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Weather engine / sliders for mappers (SDK)

Nimsky

Grizzled Veteran
Nov 22, 2005
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Hey,

I don't know if UDK already has this, but it would be nice to see weather sliders in the SDK. This would make it easier for the custom mapper to choose the weather and time of day for his map and might result in more variety for RO2 maps.

What I have in mind is something like the ArmA 2 intel screen (see pic), but more extensive. For example, you'd have a slider for the amount of rain. Pulling the slider a little bit to the right would result in a slight drizzle. The more you pull it to the right, the heavier the rainfall. Then you'd pull the 'Overcast' slider a bit to the right so the map becomes less sunny.

In ArmA you can also set the 'Forecasted weather' which means that the weather can change over the course of a mission. This would be good to have in RO2 as well.

Using the sliders or drop-down menus you could control the:


  • Date, season and time of day
  • Position of the sun* and abundance of sunlight
  • Colour of the lighting (done realistically)
  • Position of the moon*
  • Amount of rain
  • Amount of snow (snow textures for the ground would still have to be used of course)
  • Clouds / overcast
  • Amount of lightning
  • Wind
  • Fog
Etc.

*This probably has more to do with the skybox though.

imAmE.jpg
 
Changeable weather was suggested several times. The problem is timeline of average ArmA 2 and RO round. Battles in RO take about 10 to 20 minutes (except some long custom maps, but its not more than 1-1,5 h), when ArmAs mission take even few or more hours. In 15 minutes weather doesn't change much, however it would be great to have randomly generated starting weather and daytime so server admin could chose how weather conditions are, fixed or random.

UDK allows something like this AFIAK. It can be also scripted effect, so after capturing one objective weather can changed or daytime progress.

edit: whats more. Rain effect looks cool in UE3.0. It would be waste to not use it in RO2.

YouTube - Advanced UDK Rain Tutorial
 
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I personally hope that there is some variation of weather that players can select. But above all as most areas were fight for in different types of the year.

I hope to see a snow and a non snow version of every map where applicable. So in the campaign mode you would have a summer and winter campaign. One where the allies are primarily in defense and one where the axis are primarily in defense.
 
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Changeable weather was suggested several times. The problem is timeline of average ArmA 2 and RO round. Battles in RO take about 10 to 20 minutes (except some long custom maps, but its not more than 1-1,5 h), when ArmAs mission take even few or more hours. In 15 minutes weather doesn't change much, however it would be great to have randomly generated starting weather and daytime so server admin could chose how weather conditions are, fixed or random.

UDK allows something like this AFIAK. It can be also scripted effect, so after capturing one objective weather can changed or daytime progress.

edit: whats more. Rain effect looks cool in UE3.0. It would be waste to not use it in RO2.

There's no "rain system" in UE 3. It's all made with normals emitters, and it requires a lot of effort to make good looking rain like in that vid ;)

Keep in mind that everything that changes lighting conditions is really hard to do since everything is baked (ie non dynamic) lighting.
 
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I like this weather is a big thing in games and this would be great for mappers. It does however bring up the question how will weather even work in RO2.
Will we have rain, wind and so on, if we do will it effect gameplay, wind blowing extra particals around, effecting bullets?

No, it wouldn't affect gameplay and definitely not the bullets. It's more of a visual thing.
 
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Keep in mind that everything that changes lighting conditions is really hard to do since everything is baked (ie non dynamic) lighting.

True. But you could render a the map at different times of the day for a little bit of variation without too much extra work. It would be a LOT less work than doing winter/snow vs. dry maps.

For example, a map could play very differently at early evening or sunset compared to noon. Perhaps the position of the sun could render a sniper's nest that works during noon unusable due to glare.
 
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There's no "rain system" in UE 3. It's all made with normals emitters, and it requires a lot of effort to make good looking rain like in that vid ;)

Keep in mind that everything that changes lighting conditions is really hard to do since everything is baked (ie non dynamic) lighting.

Indeed, we will not see the time of day change ingame, because, as you noted, the lighting is baked in this engine, which means it cannot be changed on the fly, it's pre-rendered and not much of it is dynamic.

And indeed, there is no pre-made weather system build in either, it's an effect the mapper has to make using emitters and the like.

That said though, i'd like to point everyone's attention to an UT3 map called "VCTF-Sandstorm", in this map a blinding sandstorm will come and go durring the match, which really goes to show what can be done with thease effects, if you can make a sandstorm come and go, you can also go from overcast to drizzling rain and back again, or from snow to momentary whiteouts and back to snow, the baked lighting may prevent us from going from sunshine to rain (because the sunny lighting effects would remain, and look stupid), but there are definately more posibillities with this engine than there where with the last one, but it's going to take some skill from the mappers to bring it to life, there's no conveniant slider to enable it.

True. But you could render a the map at different times of the day for a little bit of variation without too much extra work. It would be a LOT less work than doing winter/snow vs. dry maps.

For example, a map could play very differently at early evening or sunset compared to noon. Perhaps the position of the sun could render a sniper's nest that works during noon unusable due to glare.

I have no doubt that mappers will be doing just that, people have been since the dawn of modding, day versions, night versions, summer versions, winter versions, rain/snow versions, name any game that let us map for it, and we've seen it, an why would HoS be an exception? so yeah, it's comming no doubt.
 
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Changeable weather was suggested several times. The problem is timeline of average ArmA 2 and RO round. Battles in RO take about 10 to 20 minutes (except some long custom maps, but its not more than 1-1,5 h), when ArmAs mission take even few or more hours. In 15 minutes weather doesn't change much, however it would be great to have randomly generated starting weather and daytime so server admin could chose how weather conditions are, fixed or random.

UDK allows something like this AFIAK. It can be also scripted effect, so after capturing one objective weather can changed or daytime progress.

edit: whats more. Rain effect looks cool in UE3.0. It would be waste to not use it in RO2.

YouTube - Advanced UDK Rain Tutorial
Wow that kind of rain on a night map would be really immersive.
 
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I'm aware of that there is no such system like in ArmA 2. However there was mentioned Sandstorm map from UT3 game. Also there are some other examples: The Haunted mod for Unreal. Same effect where storm shows on the map. Something like that might be added to game, not necessary sunny -> sandstorm thingy, but light snowstorm could appear on the winter map I think.

What did I mean before, what to create some map schemes with different weather and daytime. So once map could be loaded as winter version, once spring version.

It'd be veery interesting to see some differences in stock maps.
 
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