Ricebug on 10/2/2014 at 18:02
Been thinking that this could be pulled off two ways:
1. Somehow attach a hacklight to a vator and have a really slow ascent/descent speed.
2. Rig some kind of stepped sequence that's initiated every time the player goes into a certain room. That way, when he/she exits back outside, the sun is noticeably lower/higher.
Looks like this might be up kdau's aisle, but haven't seen him around here lately.
Tannar on 10/2/2014 at 19:28
Quote Posted by Ricebug
2. Rig some kind of stepped sequence that's initiated every time the player goes into a certain room. That way, when he/she exits back outside, the sun is noticeably lower/higher.
I think I remember this being done in a mission already, though it might have been the moon, not the sun. And I can't remember which mission off the top of my head.
ZylonBane on 10/2/2014 at 19:42
Quote Posted by Ricebug
1. Somehow attach a hacklight to a vator and have a really slow ascent/descent speed.
What would be the point of making it an actual light? Only dynamic lights can move, and their range is severely limited.
Also, logically, a rising/setting sun would alter the lighting of the entire map, so players would notice that this wasn't happening, unless you managed to be very clever with your map design and ensure that every single scrap of light and shadow was only cast by artificial sources.
Ricebug on 10/2/2014 at 20:34
Yeah, it was only a thought. I like to push the limits but the rendering engine would no doubt choke on anything but the smallest of maps. I wasn't aware that hacklights couldn't move.
ZylonBane on 11/2/2014 at 00:20
You thought omni lights were dynamic? :weird:
Ricebug on 11/2/2014 at 00:29
Yep. I thought Santy Claus was real, too. ;)
nicked on 11/2/2014 at 07:03
Option 2 is probably the best one, especially with New Dark's ambient light zones etc.
Sliptip on 13/2/2014 at 16:28
I did try this once with stepped animlights. The only trouble is that animlights can only seem to shine on a limited number of polygons at a time. I don't know if newdark has fixed this or not.
Since sunlight generally shines over a large area this can be a real problem. . . and often only starts happening after you think everything's working perfectly fine.
Xorak on 13/2/2014 at 22:30
I was thinking of doing this once. My thought was just to have a bunch of animlights all over the place that when they're turned on at some point have a 10000000000 value in the millisecs-to-brighten field.
AntiMatter_16 on 14/2/2014 at 00:48
I roughly simulated a sunrise in "Mine Saga's End", the last mission in the "Mine Saga" campaign. It was slightly larger than a 64' cube. I'd considered a sunset for "Bonds of Mine" but decided it wasn't really workable/possible (at least with olddark.)
For "Mine Saga's End", I didn't have a sun graphic, the light just got gradually brighter. But only to the point where it was still barely dusk. I used an animlight that started at a very low brightness, and very, very slowly got brighter. I may have used a secondary light in the opposite corner as well, to simulate light scattering, but I don't recall.
If you wanted to do it more properly and for a larger mission, you'd want to have your entire mission's outside area connected. That way you could use a single lightpoint for a position of the sun. For practical purposes, the sun is generally considered to be an infinite distance away, so you'd want to put your sun's lightpoint as far away as possible as well, so you'll want to extend the sky area as much as possible.
What you could do, is use a series of like, 10 light points. The 1st light point would be highest in the sky, the 2nd a little lower, the 3rd a little lower, until you reach the horizon.
The first light could start off at a brightness of 1000, and slowly get dimmer over 5 minutes until it's completely dark.
The second light could start off at 0 brightness, and over 5 minutes, get brighter, until it reached a maximum brightness of 800. Then it would start getting dimmer until it's completely dark over another 5 minutes.
The Third light could start off at 0 brightness, and over 10 minutes, get brighter until it's reached a max brightness of 600. Then it would start getting dimmer over 5 minutes until its completely dark.
Get the pattern? You could even have each animlight be a different color, so simulate the orange to purple to black color changes. Of course, I'm pulling those numbers out of the air, so some refinement would be necessary to get a smoothly dimming sunset. If you do choose this method, "Scale_sim_time" will be your friend. It multiplies game speed by the number you specify.
The major problem I had with making a sunrise/sunset, was the skybox colors. You couldn't animate them in OldDark. I'm not sure how much scripting (if any) you can do to change them. For "Mine Saga's End", I just chose sky settings that were intermediate between day and night. No stars, just clouds.
It might be possible to use some sort of animated skybox texture? I dunno. Someone more knowledgeable than me about that would have to answer.
