Mapping Idea

Crazy_Monkey

<div class="IPBDescription">one that I would love to see used...</div> Okay, I've been trying for over a week now, and I'm not a newb to mapping. But I cannot find a feasable way to add day/night cycle to a map. I had a working one, but it was based in one single room, and the lights were already at 23% of the maxed limit. (at least that's what hlrad -chart said). I know I could optimize it further, probably down to 15% or so (need to try), but still, to do that on a general map level, in a majority of the map, it would be impossible to stay under the max.

I guess I could just make a map that doesn't work in software mode. I never thought about that....hmmm...

Revenant

dunno what day and night has to do with most ns maps, but if u do i jsut suggest releasing two different maps, one with day other with night

Crazy_Monkey

Okay....picture this then....

ns_spacestation (what I am working on)

Rotating in its orbit around some star. The orbit would not be shown. But every 5 min or so, the lighting changes to "night" as the station rotates, basically the star is no longer influencing lighting in the vessel in the "night" portion. Picture the changes in tactics. Picture the cool light effects.

That was my thought. Not only does it apply to the situation of a spacestation, but it changes tactics during the game for a major cool factor. Heck, aliens might actually USE enhanced sight for once. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->

Anyhow, that's my original idea of the year. Now my creative brain can go atrophy.

DanDaMan

well you can't actually animate the sky file or anything. Don't even think you can trigger a different sky without spirit. So you'd never be able to see the sky.

Crazy_Monkey

I relation to my proposed situation. It would be the stary sky box. Stars on black background. Use a rotating sprite/texture to simulate the star that passes by every rotation, and gives light when it is in view.

This is all in space, so alot easier to do. I'm not asking if it can be done, I've already done it. It's just that to my ability it is beyond the half-life engine (in SW mode), to do it. Perhaps I'll make 2 versions, normal, and day-night rotational.

Remember, when I say "day-night" I'm talking about light/dark rotation as the spacestation rotates in space and the nearest stars light shines in whatever windows are present. This is not a global thing, it would have to be done per window/room. So, it's feasable, but not with software limitations, not to mention the single room took 2 1/2 minutes to compile on my 2ghz beauty. That's untextured.....just lights and simple entities that made the cycle work.

DanDaMan

well also consider the size of the wc grid. To actually have a sprite for your star it couldn't ever be more than about 200m away if you wanted to actually map it because thatis the limit of the map size. At 200m everyone in the map would be quite crispy.

Greedo

Yah, but Dan, if you just make the sprite smaller, it makes it look like it could be farther away. OP4 did this in the opening sequence with the apache helicopters, using smaller ones to make them look further away.

Liku

Couldn't you time the lights? Like how the door is timed in NS_Siege

Ollj

pitchblaaack.
nice idea.
yes you can, but it badly affects server traffic.

Crazy_Monkey

--I already simulated the far off star, just a sprite on a func_rotate

--Yeah, the lights were on a multi-manager that was timed correctly, that then hit another, back and forth, infinited timed loop of lights.

The only problem, as I said before, is that it tells me that it's already at 23% of the max lighting. I guess because the lights are dynamic? I dunno.

Whatever, I'm just posing the idea to the public to be used because I couldn't, in secret, find a feasable way to implement it, but I want to see some maps with variable lighting! <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->

Ollj

right. dynamic lights eat much more RAD-memory.
Maybe I will do a rotating space station with such an environment.