Environment - Effects and colors-modules(was Sandstorm?)

[mcnools 62]

I noticed in atleast one of the Operation Arrowhead-missions that there was a lot of sand blowing around, has anyone figured out how to activate this in a user-made-mission? I'm guessing you do it with the weather module or something, but does anyone know exactly how to?

Or perhaps it's done with the new Environment - Effects-module? Speaking of which, I would like to know more about how it works, and about how the Environment - colors-module works.

Here's what I've come up with so far (from a post further down in this topic):

Looks like the color-module changes the colour of objects and terrain to better suit the weather from the environment effects, in other words, using it in combination with the snow, it makes things a bit more.. white. Seems to work without the effects-module aswell, colouring the terrain depending on what time of the year it is (possible also time of day, haven't tried this yet)

It seems like the weather is depending on the time of year, in other words, it's snowing during the winter, and it's dusty during warmer periods, it seems, atleast this is what I got out of my testing.

In other words, all you need to do is to place a Environment Colors and/or Effects-module on the map, and it works depending on the time of year.

It would be nice to know if you could control what type of effects are created by entering something in the Init-line aswell though.

Edited July 1, 2010 by McNools

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Because the game is two days old?

[Egosa-U 10]

Use a pbo-extractor to gain editor-editable mission files to learn from..

[mcnools 62]

Use a pbo-extractor to gain editor-editable mission files to learn from..

I tried that, but the pbo's from OA doesn't seem to unpack properly.

[santafee 10]

Google for "Eliteness". Working.

[Big Dawg KS 6]

Or get PBO View, it works fine for OA data.

[buliwyf 4]

Or get the latest version of CPBO from Kegetys`website...

>> click <<

:rolleyes:

[mcnools 62]

Thanks for your suggestions guys, I'll try that out, I was going to look through the mission files myself, but like I said, the pbo-extractor I used wasn't working, so thanks!

Edit: I checked the missions, but I only found environment effects and color modules without anything in their init-line, so I'm still not sure how they work.

Looks like I did manage to get it snowing or something using the environment effects-module combined with bad weather though, but colors seems to do nothing.

Edit again: Looks like the color-module changes the colour of objects and terrain to better suit the weather from the environment effects, in other words, using it in combination with the snow, it makes things a bit more.. white. Seems to work without the effects-module aswell, colouring the terrain depending on what time of the year it is (possible also time of day, haven't tried this yet)

And edit once again: Ah, it seems like the weather is depending on the time of year, in other words, it's snowing during the winter, and it's dusty during warmer periods, it seems, atleast this is what I got out of my testing.

In one mission they used some sort of dust emitters with scrips etc. though, but I'm not sure how to get it to work.

Edited July 1, 2010 by McNools

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Oh, cool. Nice find.

[Continue 10]

I actually got that "sand effect" in the editor the other day. Like the wind was kicking up sand around the ground. The only problem is that I didn't really think about how I did it. I just thought it was the environment effects module. But now when I actually want it to appear I can't. This is really annoying. I've tried different months, times, weather etc. Any ideas?

Atleast I think I did... I have no memory of a vehicle close that was kicking up dust...

---EDIT---

Okay, I lied in the text above. Because I couldn't have been testing so many different times on the day to try kicking this sand effect in. My guess is that's it's there all the time when "Environment - Effects" module is on, but it's not that visible when it's too bright. 17:50 June the 28th, good weather, both environment effects and color module is present, and it's visible. Not that much though.

Edited July 11, 2010 by Continue

[mcnools 62]

I've seen dust effects using the effects module, but it seems rather random for some reason, it would be nice if anyone could figure out how to use these models more, so that we can control the amount of sand or something.

I think I got the most sand effect when using rather bad weather, in the summer season (in the winter, it's just snowing).

[Mr. Charles 22]

http://www.assaultmissionstudio.de/downloads.php?page_id=385

This creates some dust, but i would like to get a hint to make a sandstorm =S

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Most likely you won't be able to. Sand needs to move with the wind in order to be believable, so you don't get off the hook by simply increasing the particle size. The best I could come up with at the time was adding blur if you were facing the wind. As it was a SP mission only I could make use of setIdentity to change glasses, and when glasses were on dust wouldn't harass you. I might have different particle parameters and more frequent particle drops, but I couldn't set it as high as I wanted to and still have playable framerates.

[tyler4171 10]

My guess is that's it's there all the time when "Environment - Effects" module is on

This is true unless it is raining I believe, the Colours module also adds better color to the atmoshpere for rainy weather.