Live weather effects in Half-Life 2

[Estevan]

Is it possible to put live weather effects in halflife 2. Kinda like if its raining were you are at it rains in the game, if you play at night then the game is at night. Will that be possible? you know maybe it can have an option to enter your zip code and it finds live weather updates on some server on the internet. I think that would be cool in a mod if not halflife 2 dont yah think!

 

[nw909]

Downloading real-world weather from Jeppsen.

meh, it works in msflightsimulatator.

 

[Estevan]

Originally posted by nw909
Downloading real-world weather from Jeppsen.

meh, it works in msflightsimulatator.

COOL! i never play flight sims beacuase the last one i got crashed my pc

 

[tCh]

that would be great

 

[James Isaac]

Can Half Life 2 show rain and other weather effects at the moment?

 

[SupaKoopa]

black and white was supposta do that...

 

[southparksam]

I havent seen any weather effects so far in any media, but it would be a shame not to have them... and if they do have them I am sure they could include a feature or someone could write a mod to do it.

 

[iamaelephant]

Surely it could be modded.

 

[southparksam]

I would be really suprised if someone didnt

 

[The Dark Elf]

well if its possible to do properly, mine will have day/night cycles. And weather is a cert. Has been mentioned before, i think in a FAQ or interview that there is something to do with weather effects like rain in it.

 

[jameth]

CS1.6 has weather effects (minimal) so HL2 is a 99% yes

 

[MultiVaC]

I think there was mention of a tornado in an interview, not sure though.

 

[poseyjmac]

heres what we know so far. you can have animated 3d skyboxes, so yes you could have day turn to night and then back, and set it so every minute is a real minute in life, or scale it down.

not so sure about the dynamic light(sun and moon), and you would need to take some really good pics of a seamless day to night cycle, but it is possible i think.

and of course rain and snow will be possible. starting and stopping would be a matter of triggering them at a certain time

 

[Gorgon]

Hell yeah.

Gabe stated in an interview with gamerspot.com that they are doing dynamic weather effect as well as tornidos (spelling) , he said the tornidos will be special and the FX have never seen before in a game.

Its fact that HL2 already got Dynamic Weather. But still we have not seen it yet. except maybe in the HDR vid when Gordon loop at the sky and you could hear the wind blowing and the rain in the far side of the city is poring down.

 

[Brian Damage]

Pretty darn easy, I should think. Rain, snow, etc would be implemented close up as particles, and further off as translucent textures or fogging. Don't know how shadows would react to a moving sun though... does anyone?

 

[mrchimp]

This is the kind of thing that Gabe would reply to whith "it's a desighn decision not technicle limitation, I'm sure a mod team could blah balh blah".

 

[Rossell]

B&W did have working dynamic weather.

You had to be connected to the Net though.

 

[jonbob]

Trouble was that it always rains in Britain so we didn't exactly reap any amount of enjoyment from it.

 

[frances_farmer]

Originally posted by G0rgon
Hell yeah.

Gabe stated in an interview with gamerspot.com that they are doing dynamic weather effect as well as tornidos (spelling) , he said the tornidos will be special and the FX have never seen before in a game.

Its fact that HL2 already got Dynamic Weather. But still we have not seen it yet. except maybe in the HDR vid when Gordon loop at the sky and you could hear the wind blowing and the rain in the far side of the city is poring down.

he never said there would be tornados, he simply said as a bit of fun, one of the designers created a mini tornado.

 

[Gorgon]

Exactly created it for the game. Adding a bit of fun for the game not for the designers.

 

[The Dark Elf]

Originally posted by jonbob
Trouble was that it always rains in Britain so we didn't exactly reap any amount of enjoyment from it.

ahh but imagine the possibilities.. For example, some area's in my mod are based in a very cold climate, low visibility, strong wind, blizzards. If your not wearing the correct gear you eventually freeze unless you find somewhere safe to hide out until the storm clears or another way around. All high up in the mountain wastes where you don't know what you'll come across. You could have a huge snowcat almost on top of you and you'd not realise until it was too late, unless you got lucky and heard it through the strong winds, or maybe its something worse out there, you just wont know

As for the rain. The large battles raging as the rain pours down and running through the mud is all sluggish, splashing everywhere, mud and cr*p squishing about


Thats probably the most I've given away on my mod, and even then its not even 1% of it

 

[Incitatus]

Originally posted by G0rgon
Exactly created it for the game. Adding a bit of fun for the game not for the designers.

No you misinterpreted that

 

[Gorgon]

Well, If I am not sure of tornados then I am 100% sure of dynamic weathers.

