Rain in Q2 map?

[SquiSHeR]

Hello,

I'm interested in bringing rain-effect to my custom Q2 map. With this tutorial I was unsuccessfull though:
http://web.archive.org/web/20080117184712/www.gamedesign.net/node/561

Does anybody know a map which managed to implement it? Or maybe has someone even done it himself?

[peewee_RotA]

http://planetquake.gamespy.com/View.php?view=MOTW.Detail&id=39

This mod does it in one of it's maps really really well. The level design for the most of the game is visually poor. But the rain effect that he manages is really cool.

I've tried to do some rain effects but have never been happy with any of them. I generally settled for the sound of running water, puddles on the ground and lightning.

Here's the 2 most prominent maps that I've tried to put storms onto:
http://www.zeliepa.com/ctf/rota_ctf1_4_5_6.zip (rotactf1_test1.bsp)

[SquiSHeR]

Oh well, really nice maps you did there. Quite similar to some I imagined to design some day. I like especially the motives with the church, graveyard and jungle (although the trees could use some more "green"). RAIN effect would fit there very nice. If just the one from the RUST tutorial would work...

[SquiSHeR]

X7 pointed me out to this 2 extrodinary maps which got the rain:

http://leray.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=newq2maps&action=display&thread=1725&page=1

http://j-spot.backshooters.com/jbuzz.html

[travolta]

I know of one other map with rain it it. It's in my maps folder somewhere!

Went on this hunt a few years ago with a buddy and found it.

 Bugging me now. ahhhhhh!

Anyway I can search my files for this? Clever formula, etc?

[SquiSHeR]

never mind, I finally figured it out how to do it. The RUST tutorial seems to be totally faulty, it won't work the way its described there. It suggestes to apply the surface properties "mist, current_dn, trans33 and flowing" to each face of the rain texture, which absolutely makes no sense. Current_dn would push the player down to the ground, disturbing his jumps (like inside waterfalls).

The correct properties to set are: trans33, flowing, mist, detail and translucent (last both were missing in the tutorial to make it work).

I included the fixed example map from the tutorial below.

[SquiSHeR]

I tried to reproduce it in my own map but
the rain brushes won't let the sunlight pass  through, so that the
whole area gets really dark. Instead the pink color of the rain
texture reflects colorful light itself, messing up my whole lightning
in the map.
Is someone around who knows how to fix this? Maybe Jester or Orange?

[peewee_RotA]

add the translucent flag

[PANTONE 7717C]

He had already done that.

I haven't really played with that rain fx yet but the texture flags used in the Rust tutorial (which are stored inside the texture itself) seem to work just fine here. I tried that raintut map with your settings and with the original settings and both worked the same... go figure:P  However in both cases there is unwanted pink/orange light on the roof trim.

Hmm I don't get it, as long as you have the right texture; mist/trans33/flowing should be all you need to make rain like that.

The "current_xx" flags only have effect when used on water/slime/lava, so that flag has no use in this case.
"flowing" always makes the texture flow towards angle 0, and usually you'll have to rotate the texture or the entire brush to get the right direction. Scaling the texture up quite a bit is usually a good idea to make it look like it flows faster.
As far as I know qvis will ignore brushes with "mist" flag so the detail flag isn't needed (won't hurt tho)

Also i'm not sure about the need for the translucent flag on anything other than fluids and windows. In that testmap i turned it off and i didnt notice any difference. I do know that when using Arghrad's _sunlight it can produce strange side effects on "special" brushes.

Have you set up your _sun correctly? And have you tried it with normal skylight yet?

I checked the jbuzz map for that bouncing pink/orange color on the upper roof trims and I think it's there but hardly visible. But then again the upper trim is not flush with the rainbrushes nor directly touching them so that might have been a trick to hide it.
What I don't understand is why the bouncing light only seems to occur with textures that have that special pink color. I just replaced the rain texture with a walltexture (but kept the flags) and the pink spots disappeared(?)

I even tried to redo the rainbrushes from scratch and then uncheck the current_dn flag and leave the rest unchanged. I set the angles to -90 0 and made sure the brushes didn't touch the roofing. The pink reflection was hardly noticable this way... so perhaps it's got something to do with the _sunlight.

[SquiSHeR]

Hello PNJ,

thank you for your reply! I tried to do what you said and replaced sunlight by skylight and made sure the rain-brushes don't touch the roofing, but light still doesn't penetrate them.
I also tried removing translucent and detail content properties and this time the rain effect still worked, but same problem.

[PANTONE 7717C]

It almost looks as if your editor (woldcraft?) or compilers are discarding some of the texture flags, sounds unlikely but you never know.

As a quick test, make a simple box map with skylight and place a rather large brush that floats like 32 units above the floor and give it a normal solid texture, then set it to trans33 and mist and compile with lighting. If all is well the brush shouldn't produce any shadows. It it does then something goes wrong during the 'flagging' or the compile.

If there is no shadow then select that same brush and replace its texture with the rain texture by manually typing the name (fx/rainb) in the texture property window (so it doesn't load the rain's default flags but only keeps the trans33 and mist). Compile again and check for shadows.

[SquiSHeR]

Very logical way you suggested.
I tried it and it seems to produce expected results (I'm indeed using Worldcraft map editor). I will later try to transfer the steps to the other map I'm building to see if this fixes the lighting issue.