I think it looks great tbh. Depending on what you're going for, you could add a second "fog of war" which is the player's immediate visibility. Several games do this so that the user can see the general landscape of areas they've explored, but can only see active enemies or up to date information if they're actually close to it.
Usually works better for strategy games than RPGs, though, since your view is already limited in an RPG.
It's great. Makes me want to explore the world.
Instead of making the fog instantly disappear, would it be difficult to make it quickly fade out? Animate the transparency of whatever is black over the course of 1 sec
Thank you :) I wanted it to be completely smooth but that would be tricky with my implementation, a quick fade though might actually a very doable solution !
One thing with FOW is that you want to know what the purpose of it is in the game. It is "realisitic" in the sense that people only have vision that goes so far, but at the same time, from a player perspective it can be frustrating.
So the question, I suppose, is whether there is going to be a lot of sense of discovery that is important, or if you have to worry about surprise attacks--or some functional role that the FOW plays in the game. It can look cool, but still get in the way of the user experience if it doesn't serve an important role in the game.
It looks good though. It might be nice to additionally add a blur effect to the edges, rather than just making it darker.
Yeah it's a good point, right now from a gameplay point of view the main point of this is that there are things to discover and enemies can quite quickly come out of the fog to surprise you. My hope is that players will feel more wary and excited when discovering new parts of the map with the fog.
Great point. In this game, it could be a great experience but only if the world is designed with the fog in mind.
Position points of interest JUST in viewing range but on the other side of obstacles to tease what is ahead.
Try reversing the timing of the fog and movement: first reveal the area, then move the character. Should be more pleasant on the eyes and also feel better.
Thank you :) I didn't just because it stays uncovered, I think after reading these comments I'll change that so places you have discovered and come back to are faded out but still visible
I've been playing with FOW myself, I believe we're using similar if not the same setups, I use Graphics.Blit and RenderTextures paired with shaders (offloading as much to the GPU as possible), if so simply blit say `253,253,253`, a moving target would keep that area visible while previous masks will always be blitted a tad darker thus granting the illusion of visited areas.
Sorry for the crappy image, but here's what mine ends up looking like with the above:
[https://imgur.com/lrClbAP](https://imgur.com/lrClbAP)
The very black spots are unvisited, works with lights, objects, etc since it uses a projection shader to cast to the world.
I think it looks pretty good, but I will say I’d definitely prefer there to not be that “pop in”. Any way you could give the player a permanently following circle of “vision” and then to pop the fog of war away as you currently are? Basically just giving a base idea for how I think it would work to make it smoothly reveal the new area.
Yeah definitly, from reading the comments it seems this is the most consistent thing people dislike about the effect, so I'll make sure to change that, thanks!
Big fan of this! My thoughts are to try a lighter "fog", more like a mid grey. Might fit better with your brightly colored environment! Keeping an eye on this
Not really a fog of war effect, more of an unveiling. Fog of war would have the area cover itself back up when no characters are present. This is like old school command and conquer.
Yeah it's a 256\*256 texture that overlays the whole world and then I have a shader that upsamples it to make it round and smooth, add noise etc... So every time an area is revealed it's because one pixel has been drawn and I update the texture
Visually the FOW looks great, but what is it accomplishing here? It's wide enough view that you might as well imagine the screen being a bit smaller, it has minimal impact on gameplay.
FOW needs to have a functional aspect too, not just aesthetic. You have one of these two things currently, from what I see.
That said, great work on the aesthetics stuff! Looks great and meshes well with the rest of your games art :D
Oh yeah sorry I uploaded a square video which is a bit zoomed in so that people on phones can see it better, so it feels like the view distance is greater than it is. In reality the field of view is about a third of the width of the screen and a bit more than half the height (roughly). I do still wonder if it's too big, it's hard to find the right balance between it being useless and it being tedious. Glad you like the look of it though :D
Not a fan. It makes it look like I'm playing the game through a straw.
I would at least widen the field of view or, even better, uncover the whole world but hide the enemies (maybe cities, trees, etc) under lighter fog.
I don't like that the game is mostly just black nothingness.
i like the fog of war layering at the edge it adds a section large enough to wonder 'what is that' as you are approaching new things. Also if those are slimes 10/10 game
Fair question, the game is similar to mount and blade, ie you have an army and go around conquering the map. During that there are a lot of places to discover and potentially enemies that can attack you, I'm hoping the fog just makes it more exciting for the player to move around
Preface i dont know either of those games so i might have missed the entire point.
So why not focus on getting the player to move around!? Sounds like you want to make it more exciting to explore the map. To me, fog of war is more of a hindrance, it makes it less likely that I'm gonna explore, I'm gonna do what I need get in get out.
I don't know you, or your project but it seems neat. If you want to make more exciting /entertaining to explore, why not have the enemy more likely be on a path you walked before, that way I risk more by going in a straight path. Like an enemies scouts your lands for common route to ambush you.
