Forcing sky box to be night sky

[mecharius 2]

Hi guys,

Today I followed some tutorials around the place and got my first home made "island" to load into Arma 2: CO. Yay!

However my theme is a fictional, sci-fi island, and so I was wondering if it was possible to somehow force the sky to the night time sky box (e.g the stars) even during the day. This along with some ppeffects could be used to simulate low/no atmosphere. It might look a bit loopy but I want to give it a go!

I've looked through the config.cpp file and am comfortable with the weather settings for changing the horizon and sky box and was hoping it was as simple as just typing in the "official" night time skybox in the config.cpp?? I've had a brief look at the core files and mods but couldn't really see anything called "night_time_skybox.pbo" or its Czech equivalent.

Is this even possible, and if so do you know which file is the one I'm after? Thanks!

[mecharius 2]

I tried to resolve this by just making a custom star texture for the sky... it doesn't look great and I'd like to get rid of the stretched stars in the foreground layer, but I think you get the idea... the game time is about 7am. Obviously its a bit bland at the moment - lacking clutter and many terrain features.

[das attorney 857]

Have you tried playing about with the cfgWorld parameters for your island?

I remember that you can set latitude and longitude in cfgWorlds. Maybe you could set them to a place that would be in near perpetual darkness?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_night

Not sure it would work, but might be worth checking out.

[bushlurker 45]

Hi mecharius!

Take a look at this thread. That mod featured an "asteroid/moon" type terrain with night sky - I'm pretty sure it just replaces all the different sky textures with the same "sci-fi sky" image... works quite well...

If you wanted just the usual in-game night time all the time then - theoretically - you could just leave the sky images alone and tweak lighting parameters instead,,,

If you've looked at a config or two you'll have seen something like this...

