Creepy Fog/Overcast levels?

[viZhual]

Hello, everyone!

 

I'm working on creating a epoch server with a focus on environmental immersion (including night play, 1st person only) and rare high-level military loot.  I just can't get the Fog and overcast settings correct.

I'm going for a very creepy cold/overcast/windy look.  Not so much the total grey-out but the rolling looking clouds.  Also I want to get the fog to be thick but not impossibly navigable and taper off with altitude.  I've seen many examples online but never their fog array settings.

 

Here are the weather settings I'm using now (but I've tried many fog array variants):

 

• Chenarus Map - I've read that fog height settings may not import correctly into Arma3.
• WeatherStaticForecast[] = {58,0.2,{40,1,40},0.8,{1,50}};

 

At night, the light becomes impossibly dark (by morning it's a total grey-out).  I like the idea of requiring the use of flashlights/etc but the screen gets so dark, that even flashlights fade 100% to blackness.  I'm sure I'm making elementary mistakes.  This is the very first time I've tried modding Arma.  Be gentle!

 

I have tried searching the forums for tips and I have solved other problems I've run into.  But the weather I just can't solve and it's beyond frustrating at the moment..  Help!

 

EDIT:  I want the weather to always be like this and not change.  No clear days in my apocalypse! :)

 

Thanks in advance!

[viZhual]

UPDATE:

 

I think I have finally found an acceptable set of values for the Fog.  However, the weather will eventually start migrating towards better conditions about an hour or so into the server run time.  I very much want it to stay gloomy. :) 

 

Also - the fog seems to disappear at night.  It's not that I just can't see it.  The air actually clears but my view distance remains close. (Which is good for my needs)  Is this an Arma 3 "feature"?

 

Suggestions?

[dodgitech10]

Hi mate,

Have you tried do this to your epochconfig.hpp. Should stop weather changing during the mission.

 

events[] = {

    { 3600, "CarnivalSpawner" }, // SECOND <scalar>, EVENT <string>

    { 2400, "EarthQuake" },

    /*{ 1800, "ChangeWeather" }, Comment out this line*/

    { 1200, "ContainerSpawner" },

    { 300, "PlantSpawner" } //No comma on last Entry

};

[raymix]

Arma 3 uses what's called - keyframes for its weather system that are generated up front. Kinda like an animation keyframes if you will... When you apply effects, by default they will dissapear in around 30mins to 2 hours depending on effect.

To keep dynamics, your mission file by default is set to automatic weather, which you can change back to manual, but that means you'll be responsible for dynamics yourself.

I've actually made my own tool that does most of this for me, however I can't share it just yet, but since you have your feet wet already into this, you might find some info interesting in the video I posted... while I'm not showing any code, think you'll quickly realize what's going there and adjust your values appropriately (approximately I guess).

 

Good luck.

[viZhual]

 

Hi mate,

Have you tried do this to your epochconfig.hpp. Should stop weather changing during the mission.

 

events[] = {

    { 3600, "CarnivalSpawner" }, // SECOND <scalar>, EVENT <string>

    { 2400, "EarthQuake" },

    /*{ 1800, "ChangeWeather" }, Comment out this line*/

    { 1200, "ContainerSpawner" },

    { 300, "PlantSpawner" } //No comma on last Entry

};

 

 

 

Yep.  Sure did.  And it helped.  But eventually something triggers and the overcast starts to cycle up/down along with the rain.  I have not had a chance to sit through a full 4 hour restart cycle.  I'll see if a buddy can do that.

 

Would changing the WeatherChangeTime = 1200; have any effect?  Should it perhaps be set much higher or to zero?

 

Thanks!

[viZhual]

Arma 3 uses what's called - keyframes for its weather system that are generated up front. Kinda like an animation keyframes if you will... When you apply effects, by default they will dissapear in around 30mins to 2 hours depending on effect.

To keep dynamics, your mission file by default is set to automatic weather, which you can change back to manual, but that means you'll be responsible for dynamics yourself.

I've actually made my own tool that does most of this for me, however I can't share it just yet, but since you have your feet wet already into this, you might find some info interesting in the video I posted... while I'm not showing any code, think you'll quickly realize what's going there and adjust your values appropriately (approximately I guess).

