Yoshiboy said:
there is fog on some levels. I think in the evening or when its misty or possibly when tis raining.
Not in the rain, that's for sure, I've yet to see fog in the game. I've seen rain, but still could see clear as crystal with little streaks on it (the raindrops).
DaLagga said:
A fog effect would be nice in certain cases. Just so long as it was done properly. I hate it when games have it set so that once you get close enough to a unit to see it, it just...pops in out of nowhere.
I'm mostly envisioning a fog effect like the unreal engine uses. Such fog effects have a begin point (where they begin to obscure things, starting normally at 0%) and an end point (where fog obscures 100% and the engine doesn't bother rendering anything past that point). The begin and end points can be adjusted (usually by the Dev, but some game graphics settings let you select fog distance).
The "pop" effect is when they don't bother with the gradual deletion, or set the begin point too close to the end point, so it becomes very hokey looking.
svart said:
Lethandis said:
..., the fog thing, may actually help alot on rainy levels and dawn battles, so in the distance, things become masked and eventually don't render (this would also help camoflage the sprite-3d shifts). As for a clear day or clear night: during the day, you could have a heat-blur effect that still helps camoflage the polygonal LODs, and at night, a "fog" effect can easily become a "darkness" effect, where things become dimmer in the distance, untill all you can see is night.
Good idea with the fog, it's actually amazing that Line of Sight fog actually -improves- FPS rather than decrease it

I have mentioned fog around cavalry in another thread, those things would add a lot of tension to a battle. (i shiver even thinking about night battles)
Yes, I had thought the reverse until I started actually learning how to do such things. The fog is an algorithm that tells it to not render things and replace it with X color. Thus, easier for the comp to draw what's on screen. One really nice thing about the fog effect is, like I mentioned in my last post. It can also be used for gradual darkness, just coloring the fog black instead of grey.
Oh, and I too would love to see cavalry charging through fog. Even just the sort I was referring to would be awesome. Even better though (and this WOULD decrease, rather than increase performance), would be a low bank of fog, about mid-chest height to a horse, so it broke and swirled around them, almost like ephermal water. I have such a scene described in a plot I have written up, and it is just a powerful image to imagine, especially if you have a muffled hoofbeat sound to it too, give the sound some reverb and chorus (so there's lots of horses) and make it deep in tone (so that you can still hear it at low volume, since low tones are felt more than heard). *shiver* I'd probably hit tab and flee, let my troops handle that fight.
Edit: I should specify, the second type of fog was just elaboration, I think it would cost too much performance for the visuals that would be gained (I'm a fan of game-play over appearance any day.)