SNOW...its possible!

[urfisch]

Inspired by two mods, the frozen harbours of LSH and the vanishing food by DivingDuck, i thought about a snow mod. And its possible! Even with restrictions.



This is how it works:

We use the technique of how snow and rain in films are made. Its just on a certain area around the boat. This gives us the feeling of snow (no use of external camera!)

To produce the snow, we create 4 particle generators higher above the boat (in a special radius around it), which are linked via the statemachinecontroller to the forecast, the use of rainjackets or to the raincontroller itself. So, if there is rain (which is "disabled" due to an edited scene.dat), the emitters produce snow. The particle generators use a special texture for the snow, an ice crystal. This is possible. Its shown by the smoke and fire emitters, they also use certain textures. With negative values to the weight, the particles fall down and can have all properties of particles in the game. So they can fall fast, slow, wind affected, many or just a few.

Additionally there could be a texture changer controller, which is also linked to the statemachinecontrollers. It changes the texture of the boat itself, to an icy one (this already exists by tomi99), when the snow falls.

The whole mod is only producing universal snow. So it must be enabled during the winter via JSME before patrol. Using this technique, theres also the possibility giving the merchants and other ships snow textures. But this would mean, they always are snowy, even if theres no snow falling. This could also be done with the boat texture itself.

This solution isnt perfect, but its a way to have real snow in the game. As i have no experience in how using the statemachinecontrollers, this is i where asked for help now!...

If you are experienced in using them correctly, please let me know. I only can create the particle emitters (+ the texture and the functions) and link them to certain parts, but not to statemachinecontrollers.

[urfisch]

UPDATE

After some research:

- rain deactivation, no problem
- linkin particle controller to skydome, possible
- no controller for the weater state found, so we can use a texture changer (snow texture, when snowing) for the boat or other ships

all precipitations are now snow with this scene.dat i made.



this is how it looks now. needs some finetuning, as the amount of snowflakes variies a lot sometimes. and i might rework the snowflake texture.

[von Kinderei]

WOW ...

Man would that be a nice add-on ... good luck

[Hitman]

Pics, or it didn't happen

[Victor Schutze]

Man, I am looking forward for this one!

[irish1958]

Looking good. I.suspect it will be a ton of work to get the ships all to be snow covered.
''Keep up the good work!"

[Sepp von Ch.]

Wow! Christmas is here! Looks really great!

[USS Drum]

Just in time for Christmas.

[dcb]

Looking very nice. This could be enabled via SH3 Commander during winter months, on a random basis, I think.

[h.sie]

cool!

[BUKER]

Hi urfisch,

Great idea!

[urfisch]

bad news. im sorry guys, but the snow is now always there. seems as if adding another controller in the rain of the scene.dat is not recognized as "rain"...instead its always active.

so, without a controller which allows us to activate the snow, just when the rain is activated, theres gonna be no snow.

[Rubini]

Hi Urfish,

Isn't possible to just change the rain texture (to a new snow texture)? This way we will have snow instead rain. The scene.dat can be easily modified to alter the rain precipitation properties. I don't know if all the properties that a particle have but we can produce just fine and sparse rain easily, and perhaps this could be enough.

[urfisch]

no, just tried that. the template for the rain render controller is a fixed one. without digging into the code, there is no change possible. and even adding new parameters to the rain render controller must not mean, the game accepts them. i am experimenting with the rain itself, but it looks more like an old tv screen without signal, than snow. this is due to the parameters, which create the rain particles. they are hardcoded, which means they are designed to be stripes, not particles. so we have no access to the "size"...

a workaround would be my first mentioned solution:

a particle generator linked to the turret of each boat. this works, i already tried that and it looks good as far as you dont use the external camera. but this controller needs to be linked to the state of weather, so it is only activated, when precipitations are activated. this could be achieved by using a statemachinecontroller, which allows the change of the "existance" of the snow generator, as DD used it in when creating vanishing food. this food is linked to the fuel parameters, which makes it vanish during the patrol. this technique would allow us, to have a snow generator, which is only active when certain parameters are given.

BUT SO

our generator needs to be linked to the weather report or the cloth of the watchcrew. but HOW, is the problem. i have no experience in the coding and statemachinecontroller stuff. maybe one of the coding guys could help??



this is how it looks, whith editing the rain itself. you see, the drops are very small and look more like a snow drizzle, than snow flakes. but this is all you get out of the rain controller.

[Rubini]

Ok , I understood. Again this can fall to the h.sie type of hardcode work...

I already messed with statemachine controllers some time ago...but I can't remember now if a statemachine controller reference to wheather state exist.
(but is easy to know taking a look at some of the act files (IIRC) where the statemachine references are described. I have not my SH3 files and tools for now (new ultimate machine, new games, new SO (W764bits), so some time needed to port all my old files and games...)

Take a look on the act file to see if a linked statemachine command exist for this mod intention .