Re: Mutilple maps?

[richard honeycutt <richard at usisp dot com>]

On Tuesday 18 June 2002 15:21, you wrote:
> On Tue, 2002-06-18 at 11:54, Stan Shebs wrote:
> > Clouds should have both bottoms and tops of different elevations,
> > at least if you want to do the aircraft thing - you can have
> > fighters attack ground forces if the cloud bottoms are a couple
> > hundred meters up, but high-level bombers are blocked.
>
I don't see how cloud heights or layers have any effect in a strategic game, 
nor any real effect in any tactical game that doesn't require such 
minutae.... an aerial dogfighting game perhaps? This game doesn't seem to be 
well suited for those kinds simulations.

Clouds would be great for affecting line-of-sight and observations; all 
neccessary for actually attacking stuff. Another layer for the fog-of-war. 
Some units should be able to negate it though, FLIR and radar for example.
The idea of it being based of particle systems has merit in that it would 
allow the simulation of smoke on the battlefield ( clouds of smoke from 
firing weapons,cannon in black-powder days to olde naval combat )
Naturally it would be coupled the weather..wind and/or rain.

I haven't studied it yet, but clouds should be at the heart of climate 
simulation. They are pushed about by the wind, impact surface temps and 
are sources of precipatation. The trick is that terrain and temp and wind and 
clouds and rain/snow are all interlinked. In addition to combat models, 
climate has a real effect on economy models (agriculture). I don't know how 
to progam so can someone point me in the right direction for this? Is there a 
way to do this in the GDL ?

>( Actually, my wishlist has unit facing on it as being much more important.)
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