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Weather topic - all good ideas here

Apos

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Dec 3, 2007
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I checked forum and there are topics less or more related with weather in HoS. I'd like to take them all together and chose best solutions.

1st of all, is it possible to make weather changeable/dynamic? Yes it is.
- we can see sandstorm in Unreal Tournament 3 map
- Haunted (UT3 mod) has dynamically changeable weather/atmosphere
- tech video from UE3

With TWI experience and skills it might be done 100x better...

Anyway Ive read all post from this, this, this topics and i have this conclusion:

Dynamic/changeable weather might be used in HoS in two ways.
1. Randomly generated daytime and weather status on map beginning (no needed extra download map). So battle could start on diffrent conditions. We could have: 6:00, sunny, calm but foggy day, limited sight range; 14:00, cloudy, little wind or 18:00, heavy rain on 1 map. However weather options should be limited by map conditions (during grain silo elevator battle weather was mainly sunny, warm). Also extreme type of weathers (heavy snowstorm, rainstorm) shouldn't be ingame. Its not MW2. I believe officer wouldn't send his man to fight when visibility is 0.

2. Weather may be changing during battle (slighty). I know in 20 minute battle weather doesn't change significant e.g from sunny, +30 C to snowstorm but light foggy sunrise may change into clear beginning of day for example.

How effective it might be. Depending on season of the year. During snowing role of the sniper is limited, tank duels will look diffrent during rain when sight range and perception of small details is diffrent.

And in final word why do we need it?
Weather is natural part of life anytime, everywhere. Weather is highly important factor in war time too. In rainy day fighting troops won't get bombers support...
 
The main thing is a lot of stuff gets pre baked etc. So if you make a rainy map you could probably make it rain at times and be dry at times. And with snow maps you could get a snow storm / fog or whatever.

But you cant really have full dynamic weather and day night cycles out of the box AFAIK. Especially stuff like shadows and light when looking at its best it would be non dynamic.

But it would be nice to see some variations with the weather within a map.
Another thing is that it would be nice to have both summer and winter versions of maps for the campaign mode or whatever.
 
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I also had this idea that every time a map starts it has random time, weather, fog, etc. I never understood why no-one in the industry actually implemented that. It gives one single map so much variation.

P.S. About pre-baking lightmaps and stuff - it could be part of the game installation, or map loading, or a separate option in the game settings.
 
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I also had this idea that every time a map starts it has random time, weather, fog, etc. I never understood why no-one in the industry actually implemented that. It gives one single map so much variation.

P.S. About pre-baking lightmaps and stuff - it could be part of the game installation, or map loading, or a separate option in the game settings.

I've seen it in ArmA 2 only. Usually game started @ 12AM but it can be changed by user/server afair. Also co-op missions were great with day/night mode... Well, we will see. It seems to me that what Zetsumei said:

But it would be nice to see some variations with the weather within a map.

is most likely.
 
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I also had this idea that every time a map starts it has random time, weather, fog, etc. I never understood why no-one in the industry actually implemented that. It gives one single map so much variation.

P.S. About pre-baking lightmaps and stuff - it could be part of the game installation, or map loading, or a separate option in the game settings.

I've seen it a lot in RTS games (CoH & SC2). I really hope to see it in HoS.
 
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P.S. About pre-baking lightmaps and stuff - it could be part of the game installation, or map loading, or a separate option in the game settings.

Compiling a map can take a lot of time, so I don't think that that is a viable option next to that the condition and time would need to be the same on every computer. So although probably something could be done I consider the chance pretty low myself.
 
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