Fog colour and distance

[YesWeCamp]

Believe it or not there are map makers out there that use fog to enhance the visuals/atmosphere of the map, when competitive players disable fog entirely for better sight, it goes against how the author of the map wanted their map played.

That is exactly the reason why i think it shouldnt be locked. Most people on pubs wont even know how to change the fog and its very usefull to disable fog when you play inters/cms on a pc like mine. So in the end most people will play the map with the mapmakers desired fog. When people disable it they may get an advantage, but this advantage is equal to changing your mousespeed or whatever. Next to that fog annoys me mostly because I am usually not confronted with fog at the end of the street (except for the morning). So its also less realistic in my idea. In short: for mappers fog use might be nice for some maps, but for players theyre better off with the system that exists now.

[Mr.Floppy]

Well, even though I think it's just fine the way it is, why not simply add a checkbox to the menu allowing to disable fog, while dis/enabling some kind of script, as told above. This way anyone can deal with the fog as he pleases, even without knowing the actual commands and none even needs to touch the code.

[Bukz]

We can easily make a script that will automatically disable fog on map loads if people choose so, that is not the problem. We need to decide if people should be allowed to tweak default fog values for maps or not.

In my personal opinion mappers should have the option to lock it and prevent tampering with the values if they choose to do so.

[Mr.Floppy]

From a mapper's point of view, I actually agree with you Bukz. Why would I waste another 20 minutes to get the darn fog set up as intended, whilst anyone will switch it off anyways.

Though, as I tried to explain before, fog happens to be a 'perfomance tweak meassure' in first place. Even though, as far as I'm aware, it has little to zero impact on perfomance with default styled AC maps, it remains a typical user setting, in my opinion.

I'm not saying this is my last word on this issue, it's all up for discussion, but I think in this case it's the majority of players to rather care about, then the few mappers who even use fog like that.

[Snoosnoo]

From a mapper's point of view, I actually agree with you Bukz. Why would I waste another 20 minutes to get the darn fog set up as intended, whilst anyone will switch it off anyways.

This is a good point. Setting the fog correctly defines the ambient feel of a map. To have it removed almost instincitvely by players who whenever they connect type /fog 1024 straight away somewhat defeats the point of fog.

[tempest]

You do have a point there. However, would you say the fact that some people use /texreduce -1 defeats the point of texturing?

[Snoosnoo]

Yes. Yes I would. <3

[YesWeCamp]

Its true that it may ruin the atmosphere, but the first and most important thing of the map is the gameplay. If you want to make beautifull stuff with cubes I think MC is more the thing to play. In AC i care in the first place for gameplay, and of course after also for nice maps. If people care more about gameplay i can fully understand that they wont be happy with fog limits. Even if there would be such a thing I think maps with the restriction will be played less then maps without the restriction. I don't think that this is the goal. I, as a (noob)mapper, care about making maps that look nice, but the more important thing is gameplay, because isnt AC made to be a team-FPS, able to run on bad pcs more then to have maps that are incredibly beautifull?

Well, even though I think it's just fine the way it is, why not simply add a checkbox to the menu allowing to disable fog, while dis/enabling some kind of script, as told above. This way anyone can deal with the fog as he pleases, even without knowing the actual commands and none even needs to touch the code.

I find this the best idea so far if there is really a need of change in the way it is at this moment.

From a mapper's point of view, I actually agree with you Bukz. Why would I waste another 20 minutes to get the darn fog set up as intended, whilst anyone will switch it off anyways.

This is a good point. Setting the fog correctly defines the ambient feel of a map. To have it removed almost instincitvely by players who whenever they connect type /fog 1024 straight away somewhat defeats the point of fog.

Mr.Floppy's point also counts for textures as tempest states correctly. That means that the next thing that should be considered is the way textures can be reduced. And also that will be a disadvantage for competitive players that care more about gameplay then about nice looking maps.

