Weather Options

[KorJax]

Let me quote something in another thread I posted reguarding the ability for servers to dynamically change the weather:

Weather settings I know for a fact are not possible, seeing as in order to have weather settings in the first place the level designers need to apply particle effects around the map manually in order to get weather effects such as snow and rain, and the levels much be designed with this in mind.  It's possible to get dyanmic weather (i.e. change from clear to stormy) through complicated flowgraphing by the map designer, but these flowgraphs if set up would not be possible to change at all by a server.  Unless the lead devs surprise me however and pull something up that ends up magically working with servers but don't count on this.

Now that said, there is dynamic fog and such depending on the time of day in some maps.  For example on Clearcut, you can expect the mornings and evenings to have lower visibility than that of mid-day.  Due to gameplay (and realism) purposes, the fog won't be pea-soup thick, but more or less an atmospheric effect.  See my signature for example.  It's a little outdated but still the same idea applies.

[Stormin']

As far as weather is concerned, KorJax and I had a previous discussion about it here: http://www.mechlivinglegends.net/forum/index.php/topic,3285.msg41926.html#msg41926.

The long and short of whether or not it is configurable by the server: fog, maybe but don't count on it, and weather, definitely not.

Edit:  DOH!  It's in the post right above me, lol...

[Karyudo]

Most FPS games I know of don't have weather as a configuration option, I've seen dynamic weather in some cases. Of course even if there's no way to have a map turn on and of particle effect based on a configuration file I don't think having multiple versions of some maps would be to much unless they took up a lot of memory. For instance, maybe having Clearcut and a version thats raining. I think one of MWDA's weather conditions was even "Tornado" though it seemed like it was intended to be the aftermath of a tornado which would be an interesting place to have a fight.

[death_grin]

Most FPS games I know of don't have weather as a configuration option, I've seen dynamic weather in some cases. Of course even if there's no way to have a map turn on and of particle effect based on a configuration file I don't think having multiple versions of some maps would be to much unless they took up a lot of memory. For instance, maybe having Clearcut and a version thats raining. I think one of MWDA's weather conditions was even "Tornado" though it seemed like it was intended to be the aftermath of a tornado which would be an interesting place to have a fight.

Certainly possible.  Doing such would be quite easy.  However maps are somewhat large in size.  The Crytek designed Crysis map" Shore" for example is 60mb.  Our maps tend to be a bit fatter at this point ranging into the upper hundred MB (up to 300 in a few instances but these are bloated by needless files and none are optimized for filesize yet.)  I would guess you could expect maps around the 100mb mark by release.

That said if we don't release multiple versions at release I think it would be quite doable to make a seperate "optional" mappack with different versions.  Then let the server providers decide if they want to include these.

[KorJax]

Most FPS games I know of don't have weather as a configuration option, I've seen dynamic weather in some cases. Of course even if there's no way to have a map turn on and of particle effect based on a configuration file I don't think having multiple versions of some maps would be to much unless they took up a lot of memory. For instance, maybe having Clearcut and a version thats raining. I think one of MWDA's weather conditions was even "Tornado" though it seemed like it was intended to be the aftermath of a tornado which would be an interesting place to have a fight.

Certainly possible.  Doing such would be quite easy.  However maps are somewhat large in size.  The Crytek designed Crysis map" Shore" for example is 60mb.  Our maps tend to be a bit fatter at this point ranging into the upper hundred MB (up to 300 in a few instances but these are bloated by needless files and none are optimized for filesize yet.)  I would guess you could expect maps around the 100mb mark by release.

That said if we don't release multiple versions at release I think it would be quite doable to make a seperate "optional" mappack with different versions.  Then let the server providers decide if they want to include these.

Most of the "fatness" is due to textures and such, and the assets used.  Variations of maps (aka something like weather) is actually quite small.  Like, 30-50 MB.  Perhaps it would be possible to have different versions of the maps, as long as these versions reference the "main" map so players wouldn't have 10 different 300MB maps.

[Defender]

Most FPS games I know of don't have weather as a configuration option, I've seen dynamic weather in some cases. Of course even if there's no way to have a map turn on and of particle effect based on a configuration file I don't think having multiple versions of some maps would be to much unless they took up a lot of memory. For instance, maybe having Clearcut and a version thats raining. I think one of MWDA's weather conditions was even "Tornado" though it seemed like it was intended to be the aftermath of a tornado which would be an interesting place to have a fight.

Certainly possible.  Doing such would be quite easy.  However maps are somewhat large in size.  The Crytek designed Crysis map" Shore" for example is 60mb.  Our maps tend to be a bit fatter at this point ranging into the upper hundred MB (up to 300 in a few instances but these are bloated by needless files and none are optimized for filesize yet.)  I would guess you could expect maps around the 100mb mark by release.

That said if we don't release multiple versions at release I think it would be quite doable to make a seperate "optional" mappack with different versions.  Then let the server providers decide if they want to include these.

Most of the "fatness" is due to textures and such, and the assets used.  Variations of maps (aka something like weather) is actually quite small.  Like, 30-50 MB.  Perhaps it would be possible to have different versions of the maps, as long as these versions reference the "main" map so players wouldn't have 10 different 300MB maps.

Or how about that 700mb texture "someone" uploaded to the svn once.

[Masakari]

Rofl. It happened multiple times.

[Karyudo]

Yeah I had a feeling they could get pretty big. Though I didn't know you could reference them like that. Another 50 megs a map to get rain everywhere doesn't seem that bad. Though does the reference add much if anything to load times?

[KorJax]

Most FPS games I know of don't have weather as a configuration option, I've seen dynamic weather in some cases. Of course even if there's no way to have a map turn on and of particle effect based on a configuration file I don't think having multiple versions of some maps would be to much unless they took up a lot of memory. For instance, maybe having Clearcut and a version thats raining. I think one of MWDA's weather conditions was even "Tornado" though it seemed like it was intended to be the aftermath of a tornado which would be an interesting place to have a fight.

Certainly possible.  Doing such would be quite easy.  However maps are somewhat large in size.  The Crytek designed Crysis map" Shore" for example is 60mb.  Our maps tend to be a bit fatter at this point ranging into the upper hundred MB (up to 300 in a few instances but these are bloated by needless files and none are optimized for filesize yet.)  I would guess you could expect maps around the 100mb mark by release.

That said if we don't release multiple versions at release I think it would be quite doable to make a seperate "optional" mappack with different versions.  Then let the server providers decide if they want to include these.

Most of the "fatness" is due to textures and such, and the assets used.  Variations of maps (aka something like weather) is actually quite small.  Like, 30-50 MB.  Perhaps it would be possible to have different versions of the maps, as long as these versions reference the "main" map so players wouldn't have 10 different 300MB maps.

Or how about that 700mb texture "someone" uploaded to the svn once.