Is the fog a core gameplay element?

[Paratrooper]

no need for senselessly unrealistically complicating things.

I think that Bullet drop is complicated. This would mean that the game would need to make the bullet a physical object, calculate the travel time, and calculate the drop amount.
As for bullet damage drop, it would only need to get the distance from the and plug it into a formula. And besides, damage drop isn't totally unrealistic. It's logical that at a distance, shotgun pellets would be rendered less-than-lethal.

[Gorman]

No, it wouldn't. You can still hitscan on a curve.

Shotgun pellets will hurt if they hit you, consider that to shoot a further distance you will have to aim higher up in the air, which will increase the vertical velocity that it hits with. In short, getting hit with a piece of metal travelling at terminal velocity (at minimum) is going to hurt.

Shotgun damage scaled by number pellets that hit already.

[lehma18]

The fog is there for a reason. Back in the days you could remove the fog by pressing f5, or atleast i think it was f5. Anyway, it wasn't pretty. Chunks of the world were missing. Nobody wants to see that, it looked horrible. Also, people with toaster-computers would have serious performance problems. My old laptop's already lagging a bit, the feature that makes this game special is that it can run on grandma's rig.

[Gorman]

using point cloud techniques for the further away voxels we can easily make infinite fog distance work fine on even your grandmother's rig. Fog could even turn out to be more intensive.

[danhezee]

Just for clarity,

Expanding or removing the fog would increase render distance. I believe been said increasing the render distance wouldnt affect performance that greatly.

[SLoW]

I don't think the fog IS a core gameplay element. I've always thought of the fog as a necessary annoyance. Something I don't really like, but that serves an important purpose. I'd personally like to see fog eliminated, render distance increased, and bullet drop added. I'd at least like to try it, it sounds like an improvement to me.

[GamingFTW]

Bullets not dropping is the reason that you can be shot with a Shotgun at a far range.

[Priok]

yeah, certain maps without fog would probably work better. I can't really think of anything right now, but there are some. but yeah, bullet drop would be nice, and let other things be implemented without stuff being too similar to eachother.

[TheGeekZeke101]

The fog is apart of the game. If it weren't for fog, Ace O' Spades would of "Ace O' Spades -Without Fog"

[TheGrandmaster]

I think it's a very core part of current gameplay. I love the simplicity of how gameplay has always been.
You have to watch yourself as you move, but the shooting mechanic is delightful.

Fog shots require alot of skill, and deter camping in ludicrous spots. The fog is great, the only downside being not seeing buildings "quite so well". I would not be so keen on removing it or extending it too far. Someone's head at fog distance is already small enough.

[danhezee]

With maps with lots of terrain, the fog feels like a skybox, you must likely wont even notice it. However, maps like stadium you learn real quick the disadvantage of the fog. You spawn in the map and you see a goal post and nothing else, you cant see any land marks. So, you cant navigate which also means you can't plan a strategy. You are wondering around the fog hoping you see the enemy first.

[TheGrandmaster]

You have a map.. and a mini-map. If there's nothing there, then surely that's more of a mapper not suiting to the game rather than the game not suiting for a certain map?

[WEEDBOT]

Yes, it is. Bullet drop is a silly idea, too.

[Tai]

If you remove the fog I recommend simulating bullet so that they are affected by gravity. ie you would have to make adjustments to hit targets at great distances.

Oh please God no!

This would make it so much harder to calibrate where you were shooting.

That said, I'm not sure I understand the suggestion of removing fog; isn't that just render distance? I don't see *how* you could remove fog.

[Gorman]

No Tai, render distance is not the same as fog. For instance the engine renders squares (similar to minecraft chunks), not a circle. Besides that, render distance can be increased - I expect that on computers with spare resources most of the map is loaded in to memory anyway (maps are small so it's not a problem do to so).

And as I said, we can simply use point-cloud techniques (since voxels are essentially just large points even at 128 range we could start using these techniques - especially since we have no AA). We could even use such techniques to possibly improve speeds. If we started using octrees (if it doesn't already) then we could simply prune deeper parts of the tree structure at further distances to further increase performance.

So technically speaking, it is very possible to do so without requiring more power.


Also, headshots at 128 range are too easy, I think people can agree on that at least. With bullet drop you would have to adjust, but when you consider that we do have the ability to use custom scopes, people will very quickly just use custom scopes with mildots or other rangefinding techniques (my first scope had a make-shift rangefinder so I could adjust for bullet drop - not that there was any but I was just interested in making one!).