The sun

The Purple Panzer · Post by **The Purple Panzer** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 2:53 am

In my last map (posted in another forum) I included a representation of Stonehenge as it is now. I didn't put in the heelstone, and it got me thinking: how accurate is the sun movement in the game?

Now I admit this is probably silly, and nobody will likely care - but I at least am strongly affected by light and shadow, and the apparent time of day and time of season. It'd be great if servers let you put in latitude and longitude, and the movement of the sun were correct - including seasonal variation of sun position and shadow length. It might seem minor, but I believe it's been built into our consciousness for a few million years - and it does make a difference in attitude when playing.

I expect it's probably a really minor code change, but one that requires some careful thinking to do right. But it'd be nice.

Post by **trepan** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 3:33 am

currently, the latitude and longtitude
are set in the config file on the client
side. i do not know how accurate the
lighting representation is.

for server side control,
patches are welcomed.

JeffM · Post by **JeffM** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 3:44 pm

It's actualy prety accurate, it computes where you would be on the earth based on those coords and computes the sun and moon. It's the same computations that figure out moon phase and sunrise and sunset stuff.

rr · Post by rr » Mon Sep 20, 2004 10:34 pm

"Since the dawn of time man has yearned to destroy the sun" - C.M. Burns

Truer words have never been spoken. I say get rid of that thing once and for all, it just screws with the lighting and requires me to hold the - key for 10 seconds everyone once and awhile.

Workaphobia · Post by **Workaphobia** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 12:30 am

That was one of my favorite lines, rr. Of course, all of the early ones are my favorites.

Ahem.. the only complaint I have about the whole day night thing is that with lighting enabled it is impossible to play effectively at night and during certain times of the day. The entire system needs a little more ambient light so you can see what you're doing, and it never helps when two sides of a building are equally poorly lit.

Logwad · Post by **Logwad** » Wed Sep 22, 2004 2:25 am

What would be cool is if servers could choose to control the time of day or night. And if light sources other than the sun could be created.

Doing this would allow you to create all dark maps were you could create dark "doom"-like areas with scattered lighting (would work best if servers could disable the radar). This opens up possibilities of new flags for these specific kind of areas.

Post by **trepan** » Wed Sep 22, 2004 8:09 am

Just noticed this patch submitted by DTR:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.ph ... tid=303248
It allows one to set the latitude and longtitude
from the server.

nurdc0re · Post by **nurdc0re** » Wed Sep 22, 2004 10:03 pm

Workaphobia wrote:Ahem.. the only complaint I have about the whole day night thing is that with lighting enabled it is impossible to play effectively at night and during certain times of the day. The entire system needs a little more ambient light so you can see what you're doing, and it never helps when two sides of a building are equally poorly lit.

Agreed, I've tried using it before on my mac and it was way too dark at night (even when i went in shadowns from building during the day) so I just turned it off. If we could just fix that, I would love to use it.

The Purple Panzer · Post by **The Purple Panzer** » Sat Sep 25, 2004 2:30 am

Yet it might be just as interesting if the game stayed true to nature - real shadows (though of course not on both sides of a building), and in darkness either illumination objects (local lights) to cast light, or... headlights. You turn them on, and you light up your visual cone, and see well there; but others see you too, just as you see a car at night. It would I think add a dimension to the game, sort of like a form of stealth/cloaking, but by choice (do I turn my lights on or not?) Think, for example, of a game of paintball by strong moonlight, in which the players carry powerful lamps which they may use at will.

It might be a very interesting dimension too, as a team could arrange for someone to be the illuminator at a planned moment, and others to defend against opportunistic attackers as well as to prosecute any illuminated targets: sort of an "everybody get in position", "lights on", "lights off", "kill", with the last two steps overlapping. Sort of combat by firefly.

Workaphobia · Post by **Workaphobia** » Sat Sep 25, 2004 2:50 am

I would like to see that dimension added to the game, but I think it's just another opportunity for a hacker/cheater to gain an edge by switching to daylight locally even if the server prohibits it.

Rebel Chik0rita · Post by **Rebel Chik0rita** » Sat Sep 25, 2004 5:37 pm

i prefer the night or dusk settings =)

so the sun really doesn't bother me when i play . heh . to mee it just feels kinda weird to shoot someone on a nice beautiful bz day ;)

but sometimes when i'm observing i think it would be neat at least visually to see different kinds of clouds . a few big fluffy clouds that'll cast moving shadows along the ground during the day .

i guess we all have our lil bz wish list ;) heehe

Post by **DTRemenak** » Sun Sep 26, 2004 8:53 pm

I've revised and committed the synclocation patch, so in 1.12 you'll be able to set the latitude and longitude server-side for maps like stonehenge.