		class Lighting: DefaultLighting
	{
		groundReflection[] = {0.06,0.06,0.03};
	};
	class DayLightingBrightAlmost: DayLightingBrightAlmost
	{
		deepNight[] = {[color="#FF0000"]-15[/color],{0.037,0.063,0.091},{0.001,0.001,0.0012},{0.067,0.075,0.091},{0.003,0.004,0.006},{0.0001,0.0001,0.0002},{0.0001,0.0001,0.0002},0};
		fullNight[] = {[color="#FF0000"]-5[/color],{0.182,0.213,0.25},{0.05,0.111,0.221},{0.04,0.034,0.004},{0.039,0.049,0.072},{0.082,0.128,0.185},{0.283,0.35,0.431},0};
		sunMoon[] = {[color="#FF0000"]-3.75[/color],{0.377,0.441,0.518},{0.103,0.227,0.453},{0.04,0.034,0.004},{0.039,0.049,0.072},{0.174,0.274,0.395},{0.582,0.72,0.887},0.5};
		earlySun[] = {[color="#FF0000"]-2.5[/color],{0.675,0.69,0.784},{0.22,0.322,0.471},{0.04,0.034,0.004},{0.039,0.049,0.072},{0.424,0.549,0.745},{0.698,0.753,0.894},1};
		sunrise[] = {[color="#FF0000"]0[/color],{0.675,0.69,0.784},{0.478,0.51,0.659},{0.2,0.19,0.07},{0.124,0.161,0.236},{{0.847,0.855,0.965},0.2},{{0.933,0.949,0.996},2},1};
		earlyMorning[] = {[color="#FF0000"]3[/color],{{0.844,0.61,0.469},2},{0.424,0.557,0.651},{{1,0.45,0.2},1},{0.12,0.26,0.38},{{0.428,0.579,0.743},2},{{0.844,0.61,0.469},2.7},1};
		midMorning[] = {[color="#FF0000"]8[/color],{{0.822,0.75,0.646},3.8},{{0.383,0.58,0.858},1.3},{{1.3,0.9,0.61},3.8},{{0.12,0.18,0.28},0.5},{{0.322,0.478,0.675},3.5},{{1.0,0.929,0.815},4.7},1};
		morning[] = {[color="#FF0000"]16[/color],{{1,0.95,0.91},11.2},{{0.12,0.18,0.28},7.5},{{1,0.95,0.91},11.2},{{0.12,0.16,0.18},7.5},{{0.14,0.18,0.24},10.5},{{0.5,0.6,0.9},11.7},1};
		noon[] = {[color="#FF0000"]45[/color],{{0.98,0.96,0.9},13.55},{{0.3,0.32,0.35},9.5},{{1,0.95,0.91},13.2},{{0.12,0.16,0.18},9.5},{{0.14,0.14,0.14},12.5},{{0.5,0.6,0.9},13.7},1};
	};
	class DayLightingRainy: DayLightingRainy
	{
		deepNight[] = {[color="#FF0000"][color="#FF0000"]-15[/color][/color],{0.0034,0.0034,0.004},{0.003,0.003,0.003},{0.0034,0.0034,0.004},{0.003,0.003,0.003},{0.001,0.001,0.002},{0.001,0.001,0.002},0};
		fullNight[] = {[color="#FF0000"]-5[/color],{0.023,0.023,0.023},{0.02,0.02,0.02},{0.023,0.023,0.023},{0.02,0.02,0.02},{0.01,0.01,0.02},{0.08,0.06,0.06},0};
		sunMoon[] = {[color="#FF0000"]-3.75[/color],{0.04,0.04,0.05},{0.04,0.04,0.05},{0.04,0.04,0.05},{0.04,0.04,0.05},{0.04,0.035,0.04},{0.11,0.08,0.09},0.5};
		earlySun[] = {[color="#FF0000"]-2.5[/color],{0.0689,0.0689,0.0804},{0.06,0.06,0.07},{0.0689,0.0689,0.0804},{0.06,0.06,0.07},{0.08,0.07,0.08},{0.14,0.1,0.12},0.5};
		earlyMorning[] = {[color="#FF0000"]0[/color],{{1,1,1},"(-4)+3.95"},{{1,1,1},"(-4)+3.0"},{{1,1,1},"(-4)+3.95"},{{1,1,1},"(-4)+3.0"},{{1,1,1},"(-4)+4"},{{1,1,1},"(-4)+5.5"},1};
		morning[] = {[color="#FF0000"]5[/color],{{1,1,1},"(-4)+5.7"},{{1,1,1},"(-4)+4.5"},{{1,1,1},"(-4)+5.7"},{{1,1,1},"(-4)+4.5"},{{1,1,1},"(-4)+7"},{{1,1,1},"(-4)+8"},1};
		lateMorning[] = {[color="#FF0000"]23[/color],{{1,1,1},"(-4)+10.45"},{{1,1,1},"(-4)+9.75"},{{1,1,1},"(-4)+10.45"},{{1,1,1},"(-4)+9.75"},{{1,1,1},"(-4)+12"},{{1,1,1},"(-4)+12.75"},1};
		noon[] = {[color="#FF0000"]67[/color],{{1,1,1},"(-4)+12.5"},{{1,1,1},"(-4)+11"},{{1,1,1},"(-4)+12"},{{1,1,1},"(-4)+11"},{{1,1,1},"(-4)+13.5"},{{1,1,1},"(-4)+14"},1};
	};

Basically, the parameter in red seems to be the main "daylight intensity" control... if you were to replace all the other gradually increasing light stages parameters with the values from the "deepNight" stage then it - should - stay "deepNight" - allDay.. ;)

I've never tried this but it would be relatively easy to try and it'd be cool if it worked, or at least turned out sortof wierd or sci-fi ...

Some of those other lighting parameters are worth playing with too - the ones like this {1,1,1} are RGB values in the range 0 > 1.0 so you could mess about with daylight colours to get some daytime "alien effects" - perhaps combined with a custom sky image with a big planet nearby or something...

The sky doesn't have to be blue

B

Edited May 6, 2013 by Bushlurker

[mecharius 2]

Thanks for the replies guys - I've got a basic handle on getting the sky to show stars but your suggestions should make it look a lot nicer.

Have you tried playing about with the cfgWorld parameters for your island?

Not yet... but yes I'll have a look, thanks! P.S. Battlestar Galactica... :inlove:

Take a look at this thread. That mod featured an "asteroid/moon" type terrain with night sky

Looks pretty sweet... yeah, I've just replaced all the sky textures with a night one which looks ok, just need to work out how to get rid of the stretched foreground stars. I dropped the island into A3 the other day and it worked straight away so I think I'm going to switch on over. I can't believe that there isn't a night sky texture already included somewhere by BI - what do they use normally to render the night sky?!? If I only I spoke Czech.

Funnily enough when I was running around on the moon in A3 the other day I looked up and I could see the moon. :butbut:

If you've looked at a config or two you'll have seen something like this...

I did see this large mass of numbers but was a bit daunted :) Thanks for the run down, I'll have another look.