Praetorian Skyboxes for More Zones

[Steampunkette]

Kind of a silly idea, but I know a lot of players dislike the "Night = Blue" filter that many zones apply.

 

So what if we started using Praetorian and Kallisti skyboxes for various zones?

 

If it's meant to be a grey and overcast zone, slap the Imperial City skybox on it.

 

If it's meant to be grey and overcast and dirty, slap the Neutropolize skybox on it.

 

If It's meant to be cloudy but still bright, slap the Nova Praetoria skybox on it.

 

If it's meant to be bright and shiny, slap the Kallisti Wharf skybox on it.

 

And then maybe work on a Redside version of all the skyboxes which is just those four skyboxes but with the brightness and/or saturation dropped sharply.

[Frozen Burn]

I'd rather see the skies change.  It's not always overcast or sunny - even the Rogue Isles which tend to dirty, grimy, and overcast, should see sunny days.  And even Talos Island should get cloudy skies.

 

We already fade/transition into day/night in each zone, so I would think it's possible to fade into a dreary/sunny day occasionally from whatever the norm is now.  

 

And the cherry, sprinkles, and whipped cream on top would be if we could get rainy days once in a while and snow in the winter months in other zones outside of Atlas Park.  🙂  

[Rudra]

17 minutes ago, Frozen Burn said:

I'd rather see the skies change.  It's not always overcast or sunny - even the Rogue Isles which tend to dirty, grimy, and overcast, should see sunny days.  And even Talos Island should get cloudy skies.

 

We already fade/transition into day/night in each zone, so I would think it's possible to fade into a dreary/sunny day occasionally from whatever the norm is now.  

 

And the cherry, sprinkles, and whipped cream on top would be if we could get rainy days once in a while and snow in the winter months in other zones outside of Atlas Park.  🙂  

The snowing in AP is enabled by applying a patch and removed by removing said patch. Rain would be the same way.

[Frozen Burn]

3 hours ago, Rudra said:

The snowing in AP is enabled by applying a patch and removed by removing said patch. Rain would be the same way.

 

I know... that's why I said it would be the cherry, sprinkles, and whipped cream for the devs to do the code work to make it happen without a patch.... i know it won't happen, but one can dream.

[srmalloy]

14 hours ago, Rudra said:

The snowing in AP is enabled by applying a patch and removed by removing said patch. Rain would be the same way.

And, judging from the 'Instant Snowstorm' power, it's an effect applied to the characters in the zone individually, not something that takes effect zone-wide.

[gameboy1234]

I like the idea, there are quite a few zones that are kinda questionable with their lighting.  Faultline is one that needs work imo.  There something really off about it.  I think the diffuse lighting is missing altogether, and that's weird.  If you walk into the AE building there you can really see a difference how your character is rendered.  Especially if you have a lot of costume pieces that are the higher quality and more recent ones (like the Mecha armor).  But I think this might need to be done per zone by the devs, I don't know if trying to replace the effects on the client will yield sensible results.

 

Also the lighting in Atlas Park is good and would make a good "bright normal" lighting.

 

  

On 4/25/2024 at 1:44 PM, Steampunkette said:

And then maybe work on a Redside version of all the skyboxes which is just those four skyboxes but with the brightness and/or saturation dropped sharply.

 

But please don't drop the saturation on Redside.  I think it's down as far as it should go right now.  Possibly too far down.  I would maybe make the specular term more diffuse to reflect a more diffuse light, and maybe reduce the diffuse term just a hair.  (And I think the textures are already desaturated, that's not a lighting effect; I think the brighter colors Goldside are new textures, not lighting.)  But you don't want to go too far, the human eyeball will compress a lot of different lighting levels into a "comprehensible visual" range, and has a huge dynamic range.  You can see a lot more light as "normal" than you'd think.

 

Quick reference on the mark 1 eye (esp. "3. SENSITIVITY & DYNAMIC RANGE") : https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/cameras-vs-human-eye.htm

 

(There's such a thing as "hemisphere lighting" in computer graphics, and it's not hard to implement.  Adding this to the ambient term I think would add a lot of flexibility for many types of lighting.  https://subscription.packtpub.com/book/game-development/9781849694209/1/ch01lvl1sec09/hemispheric-ambient-light  )

[Shin Magmus]

Coming to a CoH near you: varying weather!  5% chance of the skybox changing to Fire Base Zulu / Cascade Archipelago: demonic hellstorm.

[Chris24601]

6 hours ago, Shin Magmus said:

Coming to a CoH near you: varying weather!  5% chance of the skybox changing to Fire Base Zulu / Cascade Archipelago: demonic hellstorm.

Actually, this is a good point and a possible avenue towards implementing a feature like this. Zone events like Rikti and Zombies change the skybox/lighting and can implement zone-wide power effects (the debt-protection power that shows up on your list of active effects).

 

It seems as if, if you wanted variable weather it could be approached as a benign Zone Event. Ex. Rain Event the skybox shifts to greyish clouds and everyone in zone gets the “rainfall FX” power effect until the event ends. Cloudy Event just changes the skybox/lighting for the duration.

 

No idea if that’s feasible, but it might be a place to start looking.

[Steampunkette]

23 hours ago, gameboy1234 said:

But please don't drop the saturation on Redside.

I just meant the saturation and brightness of these Skyboxes so that they'd fit in with the Aesthetics of the Isles, not "Make the Isles Greyer!"

 

Like make a copy, drop the saturation/lighting to match the Isles' current saturation/lighting and then put it in the Isles. Rather than having bright blue skies and the colors/aesthetics of the Isles clashing with it.