I think adding a checkbox in the menu as Mr.Floppy said would be the best since people can decide wether they want to play the looks or if they want to play the competition. Everyone his choice.

[AC Slater]

personally, i think fog values defined by the maker should be locked.

...competitive players that care more about gameplay then about nice looking maps.

it is the desire to create something that affects the maker. of taste and aesthetic. shame it should go to waste, huh?

[Mr.Floppy]

I get your point slater, but actually a mapper never only works for his own pleasure. If he did, he'd never puplish a map.

In fact, the maps are made for puplic usage. Sure, that doesn't mean anyone's got to bend over as far he can in order to please everyone. Though, as mentioned already, I don't see the balance here in case we would restrict everyone for the benefit of a minority.

On a side note. I rather play with a lousy, but stable 50 FPS all graphics setting on "high", than trying to squeeze the last bit out of perfomance and end up with some monotone looking fields of boxes. So I hardly ever thouch a map's fog at all, well except for maps providing incredible far ranges. Even though, as YesWeCamp summed up so nicely, gameplay above aesthetics.

[Snoosnoo]

Well technically fog is gameplay orientated to. I'd much rather see the players having an equal fog value throughout the game, rather than varying. It's not JUST aesthetic, that's the whole point of the thread. :3

[YesWeCamp]

Well technically fog is gameplay orientated to. I'd much rather see the players having an equal fog value throughout the game, rather than varying. It's not JUST aesthetic, that's the whole point of the thread. :3

Then Floppy's idea for making an option in the menu to disable fog seems the best option. But in this thread you have suggested that the point of fog was to add in the first place an ambient feeling to a map.

This is a good point. Setting the fog correctly defines the ambient feel of a map. To have it removed almost instincitvely by players who whenever they connect type /fog 1024 straight away somewhat defeats the point of fog.

But to sum it up, there is the aesthetic argument that I find weak for the fact that AC is a low performance fps.
There is the point that it gives players that remove fog an advantage. This point is true, but in reality there are few maps, and as far as i know not official maps that give really an advantage when fog is removed. And next to that, the people that remove fog play competitively I assume, and they are probably informed about the disabling of fog. In that case you can assume your opponent knows that fog can be disabled. Ok, for those people that don't know, and that play matches a new function where fog can be disabled in the menu would be good. It seems somewhat exaggerated to add such a function in my eyes since most competetive players know about disabling fog.

[Snoosnoo]

Then Floppy's idea for making an option in the menu to disable fog seems the best option. But in this thread you have suggested that the point of fog was to add in the first place an ambient feeling to a map.

I refer to you post one. ;)

[Mr.Floppy]

Well, considering fog being a gameplay feature doesn't make much sense, in my opinion.

If you want to cut down the range of sight at far distances fog really isn't the way to go. In this case smoke would be the element of choice. Have a look at Modern Warefare for example, there's like no smoke fontain placed for artistic matters. It's all about providing cover, just like smoke grenades. Ever heard of fog grenades? Well, ok that was a lame one, but I hope you'll get the point.

Secondly, you can't have such far ranges on AC anyways. At least not as long you're trying to stay within the engine's capabilities. I can't imagine a map, which was so open, that fog would be neccessary to stop people from sniping all across from one spot or stuff like that.

Again, I think I see where you guys are coming from, but fog is, and always was supposed to be a cheap method to save some resources by cutting down the amount of polys rendered. That is. I honestly don't see how it was a reasonable feature to tweak a map's gameplay. There're tons of better functionalities to be used.

However, here's another idea to at least cope with the artistical arguements. What if we didn't touch fog at all and added some kind of 'haze' in order to serve as a pure athmosphere element. Generally working like fog, but being of rather static transparant nature throughout the whole range, or gaining up density only to a certain minimum of transparency. Pretty much like it looks beeing beneath the surface of water for example.

Coders, would that be possible in general?

[Snoosnoo]

* Snoosnoo has suddenly had the urge to make some sort of rain.gif layer for a dark map and take up coding to implement it. >_>