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At least 16GB of main DRAM.
These stats may change as we continue to test.
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I personally don't worry to much about dayor night cycle, but I can see how some would. :) I personally feel, I'd prefer the possibility of a day and night cycle that kept in line with where ever Titan City is located, but I can also see why others don't like that idea.
Either way, I see it as minor so I'm not really picky. I do love the idea of weather effects though! I don't know if I'd want it only raining during rainy seasons, but maybe a random thing table with varying chances of weather dependent on the season.
So, likely sunny during summer with small chances of rain or thunderstorms. During winter, rain off the table, with better chances of snow. Etc.
I'm in the camp that feels that a day-night cycle has a lot impact on the game. So long, as I am certain someone has mentioned, there are no missions that can be accessed or completed only during the day or the night. Or at least such missions should automatically pop up when in the appropriate zone at the appropriate time, so I can go do it right then. Something a bit like the 'area' missions in SWTOR.
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
Yep, or when certain mobs only appear at certain times of the day (ghosts in croatoa I believe), and you have an achievement to meet... but it is *always* daytime when you are able to play, because nighttime would be when you are working.
Not exactly "easy pickings". Hell, you could even extend the day/night cycle so that it isnt "once an hour you get day and night"... but around the maximum I would allow is a 2 hour cycle.
If there was season based wether, very unusual weather could be used to hint at certain events, like the clichė weather control mashine plot or the arrival of a being so powerful, it even affects local weather.
That's a cool idea!
Spurn all ye kindle.
...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WM2o_qSpaA Immediately came to mind.
[B]Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...[/B]
Roleplayer; Esteemed Villain
[img]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/5.jpg[/img]
Lots of well thought out arguments on both sides of the debate here. This can only be a good thing in my view. Reasoned debate = informed decisions = better end product.
I think I'd go for cosmetic weather (weather than can be toggled on/off in the game settings with no in-game impact) and game-impact weather (The sky going green, an unanticipated eclipse, the seas bubbling & boiling) as a warning to some major event.
The only issue I can see is how you'd have the game-impact weather manifest on a PC that has cosmetic weather turned off. Could they be separated, or would we be looking at cosmetic weather & FMV/Cut Scene Plot-Signalling weather instead?
If Titan City is in MA USA, then go for MA USA weather. It would feel better to me anyway. I live on the North-East coast of the UK. We have sunny & cold, raining & colder, and hail/snowing and absolutely freezing! (Not that you'd think it from the 'summer only' dress code, but that's another story!)
Holiday-wise; go with what works. I see no problem incorporating a mix of factual & fictional holidays into Titan City. Halloween can be used for a supernatural event. The Kal Zandar Memorial Parade could work instead of a Saints Day Parade. (KZ is an alt of mine from another game, but I'm sure you get my meaning)
Americocentric (is that a word?) holidays in a fictional American city wouldn't bother me at all, but a mix of real & fictional holidays might work better.
Oh, as one last word regarding weather; check out the Unreal 4 youtube vids. (Links in the Unreal 4 thread) Hoo boy could we have weather!
You simply have a bit flag in the weather data to identify whether a particular weather state is natural (i.e., cosmetic) or artificial (game-impact); if it's artificial, it gets rendered even if the player's client settings have cosmetic weather turned off. You would still need to make provision for rendering the weather down to the minimum detail level to ensure that game-impact weather displays informatively to the player, but you should be doing that anyway.
Larger events typically also have a chat message/alert to inform the players that something's going on. That way people can be clued-in even if they have such effects turned off or if they're indoors or instanced. There's also the option of making such announcements game-wide so that people who are not in the affected zone know to go there if they want to participate in the event.
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
In agreement with Darth Fez, Larger events SHOULD have a chat message/alert to inform players. It feeds easily enough as an APB/BOLO alert for immersion into a city with an infrastructure to alert heroes/playerbase.
For the visual immersion there are ways to do weather that don't require overloading graphics engines with millions of particles onscreen or persistent scenery. As I mentioned earlier, that would be client based as a visual and non-gameplay impacting visual effect. With any weather system (none or highly realistic), simply applying an overcast cloud texture would be sufficient for many conditions: generally cloudy to rainy/snowy server-side, and rainy or snowy with visual precipitation client side. So the majority of effects like cloudy skies and green sky etc. should be visible to all players because they can be applied to the same light source as the sky's general lighting...it can be as simple as saying "the ambient light of the city is now overcast," "the ambient light in the city is now nighttime" or "the ambient light in the city is now ZOMGINVASION"
CoH already did this to some extent when the Rikti invasions and the zombie apocalypses hit zones and a green or dark orange tint colored the sky. I'd expect this to be done the same way from an end result perspective in CoT. Weather then becomes two parts: after-effects of various atmosphere that get turned anywhere from off to low or high for precipitation (purely a client-side graphics setting) and persistent effects which include icy water, snow pileup, rain puddles, and similar.
