6 ответов в этой теме

[andysks]

Hi all. Title doesn't say much, so here it goes. I was watching some people playing the new Dark Souls game, and I got impressed by the area design. Especially the way the player can see some structures far away from where he stands. 

 

From my experience, the fog attribute is the one controlling this for us here in NWN2. Does anyone know if its use is only aesthetic or does it also serve other uses... like prohibiting lag or whatever? Because I might have 99% of my areas for this campaign, but on the next I would like to try something like that.

 

 

Of course I understand that this is another engine, and most certainly the background is not the actual area, but rather a texture of some sort. I'm talking strictly about the NWN2 fog and if it would have any caveat if one sets it really high, making it essentially non existing, and adding fog effects for ambiance. 

[Tchos]

I don't think NWN2's fog actually prevents anything from being rendered, so it wouldn't hurt the frame rate to remove it entirely.  However, the area clip setting in the same section, where it actually cuts off the visible distance, I think does prevent rendering of things beyond it.  The fog, in that case, would be intended to ease the transition and hide the sudden cutoff of distant visible objects due to the area clip.  So you can't really discuss the fog without also discussing the area clip, and setting both to a far distance may indeed have a negative effect.  I can't say for sure.  I can say that NWN2's fog, being strictly linear and having no ramp, is not suitable for the kind of distance haze found in games made with, for instance, the Unreal engine.  Fog effects may work as you say, but would perhaps be more processor-intensive than the built-in fog.

[kamal_]

Hi all. Title doesn't say much, so here it goes. I was watching some people playing the new Dark Souls game, and I got impressed by the area design. Especially the way the player can see some structures far away from where he stands. 

 

From my experience, the fog attribute is the one controlling this for us here in NWN2. Does anyone know if its use is only aesthetic or does it also serve other uses... like prohibiting lag or whatever? Because I might have 99% of my areas for this campaign, but on the next I would like to try something like that.

 

Of course I understand that this is another engine, and most certainly the background is not the actual area, but rather a texture of some sort. I'm talking strictly about the NWN2 fog and if it would have any caveat if one sets it really high, making it essentially non existing, and adding fog effects for ambiance. 

If you played Crimmor, the clip distance mentioned by tchos is outside the area. That was based on the"exquisite daynight" setting from the Vault. What tchos said about it being for performance is almost assuredly true unless there was a fog that got mysteriously programmed into tons of games.

 

As for placeable vfx I suspect it depends on how the vfx is set up. You could haze the area by having your area fog start distance be negative a huge number and end distance a positive huge number. It would still be linear but most likely not noticeable. In any case a negative start distance makes for a haze everywhere because the haze starts before distance zero.

[andysks]

I did some test on a 24x24 area where my character was standing on one edge and some towers high above the ground on the other end of the map. Fog was set to -10000 start +10000 end and clip at +5000. No lag whatsoever so that's the good news. With encounters, effects, more trees and what gives this fact might change of course.

 

The true limitation though is the camera. On exploration and strategy mode one cannot see the towers placed there. On character mode yes, but who plays character mode anyway? So I would have to play with the area design in order to find the nice angles. When it comes to looking down though, the result is quite nice since exploration mode allows it. All this comes of course from the assumption that most people play exploration mode .

 

In any case, frame rate is not a problem at the moment. When I find some time I will try to overload an area with placeables and effects and see how that turns out with a high clip distance.

[Tchos]

The true limitation though is the camera. On exploration and strategy mode one cannot see the towers placed there. On character mode yes, but who plays character mode anyway?

 

I've been known to switch temporarily to character mode if I have a reason to look upward.

[GCoyote]

I only use character mode when climbing a steep slope (so I don't walk into an enemy) and occasionally when I can't get a decent camera angle on an object any other way.

[andysks]

Seems that some people do use it. Perhaps the area design should lead to a hint of something being high up, or design it such a way that the player sees what he/she is supposed to see.