RE: Interesting Idea for Seasonal Tilesets

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               

I was talking with a buddy of mine today that has done some modeling work for various game companies over the past few years. During our discussion we got on the subject of NWN and changing seasons. He had an interesting premise which might be worth exploring - at least for outdoor tiles...

 

1. Create a single tile aurorabase and walkmesh.

 

2. Create the terrain geometry and link all of it to one of the tile animation loops, pulling the geometry below the Z 0 height when the animation loop is switched off.

 

3. Clone ALL of the terrain geometry, texture it for winter, then link it to another of the tile animation loops - as above the geometry would be pulled below the Z height when the animation loops is switched off.

 

In essence, when animation loop 1 is active, it's summer. When animation loop 2 is switched on, its winter. What's neat about this idea, assuming I'm not mistaken about this next bit, is that you can script the animation loops to activate based upon specific conditions - i.e. changes in season as emulated by the game clock.

 

Animation loop 3 would be left open for things such as smoke or flame emitters which are common to both seasons.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Verilazic]

               

Just my novice opinion here: that sounds like genius.

 

Only concern I think of is how much would it hurt framerates to have all that geometry hiding below z0? I didn't think NWN did much occulsion culling?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               

Good question. I'm thinking that the best practice would be to confine the geometry to just those objects whose textures change based upon the season. The remaining objects could just be left alone, sitting in their default positions. For example, in a scene with a house and a tree, just the ground object, the roof object, and the tree foliage object would need to be swapped out. You would never have to modify the walkmesh. To ensure that all the geometry stays at the correct Z height once moved the objects should be parented to a "dummy" node. The dummy node would be the piece that actually moves up and down. You'd need one dummy node for each animation loop (aka season).

 

There are actually some placeables in Project Q that use a similar method to swap out textured pieces depending upon the current animation state. For example, the Q Brazier, when on, has an object textured with reddish colored coals representing the "hot" coals within the brazier. When the brazier is off, the "hot coals" object is dropped below the Z 0 plane and replaced with an object that is textured with black coals.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Fester Pot]

               

Make it happen!


Recent voting polls show there is high interest in such a tileset. Check the results.


If Zwerkules created a Seasonal Tileset using Animation Loop for Spring/Summer/Fall/Winter foliage, would that interest you? [YES / NO]


42 / 0


Miss u Zwerky!


FP!

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

I would not worry overly much about the frame rates except on the shadow casting objects. If the shadow casting objects are same or similar on both alternates, I'd suggest having the shadows cast by a third object which stays put, and then just move the non-shadow casting meshes. As many have already found out, the engine, and most graphics cards, including my crappy one, can handle a very large quantity of geometry. The math included in casting shadows or anti-shadows is far more resources consuming. So for instance if you have shadow casting foliage, and a winter or fall version for that foliage exists, and covers the same region in shadow (like for pine species), then build a third shape for casting shadow at the same location, and set Shadow=0 on the other two meshes. In any other case, things which don't change volume, like tree stalks, but do change mesh to introduce snow-covered textures, are much easier to speculate on, because you know they will not change in their shadow cast shape.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               

Shadows could be handled exactly as MerricksDad states - great call 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               

OK, I'm fairly interested here...

 

Summer, winter, good, fine, great... nice, but normal... I don't do normal.

 

For some time I've been wondering precisely how to depict the "Time of Sundering" in Demoness Tales. You know, Ultimate Apocalypse sort of thing, everything in sight gets obliterated into tiny pieces.

 

I can do a lot with assorted post-apocalyptic, ruined Tilesets and Placeables that I'm hitting with bricks, but the actual cataclysm itself has been irritatingly elusive... But now I'm thinking if I can create shattered and blasted versions of all the castles, houses, towers, trees, etc in a Tileset that can be switched in by a script to replace the normal geometry, along with hideously destroyed textures for the ground etc, plus a couple of additional scripts for throwing up some ludicrously huge PHoD VFX around the PC whilst the switch occurs, then in theory, the actual moment of Sundering CAN occur on-screen, with appropriate Official Apocalypse sound effects TM (instead of just scripting a teleport to a destroyomized Area and rubbishly pretending it's the same place two seconds later).

 

Oh joy! I can blow up the world!

 

(Fetches new, extra-large brick and investigates the concept...)

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_boodah83]

               

Good question. I'm thinking that the best practice would be to confine the geometry to just those objects whose textures change based upon the season. The remaining objects could just be left alone, sitting in their default positions. For example, in a scene with a house and a tree, just the ground object, the roof object, and the tree foliage object would need to be swapped out. You would never have to modify the walkmesh.

 

Pretty cool idea! But in your example, if you'd want to change the footstep sounds with the seasons (from grass to snow) you'd still need to modify the walkmesh (I think),

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               

Pretty cool idea! But in your example, if you'd want to change the footstep sounds with the seasons (from grass to snow) you'd still need to modify the walkmesh (I think),

 

Hmmm - forgot about footsteps. Since you can't have two walkmeshes, I wonder if the footstep sounds can be changed through scripting.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_boodah83]

               

Afaik, with SetFootstepType you can change a creature's footstep sounds, but the only terrain type available is water.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

You should be able to modify FootstepSounds.2da, and use this chart from the wiki, plus your new footstep entries. Which means it should be all scriptable.

 

http://www.nwnlexico...e=Footstep_type

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_YeoldeFog]

               

Or make a footstep sound so generic that it -could- be snow but also everything else! Gooooh, I'm so smart these days! '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               

Make it happen!


Recent voting polls show there is high interest in such a tileset. Check the results.


If Zwerkules created a Seasonal Tileset using Animation Loop for Spring/Summer/Fall/Winter foliage, would that interest you? [YES / NO]


42 / 0


Miss u Zwerky!


FP!

 

I already explored this idea and abandoned it because of each tile having at least two if not three animations and lots of geometry. I changed the alpha instead of moving the geometry, but that shouldn't make any difference. It was too slow for me, so I didn't go on with it.

My Medieval City tileset is at the limit of what my computer can handle and a lot of Lord of Worm's tilesets run too slow. For those who can use LoW's tileset without problems this idea of season changing tiles could work.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               

Hmmm - forgot about footsteps. Since you can't have two walkmeshes, I wonder if the footstep sounds can be changed through scripting.

It would be a lot of work and would require lots of triggers, but it is possible. It could cause lag though.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               

Hence, YeoldeFog's (sorry mate) idea of a generic sound is better. Then again with the winter terrain you could always aim for something in early winter, when the grass still crunches under your feet. Even in a fantasy setting, not too many adventurers - or monsters - are going to be moving around in the deep snows of mid winter.