I was thinking about the vision of untis, and I thought: Wouldn't it be possible to shade in all the areas a player can't see in gray? In other words, it would be like having a gray screen over everything, so you could still see colours and terrain. Whenever the area moves into your vision range, the gray disappears, allowing you to see other buildings and armies. I've often found myself wonderin whether I can see a certain square or not, especially in battles. With this, you would know exactly how much you can and can't see.

I'm no expert on computers, so I don't know if this will take too large an amount of coding or not.

very difficult to do in Flash5, assuming its even possible.

The new version works differently that this version.
Given the new ver uses Zones, it will be the Zones that determine site.

Ultimately, you will be able to see every Zone you own or have an army inside, and then the 6 surrounding 'local' Zones around those.

So it wont matter where your troops are in the zone, you will be able to see the 6 surrounding local zones.

The rest of the map will either be black, or show just the terrain with a grey shading.

Keep in mind though, that this is FLASH based, not a fully developed C++ gaming application. You cant do as much in Flash as you can in a normal game, and having to draw too many objects (especially ones you'd rarely see) has large cost.

The other issue is, if you can see the rest of the map (even if greyed out), you can see exactly where you sit on that map, and thus be able to form a plan before the game realy starts.
If the map is all black, you actually need to explore.
Especially because you wont know if you are on the edge of the map with fewer neighbours, or right in the middle with enemies on all sides.

about that; players would still be able to get an idea if they were on the edge if we use our current coordinate system. not that I have a solution in mind, but a person who can see anything close to 1,1 is going to know which direction to go for sure. maybe if you just didn't show the coordinate at all, or until turn x?

the new version will place players closer to 1000,1000.

So you'll never know which direction the land is going, and whether you are in the middle, near the edge or on the coastline.

HA! thats great. now all we need is a way to make players completely anonomous, or maybe have anonomous names for each game. that way, you wouldn't know who to trust... if you don't know who's in a game with you, how do you know who to ask "where are you in game 21?"

of course, in games with very little intel such as this, I'd still like to know the names after the game is over...

I think it would be absolutely necessary for you to know who people were when the game was over. If not, then how would you know who was tough, who was dishonest, who was on incredibly often, etc.

It's an intriguing idea vec, but I'm not sure if it will be completely plausible if we take all factors into account.

Something to chew on perhaps?

Isn't there an option on the lower right where it can overlay the potential viewing distance (5 hex radius) already? Simply select and roll mouse over unit.

It is my understanding that one can see 9 hexes away from any unit.

i think it would be bad for the players to be unknown especaly when you have an ally among them .... you could be ataking your sworn ally ......... or best friend and not know it and if this person were to find out later on that it was you that kickt their butt, after you swore alliance the rasults could be a serious friendship end or worse

as for the fog of war thing i think it's a good idea ..... for one thng it would buy me time before I'm slughterd ................ but thats just me

Last Edited : Saturday, 2 July 2005 - 07:31