Representing beyond visual range combat in videogames

[Sarevok]

Suppose you were making a game about say... Bolo tanks or maybe a somewhat realistically ranged space sim. Your primary goal is fun. However you must maintain realistic weapons ranges. How would you represent the game visually ?

This is to me the one great unsolved problem in game development. A Bolo tank would be absolute thrill to control in a sandbox enviroment. But its weapons have immense ranges. You will never see the distant targets the weapons are targeting.

Then there is the time problem when you are fighting very distant targets. In a space sim combat maneuvers while engaging a ship several million kilometers away could take days to perform. Weapon fire would be exchanged only for a few seconds then followed by hours or days between next attack pass.


How do you make such a game fun to play ?

[Stark]

Is this one of those 'unsolved problems' that were solved before you were born? Flight sims have always used camera settings and radar displays, and this continues right up to Silent Hunter and Hawx.

Space combat is certainly best represented geometrically, since you're possibly firing with massive lead angles and on hazy targeting information... Just like in Harpoon.

You don't even need to see explosions for something to be 'fun', although I don't really see the appear of driving an invincible tank around - it's lame and boring enough in Saints 2. Hell, a Bolo game that is comically forced-perspective like Civ World Domination would be awesome; drive your megatank around the onscreen sphere blowing shit up on all sides with mega weapons while anime generals pop up telling you OH NOEZ MY BROTHER etc.

[Srelex]

Advance Wars as a series has sort of done this by simply having combat animations with the attacker and the target in seperate frames.

[Commander 598]

You are Admiral Ernst von Eisenach, for the next XX hours you will play a finger snapping mini game to give various orders, mostly for beverages, as thousands of visible particle beams stab into the void before you and your fleet enacts the initial orders you gave out in the first five minutes.

[RedImperator]

Isn't this game called DEFCON? You move units around on a big NORAD video board, slow down time to make decisions, and then speed it up again to watch the results. A space combat sim would be the same thing in three dimensions. You could make the simulation as in-depth as you want--inertia, fuel, and gravity mechanics would be more or less realistic depending on how difficult you want the game to be (maybe a sliding scale, where the more difficult the setting, the more realistic the mechanics).

Honestly, a realistic space combat sim would be pretty boring on the tactical level. It's not like air-to-air dogfights or surface naval battles where there are many important decisions to be made in the battle itself. Numbers, positions, inertia, delta-V and unit composition at the point of contact are going to be far more important than any individual initiative, and those will all be decided long before anyone gets in firing range. Realistic space combat is more like a chess match between masters, where decisions made twenty moves prior dictate the outcome of "battles" between individual pieces.

A strategic simulation, on the other hand, could be a very interesting game, but nearly all of it would involve trying to gain a better position than the other guy, rather than actual pew-pew. By the time the pew-pew happens, the result would more often than not be a foregone conclusion. Again, rather like a chess match between masters.

[Nephtys]

Supreme Commander's UI did a good job representing extreme range combat. Most vehicles could fire well beyond multiple screens, so zooming out with the scalable zoom until you see little icons representing 'Ground Unit', 'AA Vehicle' and such exchanging little yellow dots (with big dots with trails representing large missiles) worked well. And even though you didn't see a giant explosion, watching a yellow dot enter a zone of red diamonds, then watching a giant circle of red diamonds blink out is effective in telling you what is going on.

[The_Saint]

LO:MAC and most space combat sims (B5: I found her, Homeworld, most of the X-wing/Tie Fighter games) feature missile combat at such range that the target is not always definable to the naked eye.

[RedImperator]

LO:MAC and most space combat sims (B5: I found her, Homeworld, most of the X-wing/Tie Fighter games) feature missile combat at such range that the target is not always definable to the naked eye.

Are you sure about that? I don't remember shooting missiles at anything in Tie Fighter that I couldn't at least see with the naked eye. I don't even see how that would work, since you had to hold a target in your reticule to get a missile lock.

The target is an ill-defined dot =/= beyond visual range.

[Aaron]

Is this one of those 'unsolved problems' that were solved before you were born? Flight sims have always used camera settings and radar displays, and this continues right up to Silent Hunter and Hawx.

Space combat is certainly best represented geometrically, since you're possibly firing with massive lead angles and on hazy targeting information... Just like in Harpoon.

