Revision as of 16:41, 28 August 2009

New Visibility System

Basic Visibility

1. Visibility will be defined as the number of pixels away someone with no radar can see you.
2. "visibility" tag will now mean emissive visibility.  The light that emits from a ship or an item on a ship. Almost all items will still use this tag.
3. Engine visibility and visibility from shooting will be emissive.
4. Add a new tag called "reflectivity".  This represents how much sunlight and radar will be reflected by a ship or item.  This will mostly be used on ship hulls.  Some items can also use it, like solar panels.
5. The visibility that comes from sunlight on a ship is equal to (sun visibility * ship reflectivity * 500)/(distance + 500).  In 3d, brightness is proprtional to 1/distance^2, but if you consider a sun to be in 2d and only emit light in a plain, then brightness will be 1/distance.  The *500/+500 will mean at zero distance, the visibiltity is full, at 500, it's 1/2, at 1000, it's 1/3, at 1500, it's 1/4, etc.  This will provide a nice dropoff.
6. Total base visibilty = emmissive visibility + reflected visibility

Cloaking

1. With a cloak, cloaked visibility = total base visibility * cloak reduction

Radar

1. Radar still has detection and vision.
2. Vision instead of being a range will be an optical modifier.
3. You can see something visibly if the distance is less than totalbase visibilty * vision * cloak reduction.
4. Detection is still a range that your radar will detect at.  You can detect a ship if the range is less than or equal to detection * ship reflectivity * cloaking factor.
5. You can also detect a ship if you can see it.