Weather in AC

[Hellspell]

I have had this idea that in a future update, if the engine allows it, for there to be weather in ac. By this I mean maps could be made so that there is precipitation on them. I think it would add atmosphere to the game and make it visually more interesting.

[Mael]

I made some rain and snow mapmodels but never finished them. Coded weather is on my modding to-do list.

Belongs in Ideas thread.

[MykeGregory]

Good idea. of course there should be an option to turn it on and off.

[Cemer]

Agree. It would be interesting. It would be more realistic, also lightning smiting players would be hilarious.

[Nightmare]

Would be amazing.
But should change up depending on graphical settings to make sure it doesn't kill FPS. :)
ie. less pretty on low. like water is now.

[Hellspell]

also lightning smiting players would be hilarious.

or maybe even random flash floods where you have to get to high ground or get swept away :P

also i dont think it would waste much fps, a white dot for snow or a short line for the rain i think would suffice
but an option to turn off the weather could do no harm

[Cemer]

also lightning smiting players would be hilarious.

or maybe even random flash floods where you have to get to high ground or get swept away :P

Those criteria should be defined by the map's creator, cuz a flash flood in ac_douze (even desert) would cause some fury.

[macm]

I like the idea, rain and snow sounds great.

and btw i mentioned before: changing the skymap in order to make the day/night ilusion, loading diferent skymaps along the match (i.e. sunrise, sunset, full moon...)

I also made a script for this but i lost it ;(

[Mael]

also i dont think it would waste much fps, a white dot for snow or a short line for the rain i think would suffice
but an option to turn off the weather could do no harm

Dots/lines in the form of GL_POINTS and GL_LINES respectively will not work well. Neither has the ability to portray depth; a snowflake or raindrop made with a point or line will appear the same whether it is a centimeter from your face or a kilometer away.

You can use blend functions to alter the width of lines and size of points, but you'd need to calculate distances to cube surfaces and flip back and forth between varying specifications to properly simulate depth. And even then it'd be a shoddy effect. Line widths and point sizes are altered with the same function and are only available in pixel dimensions; snowflakes will either appear too small or too large and they will be square.

If that were a desirable trait the rendering process would indeed be very fast however the generation of depth information necessary to alter the width of lines and points would likely kill it.

[Hellspell]

I understood enough of that to know that you think lines and points won't work, but even if that doesn't I imagine surely there'll be other ways to simulate precipitation?

Those criteria should be defined by the map's creator, cuz a flash flood in ac_douze (even desert) would cause some fury.

Yeah, being spawned in the middle is bad enough but being hit by a flash flood at that very instant would result in
as well as a lot of laughter for the people who've spawned above ground

I like the idea, rain and snow sounds great.

and btw i mentioned before: changing the skymap in order to make the day/night ilusion, loading diferent skymaps along the match (i.e. sunrise, sunset, full moon...)

I also made a script for this but i lost it ;(

that sounds a great idea as well, i could imagine using something like your idea for the skymap to get cloudy and then it raining

[Nightmare]

Always thought ac_snow could use some real snow.

[Viper]

That sounds about right. :D

Mael, how much of a toll would adding this "weather" take on the player's computer?

[Mael]

Line and points are very light. My pos 6150 LE has no problem drawing a few thousand lines to the screen at 60+fps. Points are even less expensive. As to exactly how it will affect one computer I can't say. I would guess the toll would be extremely slight.

Mapmodels are another story. I've tested multiple rain mapmodels and they usually ate 4-5fps, though they were not animated at the time. It's not the sort of thing you would plaster a map with; I intended it for sparse usage.

Edit: "few thousand lines" not "few hundred thousand".

[Ronald_Reagan]

I thought about backporting some of sauer particles. Most of the particle engine is already in AC, why not work with that?

[Cemer]

I think someone should rename this to "Weather in AC" or something along these lines so it does not get bumped to the Idea thread.

Sorry Mael :D

[Hellspell]

I think someone should rename this to "Weather in AC" or something along these lines so it does not get bumped to the Idea thread.

Sorry Mael :D

Done :)

[vern]

I just don't see it. The engine already is straining to play the majority of the maps out there, adding more to render, will just result in epic lag, even for ac_desert3. I can see the wqd and the evt going through the roof. Adding more mapmodels, textures etc, will be things the engine can handle. Weather is just not one of them.

