Some New Cloud Testing

[bustr]

These are screen shots from my new terrain Oceania I'm using to test the latest version of the cloud editor and a whole arena weather cloud system. Clouds don't cause FPS hits like they used to when I tested the last version against my terrain BowlMA by being near them.  Flying up thorough heavy clouds my FPS dipped into the 40's for a moment and cleared as soon as I got close to the outside of the cloud to exit it. I only have a GTX 760 card. And so far I can't break this thing like I did almost daily when I was testing the previous version. I'm in 1024 texture mode with shadows turned on and sliders at the default.

On the ground in a GV, if I pushed all sliders to the max, FPS dipped as low as 12 under cloud shadows and raised to 20-30 depending on the trees and clutter. Personally I don't play the game with shadows on, its as bad as night time where each cloud shadow is. Shadows are on for my testing purposes while I try to make this thing give me a dmp file, so far it's been boring and steady. All of the minimizing to the desktop and re-entering today isn't creating a dmp file either. When the program has an unexpected halt, a dmp file of the incident is dropped into the game's temp folder to submit in the Bug forum. I'm still paranoid about last time but, everything Hitech said he fixed from the last version is working. I'm probably being silly about this.

Here are 10 screen shots from my testing, and you get to see what it looks like on the outside of the arena.

[Puma44]

Nice Buster!  Looks like the real thing.

[bustr]

There is a 5 picture limit to each page, this group has the look on the outside of the arena.

[bustr]

Thank Hitech, he made all of this possible for me to accomplish.

[serun]

Thanks Hitech .

Thanks Bustr.

Those clouds look really nice!

[lyric1]

 

[1stpar3]

Are the "Kick to desktop" instances based on reduced performance of Graphics card? If so...do you know why? Looking good, SIR 

[TWCAxew]

WTG, looks awesome! Gotta love clouds!

DutchVII

[Greebo]

The new clouds look really good Bustr. I was never a fan of the AHIII'S original clouds, they looked obviously fake to my eyes.

[Goat1]

Very cool 

Goat

[Nefarious]

They look awesome! I'd like to have a couple cloud sets for special event maps!

[bustr]

For some reason yesterday when I would copy links from my host then paste them in here, the previous screen capture's copied link would paste. The top screen shot is one that happened to. Because this terrain is a 10x10, and all work spaces are 20x20. There is another 10x10 of water surrounding this 10x10 arena. My solution was to raise all 4 edges to 19.5k and pull glacier cuts and runoff canyons down to the water where I built all of the volcanic islands. I wanted to show both sides of the edge of the map boarder as screen shots.

Inside of the edge of the map.




Outside of the edge of the map.




As a joke I dropped in some glaciers for the strat raiders to look at in all three countries.

[Bruv119]

is there any way of randomising the heights / thickness and layers. 

It still looks a little 2 dimensional to me.   

[oboe]

is there any way of randomising the heights / thickness and layers. 

It still looks a little 2 dimensional to me.

But isn't that the way clouds are in real life?  i.e., don't they tend to form at a particular altitude due to atmospheric variables?   And they tend to dissipate at roughly the same height (e.g. climbing out through the cloud deck)?

[bustr]

You will have to ask Hitech about the 3D structure of this generation of clouds, he or Waffle built them. I'm using his clouds that are available from the menu. I have a restriction of making sure there is a minimum of 40 miles between logical blocks of clouds out of that menu so you don't take FPS hits processing two moving cloud groups. After that I have control of time duration, direction, alt, and speed of travel. The clouds do grow some as they travel and gain alt over a range you can define.

I chose cloud groups based on what kinds of clouds will generate at what elevations over the underlying landscape. I also chose 10k as the minimum alt after testing because any lower creates a sense of claustrophobia which gets worse if you enable shadows. The high alt cirrus layer I chose is the thinnest one because the thicker you make them, the more they add to visual confusion and claustrophobia when coupled with groups of clouds and cuts down on light in general to a degree.

The new cloud editor allows you to create your own clouds, so contact Hitech with any questions on that part of the new cloud editor. I do not know the procedure to have any of your own clouds used in the Melee arena. It's easier for me to use the existing menu of clouds knowing Hitech has passed them for use in the MA.

Don't shoot the messenger.....

Note: Clouds that move in from over an edge of the map are set to 12,000-15,000. Clouds that are near the opposite edge of the map and will pass off the map edge in transit are 10,000-13,000 to look like the land heat is raising up the clouds from over the water. Clouds inside of the four edges of the map passing over islands and water are 8,000-10,000. Having an issue with a sense of 2Dishness is an illusion because of how I chose to take the screen captures to show off Hitech's new clouds to this audience. And the 40 mile separation from other cloud blocks so you have nothing to use as a perspective. Also this map is an area of 250milesx250miles, in the real world often an area like that does not have large variations in cloud elevation unless you live next to a mountain range.

I found over the years I didn't like aspects of the game and Hitech had other things to deal with than my gripes. So I have given terrains a shot to solve some of my gripes and now clouds. Everyone is free to go for it and enchant the community with their vision of the game. I could not change the structure of the clouds if I wanted to for MA use, these is what we gots.