Lighting and Sky in wargames

[junk2drive]

This was posted elsewhere and got me to thinking about lighting and time of day in wargames.

And onto the debate about real time star positions, I never guessed it was that important.



Stars correct, can this be true! Also isnt that what Shock Force is, a 1980s Soviet equipped force vs a 2008 NATO force? It continues though,



I thought he was joking as well, but, this is the answer....



VITAL - meaning the game cant do without it? This is from Mickey D, the guy who shouts down almost every poster who asks if some feature would affect the game? Its Vital to have the stars in the correct position????

As another poster goes on to point out, a scenario designer can put the times in himself. Also, it may be 1630 and according to the stars it may still be daylight, but how many times has it been almost pitch dark beacause of the weather at 1600? Where I live it gets dark at 1500 in the mid winter, but sometimes its dark at 1400..... Id say weather modelling was more VITAL than the stars in the Sky.

And a final from MickeyD about just how accurate CMN will be, when we see it it will obvioulsy blow our minds



While I agree that it may have an accurate star pattern, it isnt exactly super accurate as a simulation. We have things in the game that werent fielded in 2008, T-90, RAF Typhoon, Marine Grenade launcher (just off the top of my head).

I just hope all of the equipment in CMN is exactly as fielded, maybe thats why its taking so long, maybe they are mapping the Trees to make sure they are all there?

Simulating night battles in games is not easy apparently. PC does not. CMx1 did a decent job of giving you the feeling of night but allowing you to see what you were doing. I didn't play night battles in CM very often unless forced to in an operation. The short sighting distance made it tough. I tried the original CMSF demo but my aging monitor made it too difficult to see the units in that night battle.

PC:O map maker has lighting settings. You can leave it at default, a generic mid afternoon, clear day, some shadow, good amount of light. Or you can base it on the long/lat that you used to make your map, and plug in the date and time and the program will set the sun position and light. You can adjust that for the weather you are depicting.

How important is sun/star position, lighting and weather in a game? Does it add that much to immersion or do you just want to play a game?

 

[Mad Russian]

PCO has a light setting that can be put at any rating. While this is not a true night combat situation it reduces things like LOS. Which is how most wargames show night combat, simply by reducing how far you can see.

Good Hunting.

MR

 

[mOBIUS]

How far does the sun move in 80 seconds?

 

[Palantir]

How important is sun/star position, lighting and weather in a game? Does it add that much to immersion or do you just want to play a game?

Star position: not important at all- if I want to look at stars I'll go outside.
Sun position: only if it will sit on the horizon and get in my guys / enemies eyes actually lowering their chance to see or hit in-game. If not I don't care much. Have it sitting high / low and leave it at that.
Lighting: somewhat, if the game is at dawn/dusk the lighting should be subdued, but it won’t affect anything in-game or my playing so not a big deal.
Weather: important, mud / snow should impact units ability to move in-game so it needs to be in there.

Immersion- not that much as I’ll be looking down on a wide swath of the map of a Btn / company level game not playing at 1:1 level so immersion is not high on my list for this type of game. I don’t think I have ever role-played my of sitting in the driver seat of a Panther in CM, but that’s just me. (Although if you guys spend time adding smell to the game there had better be some dead cattle lying around to make it interesting.)

 

[Mad Russian]

It seems to be the guys that prefer campaigns that are more into the role playing aspect of these games.

I use names of commanders in PCO for a bit more connection to your pixel truppen than just unit numbers. I like it better so I include it.

Once there are more PCO campaigns out we can see how many of us like them. These campaigns will be different than what you've seen in the past.

Good Hunting.

MR

 

[Rickie]

.......Weather: important, mud / snow should impact units ability to move in-game so it needs to be in there.

Both mud (light and heavy, as well as 2 snow levels are in PCO. and all four have different effect on movement and on booging /breakdowns. For this release they are tied to the map, as is the rain or snow 'sky' effect.

.......
...... there had better be some dead cattle lying around to make it interesting.)

well, no smell -- but if you watch some of the maps, you might spot some dead cattle , maybe.

rick

 

[jwb3]

I find that having it be identifiably dawn or dusk in a wargame adds a lot to the mood, before the action starts.

Once the action starts, any atmospherics that don't tie to an actual game effect are just a distraction, or if they aren't distracting, that means I didn't even notice them!

For example, Company of Heroes added lots of options for these things in the later packs. But, after the first couple minutes of my first game with thunder and lightning, I was really pretty tired of it... and it probably was slowing the game down. As far as I can tell, in CoH there is no game engine difference between a night scenario and a high noon scenario, other than the graphics -- so all it really matters for is the campaign scenarios with a story line.


John

 

[Rickie]

I find that having it be identifiably dawn or dusk in a wargame adds a lot to the mood, before the action starts.

Once the action starts, any atmospherics that don't tie to an actual game effect are just a distraction, or if they aren't distracting, that means I didn't even notice them!