[V-Man]

[SELECT ALL] Code:

alias lightning [
sloop lgt (+ (rnd 5) (rnd 2)) (+ (* (rnd 5) 100) 10) [
  lightscale 1
  recalc
  sleep (+ (rnd 200) 5) [
   lightscale 15
   recalc]]]

recursive Lstorm [(+ (* (rnd 10) 1000) 3000)] lightning

I have a more fleshed-out version that uses fogcolour and fog, as well as a thunder sound.

http://www.youtube.com/user/VManAC#p/a/u/2/yRV1eNBc3LU

Edit: Minor edit; replaced the video link with a link to your Youtube account.

[Cemer]

http://www.youtube.com/user/VManAC#p/a/u/2/yRV1eNBc3LU

*Replays over and over*

Edit: Should go in Quotes

Mael's Edit: Same edit as above.

Edit:Lol thanks for pm'ing me. I get it. :D

[Mael]

I just don't see it. The engine already is straining to play the majority of the maps out there, adding more to render, will just result in epic lag, even for ac_desert3. I can see the wqd and the evt going through the roof. Adding more mapmodels, textures etc, will be things the engine can handle. Weather is just not one of them.

Mapmodels are the only practical way to do accurate weather. And mapmodels that must be read, textured, and animated take much longer to render than the points and lines in the method I described above.

Weather is definitely feasible if it is done correctly. The mapmodels I experimented with had less of an impact on fps than a single barrel but nobody is afraid to put clusters of barrels all over the map.

The way I intended for my models to be used was as sparse decoration in places that made sense and added depth to a map, not the way most people just drop barrels and palettes everywhere.

[tempest]

The engine already is straining to play the majority of the maps out there

Really? Oh, you mean @camper maps? True story.

Mapmodels are the only practical way to do accurate weather.

Eh, no? Usually, particles are used for that purpose.

[Mael]

Aside from particles yesssssss

Edit: Now I remember why I gave up on this Mac. Here comes the "Pr" >> %Pr

[gkaonicx72]

What if, THE SKYMAP CHANGES?

[Huntsman]

I'm sorry but it's cloudy with a chance of meatballs...

[Cemer]

I'm sorry but it's cloudy with a chance of meatballs...

Great book. Terrible movie.

So would these models for precipitation be physical (block-like) or graphical (space-like)?

[Lantry]

couldn't you create a rain/snow effect pretty easily just drawing an animation over the screen (under the hud, w/e). Although, that would look funny unless they somehow changed direction as you changed the angle at which you are looking (when you look straight forward, the drops are traveling perpendicular to the screen, when you look up they are traveling straight toward the screen, not to mention every angle in between) and I have no clue how you would do that. although this wouldn't work very well, if at all, for standing under shelter and looking out at the rain. IDK, just throwing ideas out there.

[asthenia]

Feel free to stop me any time (I haven't even done so much as take a peek at AC's source code), but from what I know about AC's engine and general game design, it seems completely feasible for AC to support weather effects. The engine already has a working particle system (i.e. blood, sniper trails, bullet impact sparks, etc) and to add another system that uses a map.cfg-defined sprite doesn't sound too far-fetched.

One low-overhead way to simulate weather is to simply have a bounding-box around the player that generates the particles. With that method you're not wasting precious CPU rendering particles you'll never see that are on the other side of the map. The size of the bounding-box and the overall volume of weather particles would have to be a player-defined option (as well as the option to turn off weather completely), because it's pretty obvious what would happen if it was up to the map creators to determine the size, volume, and area of the weather particle systems.

One caveat of this method is that you'd still see the weather effects around you while you're indoors. There's a lot of solutions to that problem, ranging from total CPU-hogs to monstrous amounts of coding for a simple effect we didn't even notice we needed up 'till a couple days ago. :P

All that being said, I'm all for a weather system in AC. If an efficient, low-CPU method could be written, sounds like a great idea to me.

[vern]

Tell me the engine doesn't strain on ac_shine? Or ac_werk? I guess it doesn't cause some know it all said so.

I DON'T CARE!!!
^^^^^^^^ Read carefully!!!

[Fate]

As long as this can run on pre-historic hardware I'm fine.

[Andrez]

As long as this can run on pre-historic hardware I'm fine.

Same here. It would be nice to see some snow in ac_arctic :D