Camouflage: Function Over Form | Forums

[mechcaster]

Each province isn't a homogeneous environment. Koani has salt flats and mountains, for example. A base might have grass around it, then jungle. Should the camo have the same effect in the grassy area as it does in the jungle? When you start thinking it through, the complexity emerges.

Also, considering there are thousands of clothing combinations possible they'd have to account for that as well. Again, it's something I'd like, but the effort necessary is being underestimated.

If they just did big huge blanket areas like you suggest, the outcome would be terrible and Ubisoft would get blasted.

It really depends on what type of data can be accessed around the player, how quickly it can be accessed, and how often access is required. No flagging may even be required.

Create a map of game textures to clothing and give it a value. They may be able to just check immediate (sphere) textures to determine the total camo value based on the equipped gear. The same might be able to be done with grass and brush placements. This would not have to be done all the time, space out the query to 500ms or even 1 second or longer.

If it is possible to quickly determine local textures a simple key check on the clothing texture map would return 0 or a value. Then add up those values and you have a camo rating for where your guy is currently positioned.

[Flanker1Six]

BIG +1 to the OP and other posters!

[mechcaster]

Hmmm I never thought about doing it on a texture by texture basis. There probably aren't THAT many textures. And it hit me that they wouldn't have to address each individual building...since there are a set of models that are reused repeatedly around the map. I would hope that things like roads and water would already be identifiable in the code so maybe just a blanket "0" for camo effect any time you're on any road or in the water.

My guess is that most of the urban environments would take "urban" into account. The infrastructure areas may already be "zoned" as your guys will make comments when you enter them. (That could be based on proximity to a point, so the zone idea may be moot). The system doesn't need to take every fraction of everything into account. It just needs to function so it feels right in game.

Yeah, I think the roads can already be identified in their system. The game can actively draw paths along roads so that information is available. There may be some areas like roads that are marked/zoned and do not require a texture check.