Water, Weather, and Day/Night Cycles

[monkeyfrogstudio]

Hello. I hope this is okay to post, but have you looked at S2Engine HD?

The reason I bring up this engine is because it handles water, weather, and day/night cycles really well. It's easy to manipulate and change any of this and even animate things (the day/night cycle). Personally, I don't think the engine is as graphically nice as Skyline (and the UI is a bit of a mess in some ways), but these particular features are very nice, in my opinion.

Now, I have little experience with Skyline (waiting for the next release to purchase, to be frank, due to the GUI changes), so perhaps you have similar tools. If not, it might be worth taking a look.

Also, the S2Engine's FSM (Finite State Machine) form of visual programming is pretty interesting, too.

If this sort of post is not allowed, then please remove it. I am not bringing up a competing engine to say it's better. Quite the contrary. I simply wanted to point out a few features that I found interesting. I hope that's okay.

Thanks.

[epsilonion]

This type of post is against the terms of the forum because it can be seen as advertising another engine, it may be worth taking the links out and rephrasing the post so that it can be seen as not advertising.

On another note, about the features mentioned.

Skyline had a great water (ocean) system in the 1st generation with costics etc that is to be brought back into the engine at some point, I think i remember them saying about a year ago that they where considering upgrading it to another middle ware.

They also have a river/lake editor planned in the original road map.

The weather system is easily made with lua and particles but there is a planned particle removal layer so you don't have to have the rain indoors. The volumetric clouds should be making a return soon (I hope) so that they can be some beautiful clouds again.

Day Night cycle is also already in and accessible via lua and the multipliers can be changed so night time is not as long.
I had a script about weather, seasons etc that I was making and I even planned to make the sun higher in summer and lower in winter etc but waiting for that to become available.

We are waiting for quite a few features to be made available to us even though there are quite a few that have started development and priorities changed meaning they are waiting to be completed but they will get there..

I am hoping that that within the next few months we see some real improvements on the features (GUI, Ocean, Clouds, PhysX Update and more), there are only two developers meaning that updates can be seen as slow at times but when they get there head into it the updates (posts to the forum and blog) come fast and the major features come quickly.

They are very approachable and may even consider options for features etc..

Hope this helps..

[epsilonion]

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[monkeyfrogstudio]

Thanks for the reply. Nope, I definitely was not advertising their engine. I have no reason to. However, I still think it would be worth looking into HOW the day/night cycles, weather, and water were implemented. Most game engines allow for programming these types of things via their scripting or programming language of choice. So, yes, I fully expected that something could be done via LUA within Skyline. However, S2 makes these things much more accessible to the end user without programming, but via the GUI. They are easily adjusted and able to be animated, if needed. I was recommending the features and ease of use.

In any case, I look forward to the next release of Skyline. I am anxious to test it for my project(s).

[StarFire]

[monkeyfrogstudio]

Thanks for the reply. I do appreciate it. However, my original post was basically asking if you had seen how S2 handles water, weather, and day/night cycles, not if Skyline had them. I figured Skyline did (or would). Part of the reason I brought this up was because the day/night cycles, weather, and water are made easily available and adjustable via the GUI instead of just code.

S2 is not a superior engine (from what I've tested), it's default graphical display is strange (everything looks foggy), it's GUI is pretty ugly and buggy (for the most part), and it can be dog slow on fairly simple scenes at times. So, no, I am not at all promoting that engine. Not in the least. However, there are a few things the lone developer of that engine has done right. That is why I'd asked if you'd taken a look at it. Setting up how an ocean, lake, or a river works is a breeze, is a lot of fun, and the end-user has a lot of control via the GUI. The same with the weather system and day/night cycle.

In another thread (viewtopic.php?f=41&t=902) SolarPortal blatantly asks about new engines (particularly Unity), asking for thoughts and opinions. It was after reading that thread that I created this one.

[StarFire]

We really do appreciate the input

Personally I haven't used the other engine, will take a look at any video of the operation. When we get back to developing the environment tools we will certainly be open to listening to any suggestions

[epsilonion]

Ah sorry I think I read it wrong lol... I have not personally tried that engine, my experience comes from Leadworks and UE4 then Skyline..

I think I traded up personally but I do see where your coming from with the editor's/GUI making it easier to access the features and to adjust them for your scene in the GUI of them editors making it so simple that anyone could use them..

p.s. did you know you can register your lights in the scene with the TOD system so that come on at night and turn off in the morning automatically? this is done through code but maybe dragging lights from the scene entity list to a gui to add them that way may be easier for some people that don't code...

Good idea's keep em coming mate...

[monkeyfrogstudio]

No worries, epsilonion.

I also have Leadwerks and have tested UE4. Leadwerks is an interesting engine in many ways, if not a bit dated. But it has some pretty severe issues, too. For example, on my system (and a few other people's systems, too) I cannot get a compiled game to run full screen (with the latest release). The Leadwerks equivalent of a flow graph is poorly implemented and definitely not full featured, either.

I also tested Unity and like a lot of what I saw there. But as someone who is not a programmer, I saw Unity as a money pit. The only way to get things done (without hiring a programmer) was to purchase endless addons, hoping that they worked together. I'll say this, though - one of the things I like about both Leadwerks and Unity is the ability to quickly block out levels via integrated "modeling" tools. Unity adopted ProBuilder and Leadwerks has it's roots in the older BSP-styled editors. Unity's latest prefab system is pretty nice, too.

Which brings up another question - Can we or will we be able to attach code snippets to prefabs in Skyline? For example, could I create code that opens/closes a door, attach it to a door model, and then save out that door model as a prefab, using it (along with attached code) throughout my level?

[SolarPortal]

[monkeyfrogstudio]

Thanks! That's actually pretty awesome and exactly what I was hoping for. I can't wait for the new release. My wallet has been itching me to purchase Skyline, you know.