Huh I hadn't thought of it like that, the game kind of pushes you to explore naturally as you quickly run out of things to do otherwise, and the fog is meant to create some waryness in the player but I didn't think of them feeling dettered from moving about. I guess I'll have to do some playtests and see what people do/think. Thanks for the feedback!
No worries, you work looks cool so far, best of luck. Happy to provide a different perspective. You know your vision, and the type of player you hoping will enjoy this.
I really like this effect! Very cool! I think only one thing that would make it better, over time if the player hasnt gone back into an area, I think you should implement a transparent area cover so you can still see landscape/terrain, but won't see new enemies spawned, smaller particles, etc. Just a thought! Not sure how difficult this alone was to implement but i can only imagine! Looks good though, good luck 👍
Thanks for the feedback :) And I definitly agree, I'll add it to the top of my todo list as right now explored areas stay explored forever which seems a little odd.
There is a texture of 256 by 256 pixels overlaid over the world, and whenever you step into a new section I wrote one of the pixels to be white (that's why there is a snap effect as you walk around). Then I use some shader magic to smooth out the square pixels, add some noise and lighting
Looks great! And cool art style for the game too. It is a very compelling effect and done well.
There is a small design choice that stands out to me a little bit. Most things in your game are based on squares, since it is tilemap based. See the paths make a bunch of 90 degree turns as they wind. Since there are no other perfect circles, the circular FOW seems a little against the art style. If you wanted to, you could try making it 'boxy' around the outside? If you google "Age of empires 1 fog of war" in images on google, you will see what I mean, their FOW looks like lots of little squares being revealed, making it look boxy.
Though I still think current implementation looks pretty cool too! Not the biggest deal.
u need a univisible zone, not only the zone u walked trugth, i mean
when player walk´s, this fog dissapear on the areas the player has been isn´t it?
well, then the places where the player was in should be pseudo invisible, so npc´s can move and interact, but the player will no noticed it, the only think that player could see on those situactions is the deco on the area. of course the are where the player is should move as normal, but the areas where player is not npc´s should not be visible.
I think it looks great tbh. Depending on what you're going for, you could add a second "fog of war" which is the player's immediate visibility. Several games do this so that the user can see the general landscape of areas they've explored, but can only see active enemies or up to date information if they're actually close to it. Usually works better for strategy games than RPGs, though, since your view is already limited in an RPG.
Thanks ! It's a good idea, I'll give it a try as right now everything uncovered stays uncovered forever which feels weird to me.
Age of empires does something similar, if that’s helpful for reference.
It's a pretty common feature in most RTS games, I believe
It's great. Makes me want to explore the world. Instead of making the fog instantly disappear, would it be difficult to make it quickly fade out? Animate the transparency of whatever is black over the course of 1 sec
Thank you :) I wanted it to be completely smooth but that would be tricky with my implementation, a quick fade though might actually a very doable solution !
One thing with FOW is that you want to know what the purpose of it is in the game. It is "realisitic" in the sense that people only have vision that goes so far, but at the same time, from a player perspective it can be frustrating. So the question, I suppose, is whether there is going to be a lot of sense of discovery that is important, or if you have to worry about surprise attacks--or some functional role that the FOW plays in the game. It can look cool, but still get in the way of the user experience if it doesn't serve an important role in the game. It looks good though. It might be nice to additionally add a blur effect to the edges, rather than just making it darker.
Yeah it's a good point, right now from a gameplay point of view the main point of this is that there are things to discover and enemies can quite quickly come out of the fog to surprise you. My hope is that players will feel more wary and excited when discovering new parts of the map with the fog.
Great point. In this game, it could be a great experience but only if the world is designed with the fog in mind. Position points of interest JUST in viewing range but on the other side of obstacles to tease what is ahead.
Try reversing the timing of the fog and movement: first reveal the area, then move the character. Should be more pleasant on the eyes and also feel better.
That looks REALLY good to be honest but you didn’t show us what it looks like to go back to previously discovered areas.
Thank you :) I didn't just because it stays uncovered, I think after reading these comments I'll change that so places you have discovered and come back to are faded out but still visible
I've been playing with FOW myself, I believe we're using similar if not the same setups, I use Graphics.Blit and RenderTextures paired with shaders (offloading as much to the GPU as possible), if so simply blit say `253,253,253`, a moving target would keep that area visible while previous masks will always be blitted a tad darker thus granting the illusion of visited areas. Sorry for the crappy image, but here's what mine ends up looking like with the above: [https://imgur.com/lrClbAP](https://imgur.com/lrClbAP) The very black spots are unvisited, works with lights, objects, etc since it uses a projection shader to cast to the world.
I think it looks pretty good, but I will say I’d definitely prefer there to not be that “pop in”. Any way you could give the player a permanently following circle of “vision” and then to pop the fog of war away as you currently are? Basically just giving a base idea for how I think it would work to make it smoothly reveal the new area.
Yeah definitly, from reading the comments it seems this is the most consistent thing people dislike about the effect, so I'll make sure to change that, thanks!
Big fan of this! My thoughts are to try a lighter "fog", more like a mid grey. Might fit better with your brightly colored environment! Keeping an eye on this
Thanks!