You don't even need to see explosions for something to be 'fun', although I don't really see the appear of driving an invincible tank around - it's lame and boring enough in Saints 2. Hell, a Bolo game that is comically forced-perspective like Civ World Domination would be awesome; drive your megatank around the onscreen sphere blowing shit up on all sides with mega weapons while anime generals pop up telling you OH NOEZ MY BROTHER etc.

Pretty much. Remember all those MicroProse flight sims? BVR combat was represented with HUDs, radar displays, missile alarms, etc.

[Steel]

Are you sure about that? I don't remember shooting missiles at anything in Tie Fighter that I couldn't at least see with the naked eye. I don't even see how that would work, since you had to hold a target in your reticule to get a missile lock.

The target is an ill-defined dot =/= beyond visual range.

In tie fighter missiles had a range of ~2.5km for lock on. At that distance a target wasnt even 1 pixel (especially in glorious 640x480 res) and is invisible. You had to be targeting to get a lock however, so your target was always placed in a bracket of fixed size which is what you aimed at.

In games like Space Rangers, you're actually firing laser beams over multiple AU ranges, but because the ships are drawn oversize its possible to see and click on stuff.

[Psychic_Sandwich]

You are Admiral Ernst von Eisenach, for the next XX hours you will play a finger snapping mini game to give various orders, mostly for beverages, as thousands of visible particle beams stab into the void before you and your fleet enacts the initial orders you gave out in the first five minutes.

The whole thing will, of course, be set to Dvorak's New World Symphony.

[RedImperator]

Are you sure about that? I don't remember shooting missiles at anything in Tie Fighter that I couldn't at least see with the naked eye. I don't even see how that would work, since you had to hold a target in your reticule to get a missile lock.

The target is an ill-defined dot =/= beyond visual range.

In tie fighter missiles had a range of ~2.5km for lock on. At that distance a target wasnt even 1 pixel (especially in glorious 640x480 res) and is invisible. You had to be targeting to get a lock however, so your target was always placed in a bracket of fixed size which is what you aimed at.

In games like Space Rangers, you're actually firing laser beams over multiple AU ranges, but because the ships are drawn oversize its possible to see and click on stuff.

I don't remember that at all, though that could well be because I preferred to do most of my fighting close enough to reach through the cockpit window and punch the other pilot.

[Commander 598]

You are Admiral Ernst von Eisenach, for the next XX hours you will play a finger snapping mini game to give various orders, mostly for beverages, as thousands of visible particle beams stab into the void before you and your fleet enacts the initial orders you gave out in the first five minutes.

The whole thing will, of course, be set to Dvorak's New World Symphony.

Most definitely.

[Vympel]

You are Admiral Ernst von Eisenach, for the next XX hours you will play a finger snapping mini game to give various orders, mostly for beverages, as thousands of visible particle beams stab into the void before you and your fleet enacts the initial orders you gave out in the first five minutes.

Checkmate.



(don't forget the thumb movements and have waves. Very important)

And thank you for pointing out it was Dvorak, that was driving me crazy. I've been watching Episode 15 every week to get my fix of that

(what composer is it when the Amlitzer Encounter starts proper, above the sun?)

[The_Saint]

Are you sure about that? I don't remember shooting missiles at anything in Tie Fighter that I couldn't at least see with the naked eye. I don't even see how that would work, since you had to hold a target in your reticule to get a missile lock.

The target is an ill-defined dot =/= beyond visual range.

In tie fighter missiles had a range of ~2.5km for lock on. At that distance a target wasnt even 1 pixel (especially in glorious 640x480 res) and is invisible. You had to be targeting to get a lock however, so your target was always placed in a bracket of fixed size which is what you aimed at.

In games like Space Rangers, you're actually firing laser beams over multiple AU ranges, but because the ships are drawn oversize its possible to see and click on stuff.

I don't remember that at all, though that could well be because I preferred to do most of my fighting close enough to reach through the cockpit window and punch the other pilot.

Close in laser work, snap shooting & dog fighting whilst enjoyable do not always serve when fighting more numerous foes. Depending on scenario / multiplayer, one or more missile hits at extreme range breaks up enemy formations, increases odds etc before closing with the enemy... funnily enough just about the same reason modern aircraft engage in bvr combat.