For clarity, the fog of war in commander view should actually be distinguishable, for example with a gray overlay effect.
I think you mean you want to grey out the areas not visible to the commander? I support this. Would be nice to see an indication of a building's/player's visual range on the map (with invisible areas greyed out).
It doesn't need to be completely blacked out - just some minor adjustment so that it's clear which areas have full vision and which are only terrain vision (fog of war - i.e. enemy infantry and structures are not visible)
I fully agree with this. Perhaps even show light lines around the individual player and building LoS's Perhaps only visable as a player approaches the edge of the commanders visable area. It can show what he is seeing range wise. This would be tremendously useful.
Well, I don't know how LoS is implemented in empires - this could be potentially difficult to make if there is no "maximum" sight range, in which case you'd have to draw arbitrary curves around each player, which is a bit more computationally expensive. If LoS and fog of war from the commander's perspective are purely based on circles, drawing some lines could be quite a bit easier.
from FPS perspective there are multiple max draw distances - player/building/vehicle models (settable by server owners) and map view distance (which can be set individual by mappers), also its not spherical, its a frustum of a pyramid (pic below), since theres no need to draw anything the players doesnt see. in RTS FoW usual isnt even a 3d shape, its more or less just a circular area projected on the scene (with some culling blahblah) - though the actual camera view ofc has a culling frustum aswell. in empires you have both "fog of wars". comm has this circular stuff and its way smaller then the players view distance on most maps. but on most empries maps you can see further then max model draw distance, so players have sort of a FoW aswell (it not intended as FoW though, its a technical limitation or framerates)
Right, but how does this relate to commander's view? Can the commander see everything players see, or do the two players have different drawing values? If the commander can see everything players see, drawing a curve around each infantry's view would be very ugly, jump around a lot, and be also be very expensive.
i expanded on my previous post. i really should get used to read it 20 times before i click reply the first time. sry. its also not meant to be pro or con this argument, i only meant to clear this up. edit: but i wonder what you gain from knowing where the game stops rendering as your troops dont care about your limited view anyway?! barely any comm decision relies on this, if any at all. empires is hardly compairable to RTS. i know it does its best to disguise it but its no RTS at all. if you want to put it in a box, lets invent SFPS (strategic FPS) for the genre? i also wonder if it looks "more polished" if you draw comms "FoW"*. itd still be (kinda) inconsistent because why dont you draw it for players? *in quotes because a FoW usually also includes exploration, meaning youd need to start with a blacked out map edit2: actually i think its not so easy to even define what FoW would mean in empires terms. in classic RTS FoW is the area explored by your troups - usually, but not always, the units view area is circular. in empires theres a huge difference inbetween what you (comm) sees and what your units (player) see. comms representation of units view is circular and rather small, while the actual unit view is a directed frustum limited solely due to technical reasons. certainly nothing "unovercomeable", but a less easy solution then it initially appears as.
The comm view shouldn't be limited by the draw distance, it should be smaller. For balance reasons and maybe explained? Soldiers seeing something from afar wouldn't be able to get much information of what it is they are seeing - the units at that location, type of buildings, etc. I'm implying that soldiers can theoretically see to the curvature of the earth - but for balance reasons it's best to arbitrarily limit the commander's fog of war. As in most games, every unit should have their own vision variable that dictates the radius that they take away from fog of war. Radars and engy buildings would have higher vision, soldiers will have medium vision (scout could have a passive buff to this), the rest of the buildings would have low vision. Common, but not always. Warcraft III and Starcraft II both dropped the blacked out map so that players can tell what the maps look like. They weren't randomly generated anyway so it made sense. I think the big issue is how would the game handle things being in explored fog of war no longer being there, like enemy buildings previously seen that may have been taken down.
thats really not the issue if you have no exploration, you just dont draw dynamic objects like the game does it already. also if im not mistaken in wc3 there still was fow but optional and it just usually was turned off in mp? anyway, doesnt matter, if maps aint generated it certainly is a waste i fully agree.
Well not so much a waste but imbalanced, as someone who has played it before will certainly have an edge over someone who doesn't know where the bases spawn.
Black mask was implemented for campaigns but can be enabled for any custom map. Ladder maps never have black mask. This should be consistent with SC2 as well, but I'm less confident there. This is off topic though - Empires doesn't have black mask, and shouldn't, either.
Just few tips I couldnt help not to share: You can see a bit further when you look through the corner of your screen. This works for probably all source games and many other games which dont have spherical FOV. And also, you can still shoot what you dont see, so shooting rpgs at what seems like nothing is a legit tactic. Anyway, it would be nice to have some kind of indication on the range you can see, but I dont think its any important at all. Only if devs had a lot of spare time. Its barely a problem and it wouldnt bring much. Thats one of the reasons why I love empires. You actually need to learn things to get better. Even though I understand that things like this, make it that much harder for new players.
