1.20 Question

[Childress]

In the list of 1.20 additions and fixes there's this entry:

Fog of War

* Muzzle flame, smoke and dust from enemy weapons, dust and exhaust from enemy vehicles, and shell casings are displayed only if the enemy unit is currently spotted by at least one of your soldiers.

Does this mean that unseen vehicles in the distance will no longer advertise their advance in dry terrain? If so, this seems to undo one of the realistic (IMO) innovations in CMAK.

[Flanker15]

Allot of people cry foul about that dust aswell, it's way too useful (being able to monitor enemy vehicle movements preciesly from behind a hill for example).

Until computers allow smoke and dust to only be rendered in los, it's probably better this way.

[Redwolf]

Certainly the better option of the two ways to deal with it if you can't do direct LOS to the dust/smoke.

[MeatEtr]

It's kinda like that old saying, "If a trees falls in the woods, does it make a sound if nobody hears it?", or something like that.

Good to hear they took out the dust trails. Sure they're there, but if nobody sees it than the player shouldn't.

[Childress]

But spotting dust plumes was part of the game in N. Africa, for expample. They should be visible, under certain conditions, without spotting the unit(s). I gather the problem in the CM series is that the player can pinpoint them with overly accurate precision due to cpu/gpu limitations.

[BFCElvis]

But spotting dust plumes was part of the game in N. Africa, for expample. They should be visible, under certain conditions, without spotting the unit(s). I gather the problem in the CM series is that the player can pinpoint them with overly accurate precision due to cpu/gpu limitations.

I don't think it is that as much as the player was able to see the dust even if there are no units on the map that would have an LOS to the dust (not the unit...the dust itself). So the result was the player had information that no unit on the made should have...i.e. LOS to the dust.

[Pandur]

They should be visible, under certain conditions

yea they should, but as long as the PCs cant handle the load i find it 1000 times better the way its with 1.20 then it was befor.

i play only WEGO and well even if i tryed to miss the dust/muzzleflashes, i didnt managed to most of the time. 1.20 for teh win

[Battlefront.com]

Yes, the problem is the hardware can't handle spotting to smoke/dust, nor can we draw partial smoke/dust so that the spotting unit can see (say) the top half of the smoke/dust and not the point of origin. A month or so ago we had a really detailed conversation about this. For a long time we sided with the "it looks better to have it in than not" and only recently were we convinced that "it takes away more than it gives back". Definitely good arguments on both sides, just that we now agree removing it is a slightly better option.

Steve

[Thomm]

Better to invest the dust into more persistent explosion clouds ... which you did!

Best regards,

Thomm