 

Good luck.

 

I sure do know what keyframes are.  Makes sense now why even manually set the weather eventually changes.  Do you know if the time (30 mins or 2 hours) is REALtime or GAMEtime?  I can slow the clock way down if needed.  I like how we both want a "spooky" environment. :)  Also that's a very cool utility!  Well done.

 

I think I have an idea of what to do.  I'm wondering if you could share something with me regarding the Fog settings.  You said the Density is a scale of 0 -> 1.  Altitude is a scale from 0 -> 2000.  What is the min->max of the Decay?  I'm going to assume it is also 0 -> 1 and go tweak my settings now.

 

Does Epoch have functions to set the additional weather items you have that are extra?  It's array (above in first post) has some, but not all of them.

 

Thanks for the video.  It helped a lot.

 

-viZ

[raymix]

Well... interesting question about real time vs game time. I'd go with second one, because game doesn't really touch real world time unless you configure it so. Date and time can be set to anything you want.

If you are working on local test server (which you should), you can enable debug console from description.ext file which would allow you to execute code snippets in live game. This way you can use command like skipTime while playing around with atmospheric settings. In video you saw instant changes, that's because I was rolling 24 hours back, apply settings, each command was given 24h inside time parameters and then skipped 24 hours back ahead.

Hmm.. maybe this code will make more sense:

_time = 24*60*60; //24h
skipTime -24;
_time setLightnings 0;
_time setOvercast 0;
_time setRainbow 0;
_time setGusts 0;

_time setRain 0;
_time setFog [0, 0, 0];

skipTime 24;
simulWeatherSync;

When you are done playing around, apply settings to Epoch's own weather system (or make your own).

 

Not sure if you've noticed, but at very start I am showing how to disable auto weather, so anything you apply "should" persist, haven't tested this much tho... but those settings do interfere with some of code that I know for sure, found this in one of bug reports.

 

goes without saying you want fog array and not the normal fog command. Altitude can be anything, its in meters - so that depends on your terrain, I just needed range for the tool, so went with 1000 (not sure why I said 2000 in video). Both density and decay are scalar values 0-1. In fact fog altitude was the only one that had odd range, rest of commands have 0 to 1 if that helps.

 

I don't know anything about a3 epoch specifically, sorry... just stuff about engine itself.

[dodgitech10]

Could a script be implemented to change the weather back every half hour with slightly different values for dynamic weather. 

[dodgitech10]

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/forceWeatherChangeTry using this, I havn't looked at it much but will try and make a file to change the weather every half hour. But beware as it says will cause lag

 

 

EDIT: Also found this, This guy seems to be on to it better. https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/154784-creating-dynamic-weather-in-arma-3/

[tinboye]

Did epoch finally fix it so u can use static settings without breaking the game

[viZhual]

Well... interesting question about real time vs game time. I'd go with second one, because game doesn't really touch real world time unless you configure it so. Date and time can be set to anything you want.

If you are working on local test server (which you should), you can enable debug console from description.ext file which would allow you to execute code snippets in live game. This way you can use command like skipTime while playing around with atmospheric settings. In video you saw instant changes, that's because I was rolling 24 hours back, apply settings, each command was given 24h inside time parameters and then skipped 24 hours back ahead.

Hmm.. maybe this code will make more sense:

 

<snip> 

 

When you are done playing around, apply settings to Epoch's own weather system (or make your own).

 

Not sure if you've noticed, but at very start I am showing how to disable auto weather, so anything you apply "should" persist, haven't tested this much tho... but those settings do interfere with some of code that I know for sure, found this in one of bug reports.

 

goes without saying you want fog array and not the normal fog command. Altitude can be anything, its in meters - so that depends on your terrain, I just needed range for the tool, so went with 1000 (not sure why I said 2000 in video). Both density and decay are scalar values 0-1. In fact fog altitude was the only one that had odd range, rest of commands have 0 to 1 if that helps.

 

I don't know anything about a3 epoch specifically, sorry... just stuff about engine itself.

 

The fog array is the exact command I'm trying to get just right.  I think I made some progress late last night.  

