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Showing results for tags 'aesthetics'.
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I remember when I would play some of the IE games like BG/BG2/Fallout and whenever I would be exploring an area that there would always be two kinds of Fog of War. The black opaque kind, and the transparent kind. Now if I was exploring an area to remove the opaque FoW, there would be places that I couldn't go due to my way being blocked or there really being no reason to go there (because that area was only for aesthetics purposes or it was a huge lake - somthing like that). So that area would remain opaque black and I would never be able to see the entire map. Sometimes it might not have much mattered (if there is an endless ocean that reaches to the edges of the area, but at other times, there would be actual parts of a city or dungeon that might not be involved in the action, but were aesthetically pleasing to look at. I know that there were ways to circumvent around this (explore() function or something like that - A lot of mods were made for this, or the clairvoyance spell but that only worked for outdoors maps and so you are still left with dungeons) but then you saw the entire city/dungeon before you had explored it (making you possibly aware of things you shouldn't have been). A big reason I'm buying this game is because I think that the IE games with the isometric views were aesthetically pleasing to look at. But I absolutely abhorred when I couldn't disperse the FoW from an area just because I couldn't walk there. I also didn't like that the whole city would have been explored when I arrived there for the first time (oh wow, I've never been here before but my area map shows everything!). Please Obsidian, do something about this tragedy. I'm not sure if clairvoyance was supposed to never work with indoors maps, but please let me see the entire map somehow. If you have to implement some sort of "synchronize viewpoint" method like they do in Assassin's Creed where once you reach a certain location you can see the entire map, so be it. Just don't let me lose out on the beautiful artwork of your employees. Possible remedies (I don't really like many of them, but they're just ideas): 1- Allow players the opportunity to buy maps from storekeeps for areas that they wish to explore in the future (probably only cities, never dungeons) so as to give a reason why the outdoors in the cities is transparent. Maybe do something similar in dungeons where you can find a map that has explored the area map for you. 2- Make an indoors "clairvoyance-type" spell but with a smaller area of effect. I believe Warcraft III did something like this called "Farsight." I don't care that I have to cast that spell a hundred times - let me see everything (my OCD demands it!). 3- As previously mentioned some sort of synchronize area/ explore()=1 point in the map that allows me to see it. I really hate this idea. Edit: This is what I'm talking about: This is our beloved screencapture. This area has been set as "indoors" for this example. There will be similarly beautiful images in dungeons that will definitely be set as "indoors" for so-called "stealth" purposes and not knowing the dungeon map will be important. This is possibly the locations that our adventurers can walk. And finally, I'm sad to say but this would be what the map would have looked like if I played vanilla BG2. I know nobody wants that. Especially Hector.