FOG of WAR

Details most people aren't even aware of..

Published on November 9, 2004 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals

The fog of war in Galactic Civilizations II is going to be quite different than in the first one. Much of that is due to the 3D engine.

But you would be surprised how many details go into the fog of war. What color should it be. It's in space so unexplored can't be black. It had a slightly violet hue to it in the first Galactic Civilizations. We decided to go with that again.

But then there's the matter of how to treat zones of influence. In the first GalCiv zones of control was by sector. Now it's based on the individual planets in a particular sector. That means they tend to be irregularly shaped.

But how should the fog of war deal with that? Your zone of control/influence may extend beyond your sensor range. Should it paint over the fog of war? Be hidden? Or only extend to your explored area. What about alien civlizliations? Should you get to see their zones before you've made contact with them? The realisitc option is obvious but what about the fun part? It's not a no brainer.

So that's what the engine team was working on. Meanwhile, the Arcean models were being heavily tweaked by the art team and we got some new ships in. We did get bad news that the new artist we were trying to get in won't be able to join us due to some family issues. So we still need a lead 3D modeler for our Master fantasy game we have in preproduction (lead 3D modeler means you have 5 to 10 years of real experience btw).

The UI team is going well but the new planet design screen has been a real challenge to do. It's so much more important but we want the game not to seem like a spread sheet or too complex. So that's really been tough.

Comments (Page 2)

LDiCesare

on Dec 02, 2004

I think it might be good to have zones of influence only extend as far as you can see or have already explored; it makes sense that an empire wouldn't have that much influence over something it can't see or somewhere it's never been.

I agree. I hate it that influence spreads out of nowhere and some people you've never even seen suddenly become part of your empire (or conversely, people who can't ever see your planets suddenly take them over.
This would have a drawback, however, which is it'd let you know the area of space charted by the other players by looking at the influence map.
One nice solution would be to have your cultural influence automatically chart the space. You'd retain fog of war there (need drones/planets/ships to get rid of it) but you could see anywhere your influence expands. thus if there are planets under your influencem you know they are there.
Of course influence would absolutely have to be saved, not the way it was in Galciv, where it was regenerated from scratch after a save, thus potentially wrecking the game at every open.

AngleWyrm

on Dec 19, 2004

The main problem with Fog Of War constructs is that they pretend a player doesn't know where the inhabitable stars are.

FACT: The player DOES know. This knowledge is timeless. There is no point in trying to hide the value of the planets from a player; it is silly to do so.

Fog Of War only truly applies to knowledge that changes over time. Where the enemy has deployed his forces. What stuff is currently built on a given world. For this kind of information, FOW applies.

Please don't make us reload a save-game; it's self-deceiving and ruins some of the fun.

Peace Phoenix

on Dec 20, 2004

" You will know where the stars are. But it's not likely, even by the 23rd century, that we'll know of good planets (yellow stars) hundreds of light years away. " - Draginol

After some thoughs, I find this statement a little strange: unless I am mistaken, we currently can determine the color of particular star.
But I agree, knowing if there are habitable planets around them is another thing. I guess the problem lies in the fact that yellow = good planet. Even if we don't where are good planets, we surely know where are the yellow stars.

Peace Phoenix

on Dec 20, 2004

Since nothing will prevent the human player to use the save and reload mechanism to know where all goods stars are, I think it will be a more balanced decision to allow all players (Human and AI) to know where the good stars are, than to let them in ignorance. An human player will always found a way to know the location of good stars and get an advantage over the AI.

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