Wow, my streams and rivers are flowing now.

JFK

Hey Beamdoggies,

I see a current now in my watery places, with rivers and streams flowing. They seem to always flow Southwest, at a constant rate. Is this something controllable in any way? I'd love to be able to have the flow parallel to the streambed or river bed, and be able to change directions.

Looks nice, thanks to whomever did this. May have been this way a while, but I only noticed it yesterday in the OC.

-JFK

Zwerkules

I think wind direction can't be changed at the moment. Maybe that will change in the future.

JFK

@JuliusBorisov I can't find this on the Trello boards. Perhaps under weather conditions? It would be great to be able to script wind direction and strength, which in turn affects water movement. In fact, it would be great to separate the actual water movement from wind direction. Sorry if this is already on the boards.

Thanks,

-JFK

Sherincall

Sorry, not at my PC for a few days, I'll explain how this works in detail on Monday.

Short version is that currently you can control the speed through wind, but the direction is fixed. I've been thinking about how to specify a direction, but still not sure. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

JFK

You can control it through the wind speed, but only through Toolset? Or is it changeable in game?

Well, if there is any way to offset the angle of 'scroll' by x degrees from the wind direction.... yeah, no, I don't know enough to know anything.

-JFK

ShadowM

It with the water shader, it would need some link in per each tile and scripting or some kind per tile setting on direction the water can flow in the toolset. Similar to the placable facing/orientation counter

Balanor

@JFK Wind speed is only controllable through the area's properties in the toolset (the Weather - Wind Power slider). There is not currently a scriptable way, or a console command, to change that property of an area in-game.

JFK

I thought as much, but that perhaps it had been changed. I think the ability to control wind direction and speed through a script would be a nice addition to ambience too. Either way, I'm happy to see water simply moving in a direction now. Looking good.

So the applied shader is inherent in the model itself, or applied to a specific model or models at run-time, or what? I need to learn more (or anything) about shaders. A global shader affects the entire screen... could a global shader further change a model that already has a shader affecting it?

Well, my lack of knowledge is evident. Thanks for the answers folks. Here's hoping a way arises to directly set both wind direction/speed, and liquid flow/speed.

-JFK

Sherincall

Wind is controllable through the console:
##setglobalwind 2 2 0 - full wind
##setglobalwind 1 1 0 - mid wind
##setglobalwind 0 0 0 - no wind
(those are the values settable by the toolset, you have finer grain with console commands)

The flow direction could be inherited from the wind direction, but there is no way to set any values other than those three from the toolset. So it would still have a fixed direction unless you mess with the console (which is a per-client setting).

Another way to set the direction is a per-tile setting. It would require editing all the tiles with water, and I'm not sure if it will break existing content visually. For new CC tilesets we're discussing advanced techniques that will allow you to paint the direction as water crossers, and also make the waves break on the shore. But for existing tilesets, that's not that easy to backport.

Another option is to add flow waypoints to the area and use its facing. This requires the nwscript->shader API which is still in progress.

Balanor

Oh! Learned something new today. Very interesting. Apologies, JFK, for the incorrect info on console commands.

tgx

Sherincall said:

>flow waypoints

Yep, I like this idea. We just use them like we do for npcs that move here and there. That would take care of the streams that to zig-zag. The flag could be put at logical points, and the flow of the water is calculated between following the water tiles, and those flags. Sounds good.

JFK

I wonder could there be a 'local' wind effect instead of only the global wind... a sort of 'placeable' wind... hmmm....

-JFK

Sherincall

You can create wind with special effects. For example, try this near water:
##DebugMode 1
##dm_visualeffect 265

You can script that to be constantly cast at some location. Probably something a wee bit less powerful.

But opening up the wind manager to scripts would be amazing

JFK

Wow, excellent information. Thanks. Yep, it sure would. Power to the people!