Re: Reduced Visibility Table?

[Lincoln Peters <sampln at sbcglobal dot net>]

My two cents follows:

On Mon, 2003-12-01 at 15:42, Hans Ronne wrote:
> >Heh, it's very messy coding to have a unit be there and not there at the
> >same time.
> >AI, UI, plan, and task code should only ever iterate over the stack of
> >images,
> >never over the real units. Action prep sometimes needs to know,
> >sometimes not,
> >which is part of the messiness.
> 
> Actually, this raises a philosophical question. Should a ZOC be ignored
> just because the unit is invisible? I'm not sure. Think about a black hole
> making its presence felt way before it is seen. Or infantry hidden in the
> woods preventing you from moving forward.

That should probably be left to the game designer.  In the case of
infantry hidden in the woods, the units entering the cell would know
that something is out there simply because it would be shooting at
them.  However, in the case of an unseen stealth bomber, it seems
reasonable that no presence should be felt, and only the stealth bomber
(assuming it can see whatever is entering its cell) could initiate
combat.

> 
> A related problem is posed by the user area layer that is used by the
> advanced unit code. You may find that you are unable to use a certain cell
> because another advanced unit is using it, even though the latter unit is
> invisible to you.

You might not be able to see the unit that is using the cell, but
shouldn't you be able to see that the cell is used and act accordingly? 
There would have to be *something* tangible there in order for the other
unit to use the cell.

-- 
Lincoln Peters <sampln@sbcglobal.net>