Night time is the Right time now

[4sheetzngeegles]

1 Why does weather, specifically wind, fog secondarily, not start until days into the game?
how can I set it to start upon the beginning?

**** Modding question
2 Can a block be created, invisible, complete pass through, that represents the
y offset? Or a copy of the terrain replicator. Similar to a foundation stone. So that a poi
need only be placed in an (x z) plot and automatically levels itself with the terrain.

3  I'm not promoting another game but its something I observed in one. Dark souls series, there
was a form of occlusion. The only way to describe it was like a mirrored wall as you progressed
toward an object or structure, it formed like coming through a waterfall. Before that it was a 2d
object. I'd coin it a sphere of influence. I also saw it in a unity video. Which greatly reduced
cpu/gpu load to a minimum.

The fog in 7dtd seems to provide the same basic primer for it. Since 7days pois are basically
cube structures. Can fog be applied to a rendering sphere, allowing structures outside of it to be
rendered at the simplest LOD, minimal color? The face of a rectangular or square building can be 2
tris per visible side and rendered in b/w or grayscale until it pierces the veil. Because the fog
is obscuring a massive amount of detail, it seems to present the opportunity to render as extremely
low resolution.

For a visual example of this, it may sound funny, but if you look at the movie Tron. The res and deres
of objects follows the same premise, just using a different medium.          3d extrusion.

4 These are two things I noticed when applying dense fog to my game a20.6. The front approx 40' view is
rendered fog, the peripheral, on either side, is not applied for approx 15'. Can this be made to cover a
wider view. As reference i use 70' view.

The second deals with stealth, Stealth as it is works but doesn't. Explanation: It reacts directly to
light, and indirectly to AIi view distance. I don't know if it's the ambient gradient, or the sun/moon
refractive light. I have not tested it yet.

How I achieved this, I have my game set to 120 min days, but i recently changed it to minimal daylight
hours. I go away from my base, the sky overhead is black, but the red sunset never disappears. I can see
clearly about 40 meters in front of me, then all is pitch black. Here is the interesting part. If i am at
the edge of the sight range, 20 or so game meters, of a zombie, i can shoot them, they react to being hit
but as long as i stay stealth/crouched they stop searching after a few seconds, returning to wander mode
Unless i stand up within range, I can fight multiples of them at night. My light meter is 3 until around
9am, then it jumps to 37 crouch. During the day if i stealth shoot at 40 + meters A single shot brings all
of the AI to my direct location.
 
As you may guess, I go out at night instead of day now.

When the sun sets, can it be set using a timer to go from 0 intensity to 100 % of the default then back to
0? This might make the stealth mechanic more viable outdoors. Indoors it just needs the colliders to block
light. Not just localized but sun moon ambient. This should provide for the black nights, and naturally dark
interiors, matching stealth play.

 

[Riamus]

#2 - why not just set the y-offset to what it needs to be?  As long as it's set correctly, the POI will be placed flush with the ground.  No need for any special blocks.  Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to accomplish?

#3 - The game uses "imposters" to do this.  These are low-res replacements for the actual blocks so that you don't have to render things completely at a long distance.  For example, fire hydrants for me will show up as a rectangular red block until I'm within the range to render it.  Not sure why it's red and not yellow to match the fire hydrant, but not a big deal.  Buildings seem to use imposters that are closer to the original.  In either case, these render far more easily than the actual blocks.  I'm not sure what effect you're describing as I haven't seen that, but it sounds like it wouldn't really be much different than using imposters as far as performance.  And with imposters, it usually looks like you're seeing it fully formed even if you're seeing the imposters (with exceptions of red block imposters).

For stealth, I do agree that lighting values for your stealth meter would be nice to adjust slowly as the time changes rather than instantly when going from day to night or night to day.

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

What I meant for the Y height config is, as many POI's as there are being created.
There is a possibility of a mis-typed value. I recently checked all of the poi xmls,
because I was converting a list for Nitrogen, 570 to place A20.6 pois.

The internal format is not a consistent layout for the fixed parameters.
Example: yoffset can range anywhere from top to mid within the file. Some Poi's don't
have a Yoffset, I think some of these may be manually placed Nav pois.

After a map/world creation I used DM to check the pois on the map, I mis-typed, on
the number pad, user error approx 8 or 9, which i manually corrected in my prefabs.xml
deleted the regions and rechecked leveling. While doing this i came across a few pois that,
would remain offset, even if i re-rendered with the corrected value. Example: skate park
temp, basketball park, and remnant_downtown_filler_16 i think. There were a few more but i
can't remember them now. This made me wonder if there is the possibility of a  block or a
parameter in a block that is regulating or can regulate the height regardless of the
Yoffset parameter.

That gave me the thought that a consistent single placed block, basically an air clone
placed at surface level, and coded to render at terrain surface height, when being created,
by the devs would remove the necessity of a y offset parameter.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Sorry for the run-on sentence.

If it is/were possible then as long as there was enough compatible leveled landscape, then
any poi that fits within that lot would only need two parameters to be placed, in vanilla
or modded.

#3
The thought came about, using the obscuring effect of the fog would allow an even lower
form of imposter. Basically a postcard render of the outline of the building. I got the idea
because there is a specific yucca plant that i have seen, recreated in different alphas. It is a
postcard render much the same as the grass, but it is configured to always face you as you
walk around it. The pois, from that distance, if postcard rendered in the same fashion, blocked
by the fog and particle rendering, would not be noticeable. But could significantly reduce the
load. I thought this because a Postcard render is just an png, with 2 tris.

For the stealth, I have used UABE before to tweak values, to see what happens. Basically when i read
"a this doesn't work post" I look at the black and white to try and puzzle it out for myself. A
few alphas prior I manually reduce my camera height when crouching to make the zombies more imposing.
But when I reduced the light intensity, I could go into a darkened room, and when they would wake, I'd
crouch and not easily be found, if I'd really slowly creep around the room/attic/basement.
If i crossed a sunbeam I'd quickly be spotted whether creeping or not.  This is the first time i
changed the daylight amount in the main menu, with nearly the same effect.