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IronManBeta -> Re: War in the Fog (9/24/2002 6:59:31 PM)
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by lentullus
[B]
StJohn did a great job with the first version, you have a lot to live up to. :) [/B][/QUOTE]
Oh great, more pressure! Steve St. John (and later Steve Newberg) did indeed do a great job. The whole thing had to fit into 64k and run on a Commodore 64 so a premium was put good design and clever execution. SSJ and I worked together for a while on a pair of Napoleonic games (his got published, mine died on the vine) and it was a real pleasure talking to him and chewing over some of these kinds of issues.
Fog of War. For brand new players you can turn on 'auto spotting' which allows all units to be revealed to the player (but not necessarily each other) at all times. The screen shot you saw was from one of those set-ups. Once you learn the game though you can turn it off and play it the real way. I've spent the last week doing that and even though I know exactly what is going on, I still get the willies as I send my tank regiment yet again into the void where I just know a substantial cavalry force is lurking. Nothing beats the experience of actually having to probe on your own and find things out the hard way.
Early testing indicates that I may need to add a semi-automatic mode. This would represent individual vehicles and foot patrols out on recon and would detect most enemy units say within 2 km automatically. Otherwise I might have to put a lot more tiny recon units on the map to do the job under manual control, and that is not really consistent with the viewpoint of the game.
The other big fog of war item was the delayed sitreps. You don't know how the unit is doing until it reports in and then you don't know again until it reports in again. The combat info describing the unit state is timestamped and can be quite old. You have to look at it and realize that it may be 40 minutes past and the unit has been fighting since and could be all but dead, not as shown. Fun and games.
Notes on map. Sadly no, it would compromise graphics performance too much! You will just have to write them on paper. There is a 'staff diary' function that captures much of the text output of the old game into a journal that you can then save or print. Maybe that would help? Nothing beats working directly with the map though....
Cheers, Rob.
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