update discovery/revealing of the local underground so that it depends more on where your dwarves have actually been, instead of revealing everything. Active LOS around every dwarf isn't feasible, but it can push the frontier off through the connected areas when a dwarf is vaguely nearby, anyway, so that there can be enormous connected (adventure-explorable) caverns without having them pre-revealed just because you have some dwarves tinkering around far, far above. I'm sure there will be some issues, but that's normal.

[chucks]

I gather that this will also be touched in further depth during the fire & lighting arc, but I am glad to see that some of it is being tackled earlier with later changes to come.

[AncientEnemy]

It seems to me it could be implemented without much resource strain if the "los" was very dumbed down. perhaps divide each region into 9 squares, and if a dwarf/controlled animal is in one, you're able to see everything in the square he's in and all those adjacent to it. it could also only be updated infrequently, perhaps a check every ~1000 steps to see if the currently 'seen' areas need to be hidden, and 'unseen' areas only revealed when a dwarf steps into the edge of the currently visible area.