For example, Company of Heroes added lots of options for these things in the later packs. But, after the first couple minutes of my first game with thunder and lightning, I was really pretty tired of it... and it probably was slowing the game down. As far as I can tell, in CoH there is no game engine difference between a night scenario and a high noon scenario, other than the graphics -- so all it really matters for is the campaign scenarios with a story line.


John

Most of the current scenario don't incorporate too many weather affects. A few do. there is also an option to turn off weather as it does impact performance. I now that while playing one, though, my wife walked by and commented that it sounded like it was really cold wherever I was fighting (I was playing with a snow mod with some loud wind sounds).

It is very easy to work with the map maker to get lighting just the way you want it, and you can get some nice dawn/dusk effects. with a little playing around.

one nice thing is that even the weather affects are moddable though so hopeuflly we'll see some of those mods after the game is released and been out for a while.

thanks
rick

 

[Mad Russian]

I'm working on a scenario that starts at 4am. The sky is just lightening and it looks really good.

No stars you understand, just the sun rising in the east.

Good Hunting.

MR

 

[GrumpyWargamer]

Hmm rendering a video game as damn near impossible to see anything... me that is, not the sprites on the screen, is like asking me to play ASL in the dark because it's a night scenario.

Sometimes game designers have all the brains of a clever sponge.

Germans speaking German in a movie 'sounds neat' right till you wish you knew what they were actually saying.

Sort of how running a grand strategy wargame in real time will ALWAYS be dumb.

In a game I am playing, if the action is at night, just make it known it is 'night' and make my units unable to detect any further than they should be in the dark.
But I expect the actual view on the monitor to be the equal of playing a board game with the damn lights on.

 

[Mad Russian]

What has always made me wonder is that there is only pitch black night/dusk-dawn/broad daylight.

Night comes in all it's various lighting shades from being able to read a newspaper to pitch black.

I would like at some point to see a game do night correctly.

Where there are flares, burning anything lights things up, shadows hide you, flames reveal you....you know....night combat.

But that would be the very last thing I'd expect to see. All that would seem to me to be code intensive.

Good Hunting.

MR

 

[Rickie]

In a game I am playing, if the action is at night, just make it known it is 'night' and make my units unable to detect any further than they should be in the dark.
But I expect the actual view on the monitor to be the equal of playing a board game with the damn lights on.

In PCO you can adjust how far the units can see independently of the lighting. and vice - versa. just making a PCO map dark won't change how far the units will see. So if someone does create a night map, it's a pretty simple matter to make it light to suit your taste, and not affect the restricted ability of units to sight each other.

Thanks
rick

 

[GrumpyWargamer]

Which is good. It's only important for the sprites to think it's night

 

[jwb3]

Hmm rendering a video game as damn near impossible to see anything... me that is, not the sprites on the screen, is like asking me to play ASL in the dark because it's a night scenario.

Sometimes game designers have all the brains of a clever sponge.

I actually did this deliberately while playing one game. The game was an old FPS called Seal Team, which emphasized realistic stealth and tactics over run-and-gun, and it had wonderfully evocative jungle sound effects (set in 'Nam). So my four-man team would be creeping through the night to sneak up on people, nerves on high alert, and a bird would hoot and startle me out of my skin! Only problem was, with auto-targeting turned on and the night graphics basically being the same as day but with a darker sky color, I could see the enemy soldiers from a metaphorical mile away. Took all the flavor out of it...

So I turned off auto-targeting, and the room lights, and fiddled with the contrast and brightness settings till my monitor was just right -- almost inky blackness, where you really had to stop and observe to see whether that little blob of pale color in motion was a VC hat running through the rice paddy a hundred yards away, or the butterfly animation up close and personal. :smoke:

What has always made me wonder is that there is only pitch black night/dusk-dawn/broad daylight.

Night comes in all it's various lighting shades from being able to read a newspaper to pitch black.

I would like at some point to see a game do night correctly.

Even Advanced Squad Leader doesn't get this right. It has rules for all the flares, flames, shadows, and so on, and playing a night game is a totally different experience from a normal one... but in terms of the various shades between a newspaper-reading night and a can't-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face night, the only game difference is whether your night LOS extends 2 hexes or 7.

Of course, the rules that would be required to cover all the possible gradations would be absurd even by ASL's complex standards.

Likewise, imagine playing a FPS where you're walking through the woods and quite literally can't see where you're going... (In my Seal Team gaming, there wasn't much terrain that blocked movement; the trees were all decorative.)


John

 

[Mad Russian]

With PCO's settings there should be a way to render LOS from both bright as day to pitch black.

Of course that's the easy part of night combat. The flares, fires, shadows, etc would be much harder and more code intensive, and really for not a lot of gain.

I'm satisfied with games that abstract night combat down to the LOS. As long as I can change what the LOS is for different levels of night vision.

Good Hunting.

MR