Fog of War

One of the most exciting aspects of a game to me is making decisions with limited information. I knew from the start of development that I wanted Mechanized to have fog of war - a screen over parts of the battlefield that aren't in the player's field of vision. It forces players to scout rather than just rush in blindly, and rewards communication and teamwork.

After some searching online I found Catalin's excellent web site, and particularly his code for dynamic lighting. With some minor modifications I had it up and running really quick to my great delight. The lighting code was also good for learning about different ways to manipulate alpha values in textures to achieve different effects.

I fiddled around with different field of vision textures, adjusting the amount of blur at the edge of the field as you can see in my post about the new art style. With the new look, things are bound to change...