 

[Brian Damage]

I'm just wondering if the rain or a steamy atmosphere will affect the visor of Gordon's HEV, like in Metroid Prime.

 

[The Dark Elf]

Originally posted by G0rgon
Well, If I am not sure of tornados then I am 100% sure of dynamic weathers.

Yup, the weather is deffinately in there in some form. Valve have confirmed that somewhere on the net.. Even if it wasn't its still possible to fake the weather, They Hunger did it and so did Spirit of Half-Life.. it wasn't perfect and didn't work with Fog in Spirit. But it would likely work fine now, so whatever happens you'll be able to have the weather effects in it, properly or faked it'll be possible

 

[Gorgon]

Yeah, stalker have DW as well as FARCry, I cannot see why valve should not implement this great technology. If you watched FarCry techdemo you would see fog dynamicly moving and effecting all the surrounding envirounment.

 

[The Dark Elf]

Originally posted by Brian Damage
I'm just wondering if the rain or a steamy atmosphere will affect the visor of Gordon's HEV, like in Metroid Prime.

If it doesn't, you could probably code it so the view would become altered perhaps?.. Maybe by using a sprite placed across the players view. Could come up with a lot of effects like that I would imagine then. TGA's + alpha channels, it shouldn't be too hard to fake those kinds of effects, like dust or even those lil stars/flashing lights you see if you stand up too quickly or get dizzy. Could even do a Star Trek transporter effect from inside it by using something like that to gradually obscure the vision, then transport instantly to a new location then reverse the animation sequence.

 

[Brian Damage]

Heh heh, when I stand up to quickly, I black out.

Stars when you get zonked by something would be cool.

 

[Menelaos]

Originally posted by Brian Damage
I'm just wondering if the rain or a steamy atmosphere will affect the visor of Gordon's HEV, like in Metroid Prime.

Gordon's HEV doesn't have a visor, he doesn't even have a helmet.

 

[The Dark Elf]

Originally posted by Menelaos
Gordon's HEV doesn't have a visor, he doesn't even have a helmet.

Brian probably meant Gordon's glasses.. Though the visor thing I imagine would apply for multiplayer if the multiplayer models still have the helmet version of the HEV in there like HL1

 

[tunk]

*beware steamy sauna scene*

 

[iamironsam]

Real-time weather is a total novelty. I like dynamic weather and day/night cycles, but I'd hate to have it sync'd with real life. I play games at night probably 99.99% of the time. It's one thing to have to leave to and return from work in complete darkness, but now my games would be completely dark too? Forget that.

 

[Maxi]

It would be nice as an on/off option imho.

 

[Direwolf]

I've always liked the idea of having the game function on its own timetable....if you play through the same area at night or during the day it may be quite different.

 

[Yatta]

Originally posted by jameth
CS1.6 has weather effects (minimal) so HL2 is a 99% yes

You missed his (topic poster's) point. Completely.

 

[The Dark Elf]

Originally posted by iamironsam
Real-time weather is a total novelty. I like dynamic weather and day/night cycles, but I'd hate to have it sync'd with real life. I play games at night probably 99.99% of the time. It's one thing to have to leave to and return from work in complete darkness, but now my games would be completely dark too? Forget that.

That was one of the concerns on my mod. Originally I was going to do it going by the system clock (for the sake of simplicity really heh).. but imagine how sh*tty that'll be for multiplayer with people from the US vs UK. Unless its a certain time of the day one will end up playing in darkness the other in daylight and an unfair advantage. Not to mention, like you, I'll probably be playing mostly at night, so a bit sucky really

I've emailed Gabe yesterday with a few questions relating to some things to get it working correctly so hopefully his responses are what I'm hoping, or thats another idea out the window heh

 

[Yatta]

I just remember... Pokemon had day and night effects.

 

[NSPIRE]

Originally posted by poseyjmac
heres what we know so far. you can have animated 3d skyboxes, so yes you could have day turn to night and then back, and set it so every minute is a real minute in life, or scale it down.

not so sure about the dynamic light(sun and moon), and you would need to take some really good pics of a seamless day to night cycle, but it is possible i think.

and of course rain and snow will be possible. starting and stopping would be a matter of triggering them at a certain time

That sounds like it'll be f*ckin' sick. I can't wait for HL2

 

[Baal]

Yea, the new Aztec in 1.6 has rain..(which I turn off using cl_weather 0...but still, it's there )

 

[Cheetarah654]

wtf...i dont think the game interacts with the enviornment...