Will there be weather effects?

Doomweaver · Post by **Doomweaver** » 03 Apr 2005, 10:39

we don't need moderators, just a little pop-up message to people who have come to thius site for the first time that says "Warning! Ignore all of Alantai's posts!"

[K.B.] Napalm Cobra · Post by **[K.B.] Napalm Cobra** » 03 Apr 2005, 11:12

TA snow?

Michilus_nimbus · Post by **Michilus_nimbus** » 03 Apr 2005, 17:03

[K.B.] Napalm Cobra wrote:TA snow?

Yes, like in the final CC missions, where you are constantly bombarded with blizzards and hailstones.

BlackLiger · Post by **BlackLiger** » 03 Apr 2005, 19:37

That was just a projectile that was spawned in midair. I suppose it could be made to spawn at the height of the clouds just going down. It might actaully hit aircraft this time and all

AF · Post by AF » 03 Apr 2005, 21:23

Boycott alantai?!??!?!?!?!

Now that is out of the question, you ignore me and I make it my business to make you notice me.

Snow though? Read further up the thread

WillRiker · Post by **WillRiker** » 04 Apr 2005, 00:58

BlackLiger wrote:That was just a projectile that was spawned in midair. I suppose it could be made to spawn at the height of the clouds just going down. It might actaully hit aircraft this time and all

icant remember any snow, to implement snow just use the particle system, but they said there will be no weather effects in the first release

. altai should not be ignored. read his posts they are full of suggestions and cool ideas. he does boast a bit about his post count but as men u should just laugh it off and be manly about it. not run around like little girls wispering/trying to be bitchy or generally behave like little girls.

in short, we have to have weather, leave altai alone, go and beat up a group of skin heads.

AF · Post by AF » 04 Apr 2005, 01:18

hey! some fo those skin heads are cute, tho not the scall ones who spend their tiem tryign to decide whois harder and 'wether that birds fit' nonsense.

Firstly Alantai not Altai, I tried that name and a lot of people said they referred Alantai and I was inclined to agree.

Now quit it with the manly thing, I am quite happy with expression of camp or feminine qualities and will do so if I wish! Afterall did you not try to consider that there may be females on this forum who might be offended by that?

Warlord Zsinj · Post by **Warlord Zsinj** » 04 Apr 2005, 03:12

What about simply overlaying a "snow effect" over the player's screen? Then you apply the snow effects (slowed movement, darker lighting, altered sky) to the game.

It could be an easy way around making weather effects, so that all you need are sprite animations of snow falling, which you overlay on a screen. Of course, the difficult part is making it look like it has depth, and allowing this depth to remain functional with a rotating camera. (have a look at Shogun: Total War weather effects for an example of this)

AF · Post by AF » 04 Apr 2005, 03:29

What about snow building up in the crevices of the units and buildings?

Warlord Zsinj · Post by **Warlord Zsinj** » 04 Apr 2005, 09:51

It may not be necessary. It could be very difficult to implement that even in an advanced snow system (Where the snow [or rain, etc] is rendered in 3D all over the map - a much more complicated system, albeit much better).

A sneaky way around it would be for the program to simply alter the textures of units to reflect being covered in snow (using a simple program like the one used to remove the light/shadow effects from TA for Spring), or make it engine based (such as the method for overlaying shadows on units), so that no previous effort must be made for snow-covered units to appear covered in snow.

[K.B.] Napalm Cobra · Post by **[K.B.] Napalm Cobra** » 04 Apr 2005, 10:07

Refer : Earth2150

Warlord Zsinj · Post by **Warlord Zsinj** » 04 Apr 2005, 15:39

I think the total war series (particularly the earlier titles of Shogun and Medieval) handled weather better than Earth 2150, in a simple yet effective (and CPU-light) method.

(light) fog:

Snow:

Got lazy and couldn't find any pictures of rain...

AF · Post by AF » 04 Apr 2005, 15:47

imo rain doesnt look tht ncie in medieval total war, nice screens though

BlackLiger · Post by **BlackLiger** » 04 Apr 2005, 16:10

Meh. Thats shogun total war. Its good, but a lil too long to build stuff for my liking.

AF · Post by AF » 04 Apr 2005, 16:14

It's turn based, how long it takes to build depends on how much micromanagement you do. I said MTW because I dotn ahve SHTW and MTW is the successor to SHTW.

Considering we'll be fighting on aien worlds we'll need other types fo weather. For example rain on titan should be large balls fo water floating down slowly then exploding on the ground in great big splashes. Not to mention orange + green lighting

Warlord Zsinj · Post by **Warlord Zsinj** » 05 Apr 2005, 02:25

Blackliger, the point is irrelevant, I was just trying to show you how I thought weather effects should be done.

And I agree that alien weather effects should be instituted, but I think that would be a task for a 3rd party person with lots of imagination. Having some bizarro weather effects (suction pools in water, anyone?) could really add atmosphere to alien planets.

For the moment, however, I think only earthly weather effects are necessary.

Dragon45 · Post by **Dragon45** » 05 Apr 2005, 04:54

The dude that said that the TA weather effects were just spawned objects was right.

The weapons on maps in OTA were nothing special; just weapons fired from an invisible enemy, basically. The meteors and asteroids and what not all had (in OTA) easy-definable prperties, and were no different than regular weapon files. Its simple to change the frequency, size, color, damage, WHATEVER of the weapons in OTA, and i dont suspect that it will be any different in Spring, but we'll have to wati for general weather effects to be implemented in the first place.

Warlord Zsinj · Post by **Warlord Zsinj** » 05 Apr 2005, 12:56

I'd rather see weather effects be seperate from weapon particles.
Linking one thing to another often creates issues which results in limiting one or the other.

However, for the case of effects that damage units (meteors, acid rain, etc), perhaps the weapon system would be more appropriate. Can Spring handle several hundred weapons at the one time (for example, a heavy meteor shower, or acid rain)?

[although I think acid rain would be far better done with a simple weather effect ala Shogun, and then an area wide damage to units]

BlackLiger · Post by **BlackLiger** » 05 Apr 2005, 17:35

I agree w zjinski. the TA system seemed a lil sucky to me. Prehaps if you have meteors or such. Otherwise, things like rain, including acid rain (which should have the same damage constants as the acid water) should just be effects, and the damage be an Area thing.

Nb. Meteors technically arn't weather but still

aGorm · Post by **aGorm** » 05 Apr 2005, 21:59

Snow and rain and everything would look better if it was'nt just an overlay on the screen. It just doesnt have depth otherwise. However, just using the particle system should be fine. remember it doesn't need to reneder snow fallin on the whole map once you look away it can just pretend snow aint there. It should not be to intensive i would have thought, even on only a moderate machine. Slower ones will just have to have less draw distence on the snow.

As for snow building up i would have thought there would be an easy and realativey efective way round this. I would have thought that spring can detct the base plate of a building? So then it should be able to draw a polygon under the base plate thats some much bigger than the actul plate, and extrapolat it to a pyrimid with the top loped of. then as it snows this just rises up through the building, and give the impression of snow building round the edges. Belive me it sound crazy and naff but i bet that would work. (after all, in most FPS's piles of snow in the corner of rooms are made in roughly the same way...)

aGorm

Spring RTS Engine

Will there be weather effects?