Spring RTS Engine

So I just thought it would be useful to quit the talkin about it and just vote on it

Indeed.

What would you guys think of having an impenetrable wall of fog beginning at the playable edge of the map? It might be necessary for maps to extend another 10% out to accommodate the fog. This would look nice on island-type maps I think, not too sure about land maps. Either way, with some tweaking, I'm sure that it could be made so that it neither detracted from the gameplay, or the look.

b1ind wrote:What would you guys think of having an impenetrable wall of fog beginning at the playable edge of the map? It might be necessary for maps to extend another 10% out to accommodate the fog. This would look nice on island-type maps I think, not too sure about land maps. Either way, with some tweaking, I'm sure that it could be made so that it neither detracted from the gameplay, or the look.

No dice.

One of my favorite things about TA is the fact that planes (i.e. bombers) fly off the map, turn around and get their line of sight and start the bombing run. (Wow, run on sentence much?)

I think it would look best if the edge was covered by fog. Either black or white.

Taken from two previous topics:
Syffer Bidan wrote:
Extend the map far beyond the boundaries, until it fades into the fog or dust. As for the boundaries themselves, make them invisible lines, and code them to appear when a unit approaches the line. Since units have a circular line of sight, when they approach the boundary, it should slowly fade into view, but only as far as the unit can see. Thus, a unit could walk along the boundary, and as it walks alongside the edge, the translucent line only appears [in the invisible circle around the unit]. Even if line-of-sight is [set to] Permanent, the line should still only appear when a unit approaches it. [This will make the aesthetics more realistic and appealing, and should be able to accomidate aircrafts, as they can travel past the boundary, but not nesseccarily too far to fade off into the distance, so that long-range ballistic units may still shoot them down (a la OTA).]

Syffer Bidan is on to something. That's sounds like it would look really good.

But I must also put in my plug for a donut-world map option. I reaaaally want to play a borderless map. That way, there are no corners :) Take a look at Moonbase Commander to see how great the gameplay becomes.

I like Syffer Bidan idea but it just seems so complicated and unneeded I think its one of those things that would take forever and not get enough gratitude because personally I would say thanks but not as much as its due credit.

I like the way Rome: Total War deals with the issue. The map continues into the distance, but the actual boundary of the map is delineated by a red line. This red line is invisible unless you move the camera close to the boundary, in which case it fades into view, as visible in the image, where it is visible close to the camera, but cannot be seen in the distance.

note that this is actually an image from a bug report, so the weird things you see in the background are actually errors. This was the best online image I could find, unfortunately. You can see what I mean, though.



Edit: bleh, pic wasn't working. Uploaded to imageshack.

This concept is very similar to the one I have been preaching.

Meh

Rome Total War does the edging very well. It would be awesome to see that in Spring.

I prefer it the way it is. Different map edging will give you larger maps with areas you can't play on just to make things look less finite? With the spring camera you'll probably always be able to see the edge even with the RTW style because you can zoom way out and rotate in any direction.

But I think this red line is just as stupid as an edge just appearing somewhere. So the real solution would be those spherical maps. But I doubt they will be introduced soon.

What edging? I was just showing of my mad rtw skillz.

Well, i havent voted becasue im not sure which one is what im thinking of... Id have the an extra 20 percent of the map, but it should fade into fog (I think im thinking neverwinter nights here...). So you cant see out and then the edge is not accessable nor should you get slowdown from the infinate edge... (unless they ment a flat plane of infinity which would sux an look bad.

aGorm

In all honesty, do people not read my posts?

sparkyhodgo wrote:Syffer Bidan is on to something. That's sounds like it would look really good.

Yes. It's a good idea. And I believe they're saying they agree with you.

I think I'm going to have to come out in favor of endless maps, by which I mean looping maps. Actually endless maps would make games impossible to end, because any intelligent player would send their commander out in a transport airship sometime early in the game and have them travel for hours. If they wanted to, they could stop and set up bases every half hour that would have some serious porcupine going by the time a player caught up with them. Finding where they actually went would be impossible.

Looping maps on the other hand fix that problem. There is a limited and very finite space to hide in. However, they also solve the issue of the corner, which I've always felt was rather unrealistic. Simply put, it is not fair to not have to defend 2 whole sides of your base, especially in games where there are more than 4 players, which I feel will be more and more common as broadband proliferates.

A player who gets dropped in a middle starting position in OTA almost always loses to a player who started in a corner, because the corner player can have twice the turret density on their lines for the same cost. I've played many games in this situation, and it isn't fun from either the ass-kicking or ass-being-kicked prospective.

Some people have been talking as if planes flying off the edge and back on is a good thing. But how realistic is it that they are sitting within half a screen of my anti-air, but they are not being targetted? Having the planes fly off the edge and back on was a kludge that Cavedog did because they didn't have the time / energy / money / tech to make looping maps.

Yes looping maps can be used especially if the maps aren't too big like as big as a real planet. However no divide maps then, cuz you just drive around the mountains dividing the map. Or you should have a planet with a mountain across the entire planet.

well it seems everyone likes the fading into whatever color tha map is... and that makes more sense to me now so if the programmers ever read the forum I think that one is winning