I need to state my position on the idea of fog of war in Link-Dead.
I’m aiming to make LD as realistic AND fun as possible. FOW certainly is a realistic aspect and I can imagine it is fun. We know how it works from Soldat realistic and it allows for many things that would be impossible otherwise (like cutting someone’s throat from behind). Yet, I am not planning to add it as a standard feature. The reason is:
What different would Link-Dead be then from a 3D shooter?
My opinion is – nothing, besides that you see your character from the side. I want to make something that isn’t out there in the game market. The 2D side-view aspect should be embraced not mimicked to seem like a first-person game. Seeing your opponents adds fun and strategy to the game. Because it is more like a board game where you see what your opponents are doing and you can adjust your strategy at any time. I like seeing what my enemy is doing when he is not facing me directly. For example seeing him scavenging through someones inventory, or trying to flank me, or seeing what items he picks BEFORE he confronts me. This is something that will never appear in a first or third person perspective game. This can be both funny (like seeing someone trip over his own mine) and strategical cause you need to think more before actually fighting an enemy. And this is my big aim for this game, to make the player think.
This said, I am not totally ruling it out. I agree it could be a cool feature. I have thought about this a long time and even made attempts to do FOW (as seen on this video). So I might add it as server-side option in the future. Discussion is appreciated, you can list your own pros and cons list.
Your opinions for leaving out a FOW system are valid. However, I would personally hope you include it; perhaps just not as a default setting.
I was a relatively big player back in the days of 1.1.5 up, with Soldat R/S, or realistic and survival, of course. That was, what 7 or 8 years ago, so I was about 13. Soldat spent years as my most played game because how entertaining it truly was. I loved picking up a game after school, and creating fun memories that I still keep today, seriously. I’ve yet to play a game since that recreated the enjoyment I got out of sneaking up on someone, then lobbing a knife into the back of their head… maybe only Metal Gear matches that, heh.
So, it’s just my opinion, but I’d hope to see a FOW option somewhere in there. Perhaps a new generation of players will adopt that niche and create entire communities around it, like I was a part of in Soldat. Regardless, thank you for creating the stuff you do.
Awesome!
I forgot to add that I mutants will have cloaking devices so even without FOW it will be possible to sneak upon an enemy.
Sweeeet. I’m looking forward to that.
As an R/S player in Soldat (well, not so much anymore) I must say that I enjoyed (much) the whole “you cannot see me” deal. I’m perfectly fine with it default disabled or something, but I’m sure many people would prefer at least having the option to enable it, although it may have a smaller audience than with it disabled (like how R/S does on Soldat) (unless it was default enabled, then it probably would have a larger audience than with it disabled, since that is the first type of gameplay somebody plays).
I cant really list pros and cons since the only thing I can really think of is different gameplay. Variety of gameplay can segregate the community (as an r/s player, i dislike playing non-realistic games in general, unless it is a sub-gamemode (completely unique gameplay compared to default gamemodes) that I enjoyed), but can also expand the community (with FOW being non-existant, first timers who dislike FOW being off would not like LD, although that’s probably not a whole lot of people :P).
I fear that leaving it out will cause horrid amounts of campping and stalemating. Nobody moves and instead just stares at the enemy, always keeping a wall between themselves. There is no strategical aspect of playing mind games, predicting what your opponent is going to do, and so on.
I do see what you are going for here, though. But, chess with guns doesn’t work. First one to shoot wins. If he can’t shoot you, he can’t win.
Your comparison with the 3D games is… lacking. There’s no reason to have the projection at 360 fov, besides the fact that it’s unplayable. That’s a small minus when designing a commercial game. That could be a fun shooter to prototype, though.
And, in 3D, you lose vision broadness, and in 2D, range.
Trying to be unique in a base mechanic like this sounds a bit childlish.
Oh, and cloak. What about the cloaked guy? He should be prone to being snuck on as well!
Have you toyed around with the idea of having varying levels of FoV based on the faction/team?
>There is no strategical aspect of playing mind games, predicting what your opponent is going to do, and so on.
I completely disagree.
What I were going for there, was that when your opponents movements are hidden. Or your own actions. It just isn’t the same.
Oh he’s flanking me. Spam grenades.
It’s lacking the “delay” to information, seeing what he is doing all the time, as opposed to seeing him do something, and realising that he had to do something to achieve that before hand, out of sight.
wouldn’t it be cool to simply make a map which is almost completely covered with fog more in some areas and less in others so to see another play you must be very close. also (this is completely irrelevant) would you ever plan on creating background animations such as leaking water/steam from pipes and flashing emergency lights etc..
Hey MM, I love FOW, but I also love seeing the enemy and adjusting my actions accordingly. In my opinion it’s okay if it’s not a default option, but please make it optional someday, especially for map makers to play with.
For example you could allow the mapmaker to, say, make “hunter”-players, like the ubermen, have fog of war, while “hunted”-players, like the mutants, don’t. In this case the mutants would have to be nerfed a bit, since they would have a great advantage, but it would allow them to ambush and plan attacks on the uebermen much more effectively.
Other ideas for mapmakers would be for all players to have FOW at the beginning, but if they accomplish something specific, they get it turned off for a while… (maybe a hacker’s goal?). Or the mapmaker enables FOW inside buildings, but not outside. I think these are all aplications of the FOW that differentiate Link Dead remarkably from any 2D or 3D game, since neither have had these options or these broad possibilities. But I’ll leave these ideas open for the future.
add a ingame teamspeak system
FOW should be MAP and REGION specific. There are some parts of the map that the Mutants cant see the Ubermen and vice verse. Night maps should have Fog of War too.
This solution is better imo because it mix both solutions (with fow and without) and add more strategy deep to the game, like: Im in this place where the enemy cant see me, so i can make my defense or step to the next place where i can enter the enemy base to make an ambush.
You also can add random rain, and when its raining, the enemy cant see each other because of the fow.
Perhaps instead of a fog of war; just have a few very dark places for example that require light to see who’s coming.
That way someone could literally opt to hide in the shadows and they will see others coming (due to their torch/flashlight) but you could turn yours off.
Cool, really like the concept.
Not being able to see through the staircase really limits your vision… not sure about that part. People can juz camp on the other side of the stairs and blow you away with a shotgun.
I think the FOG should be feathered (slightly transparent and blended in) on the edges so they can’t immediately appear and disappear behind the FOG
In response to Curt:
I was thinking maybe LD could have the “default” options in favour of a more realistic game (i.e, with FOW enabled and most of the other realism server settings by default), this way the game can only get more soldat like the further you stray from the vanilla LD servers. So instead of making the effort to learn to play the “R/S” style games, you already have those skills and then there might be a proportionally smaller number of servers with the realism settings relaxed. Kind of the opposite of Soldat in that light.
My idea, which can be seen in the video I posted, was that interiors of buildings would have FOW but outside everything would be normally visible. This mixed solution is interesting, I’ll consider it some more.
Have you considered a ‘last known position’ mechanic à la Splinter Cell? Or a Link-Dead version of ‘sonar vision’, available only to certain classes whilst stationary?