day / night cycle?

[commando]

After watching STALKER trailer clip for the first time...

i saw that stalker is going to add Day/Night cycles WOW is what i can say.

But Hl2 is going to be basically ONE HUGE level again *loading* means new part of map loaded yea but u know what i mean.

So i was wondering about the HL2 time/ sky.........

what do all of you think?

do you think there will be a Day/Night cycle?

 

[figge]

Sure... if u see the traptown it's night, and buggy it's day...

but it will be static... so u can play a level for 24h and it's still for example day...

 

[Sai]

well since i hear that the game takes about 36 hours or so to complete i wouldn't be surprised if they had an in-game clock that could calculate the 12 hour day and night mark

 

[commando]

Sure... if u see the traptown it's night, and buggy it's day...

but it will be static... so u can play a level for 24h and it's still for example day...

how do u know this?

 

[commando]

well if it is static how the HELL is the buggy level night and the trapdown day.. how will that work out?

 

[seinfeldrules]

They have different loading screens and different lighting for each...

Each seperate level could have been built either night or day. Have you never played a FPS before? (no offense, but it sounds like it)

 

[figge]

how do u know this?

I've read it... (think it was in the mail section)

Half-life2 won't have any Day/Night change in the middle of a map...
...but i think it's moddable...


(plz don't sue me if im nott 100% right on this )

 

[commando]

They have different loading screens and different lighting for each...

Each seperate level could have been built either night or day. Have you never played a FPS before? (no offense, but it sounds like it)

HAHAHA your funny i been playing FPS for god knows how long

i was wondering how they are going to go about doing the day/night levels.

i mean during the game i know there is going to be like night and day *weather change* but how they are going to do it i wonder.

also what i mean it how they are going to do it, it how they are going to make it turn day/night with out the player saying "hold up it was day a minute ago."

 

[CLAYMAN]

each map will either be day or night ... i dont think it will change while you play

 

[slicktick]

Its like in HL when its day and then you go underground or inside for awhile and then you pop back up and... ITS NIGHT NOW... its not that hard, that is how it was done in the first HL, im assuming this will be the case, since it is about the only way to do it without night/day cycles. Besides, hl takes place in a set timeframe, it is not based on your speed, time moves basically as fast as you complete the levels.

 

[Lobster]

HAHAHA your funny i been playing FPS for god knows how long

i was wondering how they are going to go about doing the day/night levels.

i mean during the game i know there is going to be like night and day *weather change* but how they are going to do it i wonder.

also what i mean it how they are going to do it, it how they are going to make it turn day/night with out the player saying "hold up it was day a minute ago."

Commando each map will have a different light level and skybox depending on what time of day its supposed to be.

Seeing as the game is pretty much linear in map changes (as with hl1 and most linear games), the traptown area is set at night because its full of zombies and spooky!, the buggy map is dureing the day cause its more of an adrenaline filled action scene, its all part of turning the story into gameplay.

It is generaly done after a long indoor section, in HL1 there was only one real night time scene, at the end of "On a Rail", which was then followed by a long indoor section, then it was daylight again.

 

[commando]

true. i was just hoping it could be like stalker hehe. i know it will kick stalkers A**S but still would be a Great feature to have

 

[Deadlor]

HAHAHA your funny i been playing FPS for god knows how long

i was wondering how they are going to go about doing the day/night levels.

i mean during the game i know there is going to be like night and day *weather change* but how they are going to do it i wonder.

also what i mean it how they are going to do it, it how they are going to make it turn day/night with out the player saying "hold up it was day a minute ago."

Also HL2 is supposed to be loading all the time like HL1 so conceivably they could change the sky little by little. I mean no one is going to notice any difference between that and a dynamic system unless they stay in one spot for a long time just so they can throw the fact that it's not dynamic in valve's face. If you play through the game normally it won't matter because the levels will have different skyboxes.

 

[Lobster]

true. i was just hoping it could be like stalker hehe. i know it will kick stalkers A**S but still would be a Great feature to have

Stalkers gameplay isnt that linear with its story, its more like GTA3, there are story missions, but there are an infinite number of randomly generated side missions you can do, and the world just goes on evolving around you, much like an RPG.

HL2s gameplay is a more down to earth linear time frame, (like most other FPS's).

Operation Flashpoint had a nice Day/Night cycle.

 

[SMT]

I think the mods are on holiday because I've seen a kajillion repeat threads get started today.

Sorry, somebody had to say it.

 

[commando]

yea but all i am saying is all other fps are not one big whole game if you know what i mean

i mean Most all other FPS have "levels" level endings and all that

HL2 has one big huge level. was just thinking/wondering that was all.

Thanks for clearing it all up. Im still not dissapointed one bit if it isn't weather change. just a wonder that was all.

 

[Lobster]

yea but all i am saying is all other fps are not one big whole game if you know what i mean

i mean Most all other FPS have "levels" level endings and all that

HL2 has one big huge level. was just thinking/wondering that was all.

Thanks for clearing it all up. Im still not dissapointed one bit if it isn't weather change. just a wonder that was all.

One big huge level? i think your mistaken.

It is going to be as it was in Half-life 1 but less pathed, so like.. each map has an entrance and an exit (pretty much), how u cross the level is up to you but the maps will happen in a single path, to stop a player from going backwards intime into daylight again, there will be somthing to stop them, a long drop or a teleportation usually works well, but that is up to valves story telling hehe.