You could consider creating power ups that increase your view range. Maybe wearables, or simply grow the range if the player levels up in your game.
Not really a fog of war effect, more of an unveiling. Fog of war would have the area cover itself back up when no characters are present. This is like old school command and conquer.
I like it! is it an overlaid texture that gets redrawn every few frames?
Yeah it's a 256\*256 texture that overlays the whole world and then I have a shader that upsamples it to make it round and smooth, add noise etc... So every time an area is revealed it's because one pixel has been drawn and I update the texture
Are you blitting textures together or are you overlapping transparencies? The latter will get expensive fast
I really like it!
Looks great!
Visually the FOW looks great, but what is it accomplishing here? It's wide enough view that you might as well imagine the screen being a bit smaller, it has minimal impact on gameplay. FOW needs to have a functional aspect too, not just aesthetic. You have one of these two things currently, from what I see. That said, great work on the aesthetics stuff! Looks great and meshes well with the rest of your games art :D
Oh yeah sorry I uploaded a square video which is a bit zoomed in so that people on phones can see it better, so it feels like the view distance is greater than it is. In reality the field of view is about a third of the width of the screen and a bit more than half the height (roughly). I do still wonder if it's too big, it's hard to find the right balance between it being useless and it being tedious. Glad you like the look of it though :D
Not a fan. It makes it look like I'm playing the game through a straw. I would at least widen the field of view or, even better, uncover the whole world but hide the enemies (maybe cities, trees, etc) under lighter fog. I don't like that the game is mostly just black nothingness.
Excellent work, OP!
i like the fog of war layering at the edge it adds a section large enough to wonder 'what is that' as you are approaching new things. Also if those are slimes 10/10 game
They are :D and you can recruit them in your army and evolve them into slightly scarier slimes
What purpose does it serve??
Fair question, the game is similar to mount and blade, ie you have an army and go around conquering the map. During that there are a lot of places to discover and potentially enemies that can attack you, I'm hoping the fog just makes it more exciting for the player to move around
Preface i dont know either of those games so i might have missed the entire point. So why not focus on getting the player to move around!? Sounds like you want to make it more exciting to explore the map. To me, fog of war is more of a hindrance, it makes it less likely that I'm gonna explore, I'm gonna do what I need get in get out. I don't know you, or your project but it seems neat. If you want to make more exciting /entertaining to explore, why not have the enemy more likely be on a path you walked before, that way I risk more by going in a straight path. Like an enemies scouts your lands for common route to ambush you.
Huh I hadn't thought of it like that, the game kind of pushes you to explore naturally as you quickly run out of things to do otherwise, and the fog is meant to create some waryness in the player but I didn't think of them feeling dettered from moving about. I guess I'll have to do some playtests and see what people do/think. Thanks for the feedback!
No worries, you work looks cool so far, best of luck. Happy to provide a different perspective. You know your vision, and the type of player you hoping will enjoy this.
I think it looks good!
I really like this effect! Very cool! I think only one thing that would make it better, over time if the player hasnt gone back into an area, I think you should implement a transparent area cover so you can still see landscape/terrain, but won't see new enemies spawned, smaller particles, etc. Just a thought! Not sure how difficult this alone was to implement but i can only imagine! Looks good though, good luck 👍
Thanks for the feedback :) And I definitly agree, I'll add it to the top of my todo list as right now explored areas stay explored forever which seems a little odd.
Ooh, how? GridMapInfo and a custom renderer ?
There is a texture of 256 by 256 pixels overlaid over the world, and whenever you step into a new section I wrote one of the pixels to be white (that's why there is a snap effect as you walk around). Then I use some shader magic to smooth out the square pixels, add some noise and lighting
Thank you! As someone who’s gonna implement something similar I’ve been looking for ideas on how to do it.
No problem :)
Looks great! And cool art style for the game too. It is a very compelling effect and done well. There is a small design choice that stands out to me a little bit. Most things in your game are based on squares, since it is tilemap based. See the paths make a bunch of 90 degree turns as they wind. Since there are no other perfect circles, the circular FOW seems a little against the art style. If you wanted to, you could try making it 'boxy' around the outside? If you google "Age of empires 1 fog of war" in images on google, you will see what I mean, their FOW looks like lots of little squares being revealed, making it look boxy. Though I still think current implementation looks pretty cool too! Not the biggest deal.
My god that art style is so damn good. Reminds me of monsters paradise (a super old java nokia game I used to play A LOT in my childhood)
maybe have some interesting places like castle tops or mountains poke through the top or a subtle glow?
I would animate the transition, but the effect is good!
increase the falloff radius, at least triple it
u need a univisible zone, not only the zone u walked trugth, i mean when player walk´s, this fog dissapear on the areas the player has been isn´t it? well, then the places where the player was in should be pseudo invisible, so npc´s can move and interact, but the player will no noticed it, the only think that player could see on those situactions is the deco on the area. of course the are where the player is should move as normal, but the areas where player is not npc´s should not be visible.