Rain, Fog and Excessive Lighting(!?!)

[drah]

I'll probably get slapped for this as both points may already have been covered.

I've noticed with the latest version that terrain closer to the player seems brighter. (I'm assuming this was done mostly for helping visibility at night-time and I like this effect at night-time) ... the only thing is... during daytime this seems to make close-terrain excessively bright... with the terrain turning bright-yellow... almost white in some places, during the middle of the day.

Also... I wanted to ask if anyone knew the problems with rain/fog and why they're not used more frequently.

(I heard there were some problems but wasn't sure what they were or if there were any plans to use them more frequently in future!?)

I'm only asking because I think they really help add mood and variety to the world.  In the last 6-7 months I've seen rain once and fog once... and I'd loved to have seen them more.

[Janner]

this was posted on IRC , might help you if windows.

Talad   www.planeshift.it/download/PS0.3.017_terrain_patch.zip
Talad   this fixes the terrains on windows

[Idoru]

I honestly think that the rain and fog effects are pretty dam amazing, I cant say I noticed the lighting problem. IMO I think it should be much darker at night than it currently is. Although im not sure if the engine supports individual light sources like lamps and torches. and it would obviously give the Kran Infra-vision a reason to be impemented.

The only issue with the weather effects ive noticed is I find it almost impossible to take a screen shot using the /screenshot feature with nogui and lossless options

[ThomPhoenix]

Weather in itself works fine as far as I know, but I heard that Laanx has some kind of auto-weather function that is very unstable.
I don't know that for sure though.

Although im not sure if the engine supports individual light sources like lamps and torches.

The engine does support it.

[Nikodemus]

Weather in itself works fine as far as I know.

It doesn't work fine, because i can't see eg. fog at all. So many games have fog and in PS it has been made in way too modern way. Most likely supported only by relatively recent graphics cards. Why can't it be made the way all graphics cards support it?

And nobody realy knows if its the case.

[Idoru]

Why can't it be made the way all graphics cards support it?

It worked on my FX5900, 6100 and my new 7900. (the FX5900 is over 3 years old)

If you make that argument for weather effects you could easily extend that to why wont you make the game so it works on my Cyrix 266, or my 486DX2. A little extreme with my examples but its hard to make something that works perfectly for everyone.

[Xordan]

There's already a plugin to have a proper water effect, but there's no support for old graphics cards so it's not in CS, and we're not using it. So we do try and keep compatibility with ancient cards,

[Seytra]

There's already a plugin to have a proper water effect, but there's no support for old graphics cards so it's not in CS, and we're not using it. So we do try and keep compatibility with ancient cards,

And here was hoping that there'd be reflective surfaces, flowing water and splash / movement effects some day. I must say that with this sort of "not strictly necessary" things compatibility should be a bit relaxed. After all, adaptive distance is very similar to simply not displaying advanced effects on older hardware, just like in other games the options for disabling shadows, using low res models and such.

[Karyuu]

Whenever you guys saw rain/fog before this update, it was all GM-caused. Last time I tried with this release, I got a client crash with rain, so I'm wary :]

[Parallo]

I saw rain for the first time yesterday. It was the coolest thing I've ever seen IG!

[zanzibar]

Weather effects are awesome, but they need to be manually turned on and off by a high ranking GM so it's a more or less rare treat.

I've noticed the brightness effect as well, but only on my LCD monitor.  My other one is darker so I actually like the extra brightness.

[Nikodemus]

I've noticed the brightness effect as well, but only on my LCD monitor.  My other one is darker so I actually like the extra brightness.

It is not just increased brightness its a whole new texture which appears everywhere. So, if far away you saw grass and you walk closer, you don't see it anymore^^
A bug and so the lightness.

btw. Hydlaa is full of objects which aren't affected by light, or something. Like the Laanx statue is always same as bright and road in some places completly black. There are many more lightness bugs in the new .017 release, than there was before.

[zanzibar]

What we need is a way to have a dark sky and yet keep the ground and objects at least somewhat lit.  I guess it's difficult to have different lighting levels for the ground and for the roof.

[Nikodemus]

i believe it is done by setting base lightness for an object and for different objects it may be different, and then adding lights.
Its how it is done in severs, or DR for example. And by the way it is why when you walk you see objects with very different lightness. Because someone broke something in the map or it broke by itself loll x)

[drah]

Shame about rain effects causing probs... because it REALLY adds atmosphere... judging on the posts so far.. I guess I'm not alone in thinking that.

But of course.. there's always the CS engine... is there no way to have "graceful degradation" in the CS engine?? (I know.. I should probably ask this of the CS team not the PS team!!) ... so that decent graphics cards get the funky effects.. and the weaker cards still get supported.

(yeah.. i know.. i probably wish for too much, heh!!)

Either way... I'm still grateful too see those effects on the rare occasions they do appear.