Day/night cycle

[ickylevel]

I am considering to start working on a day/night cycle, with potential implications on gameplay as well, a la warcraft 3. Will probably require some map editor changes. What are your thought ? Could this go vanilla ?

[Nolanjoker]

is not too soon? i mean that is a misc feature.

[Palantius]

Instead of a day/night cycle, I think it would be better with seasons. This is also a planned feature, see: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Background%3A_Seasons. There are several advantages to have seasons instead of a night and day cycle, most of them are connected with the visual aspects. Nights for example could be to dark, and it makes more sense if a game in which you build cities and fight great wars spans over two or three years instead of ten days.

I do however agree with you that the seasons (or day/night cycle) should affect the gameplay. But all I can think of, is that during the winter stamina (when implemented) should be drained quicker. Also take a look at http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Background%3A_Weather. Maybe the weather would change once each season and affect the gameplay (in contrary to the design document). More gameplay effects could be added this way, for example, fog and snow would reduce the LOS (line of sight). Resource gathering speed could also be affected some way.

But if you're not interested in seasons and would only like to do a day/night cycle, I believe that would be a great feature that would probably be added to the game as an additional option.

[sanderd17]

Day-night would be easier to implement, seasons would need different textures per building, tree and ground surface (snow versions, autumn trees ...) so cost a lot of work.

Wrt gameplay, IMO any such cycles should be decided by the map designer on how long they should take, and even if they should be implemented.

[wraitii]

Season would need a new texture, a sort of "decal" that would be overlayed on the existing texture. It might be building-specific but could probably reuse the base texture UV. It could simulate snow covering, vegetation growing and decaying, dust in deserty maps, things like that.

Having a day/night cycle means adding dynamic lighting to the game, which is a lot more work.

Both would have to introduce big gameplay changes (night would emphasis LOS and stuffs like that, which is not too suited for an RTS in my opinion, at least 0 A.D. would require a ton of changes.) Seasons would slow units down in winter, stuffs like that, which is already less important.

[ickylevel]

Yeah seasons is probably a flagship feature that will make the game stand out. But would require more work on the art side. I want to do something on my own for now. So wraitii you mean the world lighting is precomputed when the map is loaded ?

Edited September 1, 2013 by ickylevel

[historic_bruno]

Instead of a day/night cycle, I think it would be better with seasons. This is also a planned feature, see: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Background%3A_Seasons.

Seasons may have been planned at one time, but that's an old document and we ruled them out, at least for Part 1 due to the large number of other higher priority tasks needed to reach that point. That's not to say that someone can't come along and implement seasons, but I don't think there will be any major push from us and it certainly isn't considered an important feature (day/night cycle is the same). Maybe as other gameplay features are implemented, if it looks like we'll have time and resources, we can re-evaluate seasons and day cycling.

[ickylevel]

Well I am experimenting atm (not being part of the team I don't have any obligations). I have made a basic light cycle but it makes the game 4x slower as CGameView::CheckLightEnv() is quite expensive. I need to find a compromise... I can at least update only parts of the terrain.

Do you think making only visibles objects/terrain dirty will be good enough?

Edited September 3, 2013 by ickylevel