 

I'm using the Chenarus map from the AiA pack.  I can get the wweather to look exactly how I want but I Can't get it over the whole map.  Chenarus seems to slope upward in a North-West direction.  The further you get from the coast, the less the fog effect is.  

 

I compensated for this by setting the Altitude setting very high (300-400 meters) to coincide with the terrain height seen on the topo map.  With this value, only the highest peaks will be clear.  However, at this high setting, being in the lowest altitude, on the coast for example, it is a total grey-out.  There is a point where the base level of fog is 100% dense if the altitude is high enough.  I need to play with this more.

 

I've learned a lot about the weather engine so far from your posts/video.  I may end up having to write my own weather keyframe for the engine to move to.  For example, set the weather how I like it at server start then have it set to a very close value and migrate to it over the next hour.  It seems it should be fairly easy to create a script to set weather options at intervals and let the engine do the change itself without a jarring change.  I need to think about this one...

[viZhual]

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/forceWeatherChangeTry using this, I havn't looked at it much but will try and make a file to change the weather every half hour. But beware as it says will cause lag

 

 

EDIT: Also found this, This guy seems to be on to it better. https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/154784-creating-dynamic-weather-in-arma-3/

 

I'll read up on this tonight.  It should be possible to set weather without lag.  For example, setting weather to nearly the exact same conditions and let the engine just creep back and forth on its own?

[viZhual]

Did epoch finally fix it so u can use static settings without breaking the game

 

Well, it doesn't seem to break for me!  How did it break before?

[Richie]

Did epoch finally fix it so u can use static settings without breaking the game

 

It was never broke if i remember rightly, you just had to have a wind value.

[viZhual]

It was never broke if i remember rightly, you just had to have a wind value.

 

Yes, I did read that.  I believe that simply setting it as {1,1} was the fix.

[dodgitech10]

I was looking through the Changeweather.sqf and from my understanding the first 21 lines in the files describe to me that the weather is based on how much time goes by. So if your time multiplier is set to x4 the weather while adjust accordingly from stand values at real time?. (No coding knowledge, My games dev course was a scam only taught me UDK). So I might be wrong but I am trying.

[raymix]

My games dev course was a scam only taught me UDK). So I might be wrong but I am trying.

offtopic:

Was it by any chance in.. Ireland? If so I might know the exact school :)

[dodgitech10]

offtopic:

Was it by any chance in.. Ireland? If so I might know the exact school :)

 

 

Australia

[viZhual]

I was looking through the Changeweather.sqf and from my understanding the first 21 lines in the files describe to me that the weather is based on how much time goes by. So if your time multiplier is set to x4 the weather while adjust accordingly from stand values at real time?. (No coding knowledge, My games dev course was a scam only taught me UDK). So I might be wrong but I am trying.

 

I'll need to do more digging to fully understand the weather system.  That being said, I did find the culprit to the grey-out effect I was getting.  It was directly related to the Altitude setting of Epochs Static weather command.  And I assume the fogArray command as well.  It appears, that if you are "below" the base level enough, it just goes100% grey.  With trial and error, i'll be ale to figure out the right value to get the effect I want.  I just won't be able to have it all over Chenarus.  This map constantly slopes upward as you go north and west.  Oh, well!  Having creepy main cities isn't such a bad thing.  They are already hot beds of activity.  Now this will just change the dynamic some. :)  A lot less snipers for sure!

 

I'm still open to exploring the fog weather effect deeper but I think my original problem has been solved by limiting the altitude to under 40m.  I'm still working on the sweet spot.  Thanks for all the replies.  I learned more than I expected from the helpful links and code snippets.   Once upon a time I might have coded my own weather system but I'm just too mentally tired, lol.  I'll have to be satisfied with a creepy coastline.  ;)

 

viZ

[raymix]

Ya know, this is not the only way to create fog effects. There's scripts out there that uses particle system to create creepy fog you might be interested in, goes by name "ground fog". Was quite popular back in A2 days, word of warning tho - particle system in this engine sucks, so it will eat up your fps pretty fast... but it does look pretty darn nice. I'll be creating myself a particle editor in near future, hopefully will find a way to keep good fps/quality ratio while studying it.

Good luck on your hunt!