 

[Letters]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is part RPG, so it's naturally going to have more RPG-ish thingers in it!

 

[A2597]

WRONG: If you actually bothered to read the valve q&a thread, you'd notice I asked this last week. The scybox is dynamic, including 3D clouds he said.

 

[commando]

i meant one bit whole "level" as in like HL1 it was a figure of speech .

but yea i know what you mean

in HL1 they made it so every level you couldn't go bk i just realised just the "LOADING" bits u could go bk and forth. and when it loads it is basically loading another map they map onto the editor

 

[A2597]

From my e-mail...

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:A2597@...]
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 7:22 PM
To: Rick Ellis
Subject: Dynamic Sky?

Judging from the footage and screenshots previously released, most of
HL2 takes place in areas where the sky is visiable, and this raised a
question for me.

Will the sky change dynamically? Clouds, the sun, day/night transitions,
etc? I think it would be really cool to watch a sunrise actually occur
while sniping some combine from a rooftop.

A2597
--------

The 3D skybox is dynamic, yes. You can place clouds in the sky that
move, or anything else for that matter.

Rick
Valve

 

[commando]

WoW thanks for that info

 

[Letters]

Ahh cool... so we'll be able to create intelligent clouds that can move around anywhere they want and have babies! That's what I'd like... to be able to look up and see some sweet cloud action!

 

[commando]

yea i love it when the clouds move makes the sky feel alive.

I mean No One Lives Forever had that feature and a cool sun effect. made the sky real! Loved it

 

[Lobster]

If you look at the strider video, u can see large clouds of dust moving in the streets (cant wait for DOD2), they are acctully just particle sprites moving in the 3D sky box, its quite a nice effect for such a simple method. theres also some on traptown.

 

[seinfeldrules]

HAHAHA your funny i been playing FPS for god knows how long

i was wondering how they are going to go about doing the day/night levels.

i mean during the game i know there is going to be like night and day *weather change* but how they are going to do it i wonder.

also what i mean it how they are going to do it, it how they are going to make it turn day/night with out the player saying "hold up it was day a minute ago."

Yeah I figured you had played them, you just phrased your question in a weird way and I misinterpreted. I think it will be similar to the day/night cycle of Far Cry.

 

[commando]

Yeah I figured you had played them, you just phrased your question in a weird way and I misinterpreted. I think it will be similar to the day/night cycle of Far Cry.

yea sorry man i was being dumb hehe. just wondering that was all.

what ever is going to happen you can count on it being great on what ever they done.

Lobster i like your sudden out burst of *cant wait for DOD2* lol wierd...but funny

Ooooh little dust effects will be great.

 

[galoot3000]

hey commando, i wondered the same question a while ago, here what i got http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=21097

 

[Lobster]

Lobster i like your sudden out burst of *cant wait for DOD2* lol wierd...but funny

Ooooh little dust effects will be great.

lol i just think the street fighting in DOD would work really well with the source engine,.

 

[commando]

never played DOD. dont know why. just didn't want to

 

[Colonel Sanders]

Real-time night and day cycles seem like they would be fairly taxing on one's cpu. Thats probably why Gabe and the HL2 team decided not to include that feature, although it would be really awesome to see.

 

[figge]

never played DOD. dont know why. just didn't want to

You should

 

[Rupertvdb]

Real-time night and day cycles seem like they would be fairly taxing on one's cpu. Thats probably why Gabe and the HL2 team decided not to include that feature, although it would be really awesome to see.

i think they had better reasons not to put it in, like the fact it isn't necessary for a game to have that.

It's easy to forget but the game is not just a game but a story, that's why they get these writer guys to come help out. I think Valve wants to have as much narrative control as possible to make the game as fun as it can be.

 

[Apos]

HL2 isn't an open ended adventure game like Stalker: it's more sort of like a movie that you can play. Natural day/night cycles certainly wouldn't be impossible, but they don't really have anything to do with this game.

 

[J Hater]

day/night

it think it would have been kinda hard to add that cycle to the game and i think modding it, it's also probably impossible, maybe if they added it in the first place they would have made missions like.."be at the pier at 18 o'clock" but c'mon we don;t really need day/night to love hl2

 

[KurtCobain]

I reckon the day-night or night-day will come slowly..

...i mean in each section or chapter it will get darker or lighter


If it can all happen in 1 map it can seem a bit too fast

 

[Rupertvdb]

guys, i don't think it's the real Kurt Cobain posting...i think...it's an imposter

 

[groovy]

i remember in Morrowind the day/night sequences were superbly done. it didn't seem to slow the computer down as dawn went to midday to dusk smoothly and the sun would rise, and go down... i thought it was rather splendid with the night sky packed with pretty stars and small clouds

 

[Brian Damage]

Apparently, it's not in Hl2... but it is mod'able (I think it's in the Info thread). It'd require having several different lightmaps for each map in the game, though, and writing code to load them on-the-fly.

 

[EVIL]

If you would have a real-time day and night cycle then the static shadows would all look wrong. It is a game that has multiple paths trough the story (some of the maps have multiple entry and exit points like a spider web) so when you play Half Life² once you wont see everything. So second time you play it you could have an entirely different experience. It isn’t all entirely linear but day and night is a bit out of the question. You might see changes in lighting because on one "area" you have multiple maps which all could have different sun positions. So who knows, but it isn’t dynamical although he clouds are but that’s all. You can move the sun though; it is an entity in the skybox that can be animated and stuff.