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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Weather Effect


ATeX

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Well, the title actually says it all. What about weather effects in the game? I suddenly came up with the idea while reading the posts in the environmental models topic. I think that like fighting in the middle of a heavy storm or in the middle of some heavy fog or so, that would definitely improve the scaryness! Especially with good sound effects, well balanced gameplay and a creepy background music.

 

 

Also, would it be possible to have the clouds moving in the geoscape? Like they look in the concept art at the website of xenocide. That would definitely be amazing!!! Like a weather generator!!! :D Especially when the battlescape accords with the geoscape!!!

 

"Man Down Man Down ....... ksssssssssst.... heavy distortion on the channel......kshhhhhhhhht............I can't see a thing with that damn aaaaaaaargh"

 

Or even like, when the aircraft has to land, but due to the weather it has to do a emergency landing and it gets damaged so that backup has to be called, things like that ;) :D

 

Man! This would be awesome!!!

Edited by ATeX
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you COULD also do some cheap effect with a raining screen in front of the battlescape, so it looks like its raining, just like old SNES games (eg. in the first of Breath of Fire 2).
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Computers have come so far, it'd be much better to do it in the battlescape. Having little puddles with raindrops falling in them... that'd be awesome.

if each little raindrop needs to be a sprite (or even a model), don't you think it would lag just a bit?

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No, that's not quite what I meant, what I meant to say is that everything from the geoscape accords perfectly with the battlescape, as well the terraforming and climate as the weather ;)

 

volumetric fog etc, sprites as rain (very small and low detailed but a lot of them) same for snow, mirror effects with water :D

 

U're not going to tell me that a GeForce or Radeon card can't draw that -_-

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U're not going to tell me that a GeForce or Radeon card can't draw that  -_-

I'm not. But GeForce or Radeon card CAN'T tdraw that

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if each little raindrop needs to be a sprite (or even a model), don't you think it would lag just a bit?

I've played games that have thousands and thousands of sprites. They're based on the Doom II engine, and one that I remember did liquid effects with little invincibility balls. I got a really good framerate, too, with my G2MX220.

 

I've also seen the effect in Coastal Heroes, a helicopter game, and MS Flight Simulator. so it can be done, without giving any noticible lag.

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I'm sure we will be adding weather effects in once we have v1 up and running, but the priority is to have the game working well first, then we'll add weather.

 

You're not the only one that thinks a night terror mission in a heavy storm or fog would totally :rock:

 

As for worldview weather effects, it'd be dead easy to add in but they'd look pants, so again once we have it all working then we'll add in the eye candy.

 

Thunderstorms over Africa anyone?

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Thunderstorms over Africa anyone?

 

On average, there are two bolts of lightning every second. And there are alot of storms at the Cape of Good Hope (at the southern tip of africa or South America.)

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I don't know about complexity being an issue. IIRC Baldur's Gate ahd a very simple rain effect, which worked well. The problem with rain effects in games taht are complicate is that low end machines slow right down (i'm thinking of GTA3 for example).

 

 

EDIT: I agree this should go in the lab section though

Edited by MagicAndy
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Stuff like rain is handled by particle engines, video cards are specifically designed to support this kinda thing these days (I think). Correct me if I'm wrong, programming gurus. :P

 

So it shouldn't lag.

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yes of course it slows down, but when the game will be finished computers will have evolved a lot! Think about it ;)

Yes but we have limits, and these limits have been discussed before:

http://www.xcomufo.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3290

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Like Deimos said, this is one of those things that will looked at once a functional game with working battleview is completed. Consider the weather effects in Diablo 2, a TNT2 card handles that kind of stuff (but I think that was overlay with animated water textures IIRC), like Jenny said we should have the tools built into the Ogre engine and the video hardware should handle it. The processor overhead shouldn't be bad since the animation doesn't need to stay in sync even in the eventual multiplayer version, the way enemy unit animations have to.
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Still, a sprite effect is very easy and cheap to compute. Just about every graphics card in existance is optimized in some way to do it.

 

Having rain/snow fall in front of the screen is very easy to do. A full battlescape rain only needs to be onscreen, not anywhere else. As always, such a special effect can be turned off/low/high in the options menu.

 

Either way, it'd be nice to at least somehow show the weather. It'd be a shame if such a cool effect was skipped entirely because of computer requirements.

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