Rain in Paragon City

[srmalloy]

With the winter event rolling around again, it occurred to me that it should be possible to have it rain in CoH the same way that the game makes it snow. Instant Snowstorm creates a visual snowfall around the character; this same visual effect can be set on a zone, as we see in Atlas Park during the winter event, where each character that enters gets the effect while they are outside. If a visual effect were created to display rain around a character, then it should be possible to apply this effect on characters in a zone or outdoor instanced mission to make it appear as if it's raining. It's not a wholesale fix -- it doesn't make the ground wet, for example -- but it would give a low-overhead way to simulate rain in the game.

[Glacier Peak]

2 hours ago, srmalloy said:

With the winter event rolling around again, it occurred to me that it should be possible to have it rain in CoH the same way that the game makes it snow. Instant Snowstorm creates a visual snowfall around the character; this same visual effect can be set on a zone, as we see in Atlas Park during the winter event, where each character that enters gets the effect while they are outside. If a visual effect were created to display rain around a character, then it should be possible to apply this effect on characters in a zone or outdoor instanced mission to make it appear as if it's raining. It's not a wholesale fix -- it doesn't make the ground wet, for example -- but it would give a low-overhead way to simulate rain in the game.

I could've sworn there was at least one mission instance with rain effects. I feel like it was a CoT map, maybe the floating Oranbega map? 

[El D]

There's rain effects in one of the missions of the Dark Astoria arcs (specifically the one where you fight Blue Steel on top of the PPD headquarters).

 

The visual FX for it are also available in the base editor, apparently. So it's definitely usable, I just assume there's some broader issue with applying it to the overworld maps.

Edited December 4, 2021 by El D

[Ashington]

2 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

I could've sworn there was at least one mission instance with rain effects. I feel like it was a CoT map, maybe the floating Oranbega map? 

the death of statesman map in one of the who will die arc missions has it

[krj12]

I'd like to expand this to having random atmospheric effects:  rain, snow, fog, high winds,  etc - snow dependent on the time of year of course.

 

But not so often that it becomes passe or annoying.   Maybe 95% of the time have "normal" weather.

 

 

 

[Luminara]

As long as it included an option to disable it on a per account basis, I'd support this.  We're not all running dual <insert latest/greatest GPU>, and hitting single-digit framerates is pathetically typical already when we encounter something Nemesis Jaegers who crap out ten clouds of Fuck You and The Framerate You Rode In With at the same time.

[A Cat]

Iirc they never did this because areas under overhangs had no way to be defined to exclude the rain effect. 

[Ruin Mage]

Rain was a thing, IIRC, in the Vanguard/Portal Corp ripple.

I imagine, but could be wrong, that one of the reasons it hasn't been done is wanting to try and get more atmospheric effects + the limits of the code/engine.

[srmalloy]

21 hours ago, A Cat said:

Iirc they never did this because areas under overhangs had no way to be defined to exclude the rain effect. 

They figured it out for indoors, as you can see by entering the tailor, hospital, or City Hall in Atlas Park; however, you still get snowed on if you're inside the wall leading to the Hollows, so it may just be an issue of not wanting to go through and do all the fiddly work to define exclusion areas.

[srmalloy]

On 12/4/2021 at 4:49 AM, krj12 said:

But not so often that it becomes passe or annoying.   Maybe 95% of the time have "normal" weather.

I imagine that rain in the regular city zones would be a "most/all zones" at once thing, because of the way weather tends to work, which might be an excessive load on the servers and clients; my preference would be to use it for 'atmosphere' in instanced missions -- primarily outdoor missions, but I could see the occasional winter mission where there would be snow in a warehouse or office map. Or special cases, like the rooms in the Frostfire mission where you have the ice slides or Frostfire himself.