TLDR, weather as a game impacting mechanic should never depend on the players having a graphics setting turned on, and weather as an immersion aspect can be as robust or minimal as the devs see fit to allocate time to such effort, including what each level of impact there needs to be, look like, and cover.
[i]“The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” -Douglas Adams[/i]
I think since Hurricane Atlas is a huge integral part of our combined lore/story.. having weather activity receives higher priority for me.
It can rain in January and snow in June because we've already established that weather manipulation exists in our gameverse
Crowd Control Enthusiast
I think weather (except in some instanced zones) should follow the actual year. A passing rainstorm could come at any time, but it would be affected by the season. However, the seasons and years need not follow the day/night cycle. Yes, given weather-manipulating villains (and heroes) there might be localized weather anomalies, but they don't last long.
Hurricane Atlas was a natural storm, occurring at a natural time, which the villain manipulated - he did not create it.
I do not expect snow to fall on the whole city in July, just because some fruitcake waves his hands and makes whooshing sounds. Mother Nature is not that easy to fool.
Be Well!
Fireheart
:o Storm could do it!
Just to point out, in DCUO there are icey, snowy areas in Gotham due to Mr. Freeze. Maybe that could play into it too.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
A response on Facebook, for those of us who care about such things:
"That video" Shadow Elusive refers to is the video from Valiance that showcases their day/night cycle and weather.
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Can I twirl in the snow like Edward scissorhands ?!?!
Just gonna necro up this thread since I was thinking about in game weather today. And we haven't talked about it in awhile.
First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YPgVlBbtcs
This guy seems to have come up with a pretty interesting way to apply weather to the environment. Which I find more critical to "weather" in game than falling effects. Which Shadow Elusive alluded to in a post referenced above (links please?)
Secondly an item that was not addressed in this thread is ocean and wave elements. In COH we had a basic sound effect and some simple animations along the shorelines that weren't bad for a lake and could be explained by the warwalls, but didn't sell me on the ocean side aspect. So it'd be great to see a little more aggressive wave action and a sea that wasn't glassy flat. It would be neat to have an active water mass, IE one based in physics and would react to stimulus but I think that would be asking an awful lot. Also it would be neat to see large waves crashing against outcroppings and such.
Furthermore having a tide that would rise and recede would be pretty cool. Especially if it revealed a cave system or something like that.
That's all for now.
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I like this. Also, is it possible to have content that makes the most use of the sea and extreme weather as a setting, ie missions etc which involve moving over the decks/hulls of boats and ships being rocked about on the surface of a stormy ocean, the landscape resembling heavily fluctuating peaks and troughs and an ongoing blizzard of surf? Situations like these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6AfSckWSZA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cWyHLup7FY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG6FhK96dBg
"TRUST ME."
I think the way to work this is go ahead with the seasonal changes. Like tree changes, leaves, snow on the ground and such. And the actual weather effects can be turned on or off by the player. People know what their system can handle and if the weather effects are causing lag problems, give them the option to turn them off.
On the subject of day/night cycles. I really like the idea that was supposed to be used in CO, but never happend. Make the street crime in CoT increase during the night cycle. More spawns maybe. More spawns in alleys, under bridges and such. Leave enough spawns during the day to play but the night always seems to bring out the those wanting to do no good.
Just an idea.
Did someone say winter?
[youtube]HmZ62dsMj-8[/youtube]
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Say, that's pretty neat! I was pretty disappointed at first as it seemed like it was only updating the texture. But it also appears to be adding a physical layer of snow accumulation as you can see default robot's feet slowly getting buried in the snow. So now I wonder how far that physical layer can go. Does it gather differently on a sloped roof? Does it collect in corners? Will it slide off a tree branch when too much collects? Based on some of his other videos it seems like he is just demoing existing features. Which is promising for the future of weather in COT.
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It does mean, if nothing else, that if they want a "Winter" season to be present, they can literally just turn on the snow effects wherever they like, which is all sorts of cool.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
I get sick of the Weather in real time as it is. Also people will come and go. I do not think its a good idea to plae people in an atmosphere they may not like for months on end. I agree with the weather change and day and night. But not so much it matching real life.
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