Night-Day transitions

[Fedorov]

Will there be night-day transitions and/or random time of the day for each map so the illumination, shadows, visibility weather, etc... won't be always the same, making the game appear bigger and less repetitive?

I think it would be a good addition.

 

[LogisticEarth]

Considering most maps take between 20-30 minutes, I'd say this is kind of superfluous.

 

[Fedorov]

Considering most maps take between 20-30 minutes, I'd say this is kind of superfluous.

but what about the random start time or weather?

read the whole thing before replying ffs

 

[Xendance]

Not possible unless TWI decided to use fully dynamic lighting for their game.

 

[Fedorov]

Not possible unless TWI decided to use fully dynamic lighting for their game.

What if the lights could be compiled in the map when loading?

Would it be too unreasonable?

 

[SiC-Disaster]

Well, even in 30 minutes the light conditions can change.
A battle right before dawn or right before sunset where it keeps getting darker and darker or lighter etc.

Anyways, different times of day would be great, just imagine the replay value if you could play a map in broad daylight or in a heavy thunderstorm at night, etc etc.

 

[OneBloodyHero]

Yeah. Different time of the day would be nice (different lighting on the battlefield). Changing night-day transitions I think would not really accommodate this game; battles are short, not long-drawn out engagements. I guess you would see night-day transition if the battle begins at 8:30 pm and goes passed 9:00pm in summer battles or something, then you would see light change. Unless, you want to abstarctly represent changing time (like Fallout 3 or Oblivion), but that would not be very simulation like.

 

[Fedorov]

it could be carried over from round to round, for example: if its a 45 min maps and 3 rounds are played you can have a more than 2 hour transition which is quite noticeable

 

[Mormegil]

It wouldn't have to recompile during loading, just have a night version of the map downloaded.

Though, it's unrealistic, I could imagine a 45-60 minute map like Berezina where you need to hold on until it's dark. So instead of having a somewhat artificial time limit, having a physical one would be great and more immersive.

 

[-[SiN]-bswearer]

disaster briefly hit on the point i was going to make about changing whether conditions. in 15 minutes a storm could role in and start raining, possibly snowing. that would be extremely immersive and pretty darn cool to be fighting and all of a sudden snow starts falling, the sky darkens, and the snow even sticks on the ground. i could support that in the game if it's possible to impliment.

 

[Fedorov]

It wouldn't have to recompile during loading, just have a night version of the map downloaded.

Though, it's unrealistic, I could imagine a 45-60 minute map like Berezina where you need to hold on until it's dark. So instead of having a somewhat artificial time limit, having a physical one would be great and more immersive.

but a night and a day version are very limited options if you could implement a dynamic system like for example Oblivion, with all the possible spectrum with dawn or dusk, night, midday. It the position of the sun and visibility could very well decide the outcome of a battle giving advantage to one side or the other randomly

 

[Nezzer]

Night-Day transitions only in dawn or sundown maps, because RO maps doesn't last for an hour or more like BF2's PR. But I totally agree with the weather transitions, that would really make the game completely immersive. The only MP game I've ever played with weather changes is Company of Heroes(and it's from 2006!!) in some custom maps, and it worked really well!

 

[Nimsky]

Random time of day and weather would be nice, if that is even possible. I think it is. That would probably improve replay value.

 

[OneBloodyHero]

Yeah, weather change would be really cool. Weather can change in minutes, so why not in a game... That would be tight...

 

[Reise]

Well I wouldn't go and say it has to be random.

Maybe a certain map's gimmick could be that it starts out dark, then gets brighter and then transitions to rough weather?

Making it random just complicates the idea.

 

[Fedorov]

For me.. ideally, the battle could happen at a random hour, but with a higher chance of happening at the times that the majority of battles started in RL

For example: if most russians attacks are in midday, the higher the chance for the map (in which russians are attacking) to take place in midday.

As for the weather... there should be some kind of randomizer of different kind of weathers but always basing those chances on the month and of course the actual possible weather types on Stalingrad (you know there is not gonna be a snow storm in summer)

 

[Mormegil]

Heh, if it starts snowing, will there be an advantage to troops that have proper cold weather gear?

That could also be used as sort of a game timer. Say Germans don't have cold weather gear, and can only attack while it's clear. When it starts snowing really hard, the round basically ends. You could even remove any visible timer, so you don't know how long you have to hold for.

 

[Reddata]

. . . different times of day would be great, just imagine the replay value if you could play a map in broad daylight or in a heavy thunderstorm at night, etc etc.

My thoughts exactly! I played S.T.A.L.K.E.R (SoC) twice, and both times were almost completely different because both the weather and time of day were different for each playthrough. I think that's a great idea, albeit a tad unhistorical because while just as many Eastern Front battles were fought in the summer as winter, not all of them lasted long enough to see more than one type of weather.

As far as functionality goes, hardcoding the weather and time of day parameters into the match at the start seems better than trying to make a truly dynamic system with ingame changes.

 

[Mr Milkman]

weather changes would rock, I'd love to play a map in the evening when a heavy electrical storm was raging, lightening lighting up enemy silhouettes in the distance etc