Rob Zacny

Episode 189: Through a Glass, Darkly

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Klei's Nels Anderson and Firaxis' Scott Lewis join Rob and Troy to talk about fog of war and hidden information in game design. They talk about Mark of the Ninja and how information-gathering becomes a key game phase, and how games like Civilization use fog of war as a way to keep the player focused on a small, manageable area at the start of the game. The group discuss other ways to represent information-gathering, touching on games like Wargame, XCOM, Panzer Corps, and even 2006's Chromehounds.

Apologies for any audio issues. We lost Scott Lewis' audio track to a glitch.

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Hi there, just listening to this cast and I'm amazed R.U.S.E. hasn't entered the equation, unless it did and I didn't catch it, or that if its mechanics are derived from one of the games you did talk about. The basic premise of the game is using tiered qualities of fog of war information to throw off your opponent. I've only played the XBOX demo for it and am no strategy master, but it has interesting implications, primarily stuff like moving low cost units in such a way to make the opponent think they are higher threat units.

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Yeah, Ruse occurred to me during the show. But we do talk a fair bit about Wargame: European Escalation, which is the follow-up to Ruse and which takes those concepts a bit further.

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Listened to the cast earlier on, and I enjoyed the fog of war talk. Not sure you can apply the same premise to the 2d platform stealther, but having played the demo of Mark of the Ninja, you can broadly see that it does cloak parts of the screen with uncertainty. So, I'll take the massaging of 'Ninja into strategy game talk on the chin. :)

I'd like to see scouting and intel gathering become integral to strategy and wargames in the future. I was totally in agreement with the likes of Panzer Corps becoming a bit of a "trial and error" gauntlet that just sucks the life out of the wargaming. RUSE was mentioned in the previous post (I think Wargame:EE is from the same dev), where scouting was required to anticipate incoming forces in both size and composition. But also the ruse's themselves were tied into either dispelling the FOW for a region, or increasing the FOW in a region - which is really the "cool" concept behind the whole game.

To go off on an tangent, scouting can take place in the likes of co-operative team matches in FPS games such as Battlefield 3, where your team has the ability to mark up potential targets. The rest of the team can use situational awareness coupled with this extra information to make decisions about where to make a stand, or how to assault a position or even counter an immediate threat. More games should do this sort of thing. Especially strategy games. In comp stomps, there should be team based intel gathering mechanisms at play.

I rarely write up wargames as AAR's with FOW on, mainly because I'm trying to make a teaching/thought process example of the play. But I do like the added thrill of having to perform recon, before you can formulate your plans, and I like the way the "slow reveal" forces you to often re-evaluate your position and tactics.

Chromehounds was mentioned and I was taken back a few years to a time when stompy mech teams worked together. I spent a long time playing Chromehounds, and to this day it is one of the finer mech multiplayer games out there. It's a shame they pulled the plugs on the servers. Intel was essential, and the local sensors on different mech units, with one of them being the Commander unit co-ordinating the rest of the teams firepower was just sublime to play. The Armoured Core mecha titles just never came close to being as good as Chromehounds. Here's hoping Hawken has some sort of team based Mech loveliness.

Chromehounds led me onto thinking about the Front Mission series, basically tactical mech combat, similar in nature to the X-Com series, very popular on the original playstation. I'm sure they had FOW in that game.

Lastly, Rob was talking about a scenario in Take Command 2nd Manassas whereby you would control your troops at a certain level and have NO idea about the rest of the battlefield. I'm sure I read Scourge of War has an option to lock your view to the current command only. So you can't view to map from above, and see the other positions, other than your level of command. If you're having a bash at co-operative multiplayer Scourge of War, it might be worth looking into that option, to see exactly how "real world" FOW settings and a reliance on messenger riders affects play.

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For the Take Command games, I also disliked your capacity as a commander to draw dots on a map inmediatly... I mean, it would be waaay more fun to let you make your own scrawls on the map based on what couriers told you or what you could observe. Also disliked the capacity to "Take Command" of individual troops disregarding your position in the line of command, but thats another topic.

This discussion tended to talk about team-games, I have never tried this but always wanted to try and boot an old RTS (like Age of Empires) that let you control 1 sole base/civilization/faction with multiple players. So games could be 1 vs 1 (but each faction actually controlled by multiple players), each player could have a specific role "The Economy guy", "Frontline Combat guy", "Ability Caster guy", "Scouting guy"... etc. Sounds good on paper.

And that could be leveled up by having each player within the same faction having their own Field of View, so the Scouting guy would always report to the other players by words (or drawing on a map :P). Supreme Commander sounds perfect for this kind of play on the larger maps.

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I was playing around with some interesting ideas while designing a 4x wargame.

The idea is that you play a general who stays away from the front lines. You have to direct all the troops by sending out messengers, receiving reports from scouts, etc. There is always a delay between when the information is collected and when it gets back to you, and finding ways to shorten that gap or to prepare for the worst is really important.

In a fantasy or sci fi setting, you can add in limited resources that let you take direct control of troops for a short period of time or spy on regions of the map. I suppose you could also put in decoys, plant moles, and do other devious things.

In the end, I am more of a hands on kind of guy and I don't know that I would enjoy playing a game where I never got to controlt he units on the field. I think for a fog of war game these kind of mechanics would make things more interesting.

For example, what about a 2D platformer where you are a dark elf and you have infravision but you are blinded by light. It totally flips the fog of war equation on its head since what you can see and what your opponents can see are totally different. I actually started designing a game based on this idea and I think it would be lots of fun.

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The idea is that you play a general who stays away from the front lines. You have to direct all the troops by sending out messengers, receiving reports from scouts, etc. There is always a delay between when the information is collected and when it gets back to you, and finding ways to shorten that gap or to prepare for the worst is really important.

In a fantasy or sci fi setting, you can add in limited resources that let you take direct control of troops for a short period of time or spy on regions of the map. I suppose you could also put in decoys, plant moles, and do other devious things.

The only "full fog of war" games I know are the Airbone Assault Series, anyone knows any other title that uses fog of war to that degree?

For example, what about a 2D platformer where you are a dark elf and you have infravision but you are blinded by light. It totally flips the fog of war equation on its head since what you can see and what your opponents can see are totally different. I actually started designing a game based on this idea and I think it would be lots of fun.

Sounds interesting, good luck with the brainstorm :D

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Modern naval combat and games were conspicuously absent from this discussion. In games like the Harpoon series, Fleet Command, Dangerous Waters and others (to say nothing of pure sub sims), gathering info on the enemy is THE central focus of the game. This is an accurate reflection of the significance of detection in modern naval combat.

From a game standpoint, this has frequently been represented by standardized symbols conveying varying degrees of info -- from a simple bearing line to a fully detailed contact. I've always wondered these conventions haven't found wider use in other wargaming.

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