DP - Fog + Skybox

Discuss programming topics for the various GPL'd game engine sources.
CocoT
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DP - Fog + Skybox

Post by CocoT »

Hello everyone :)
For some odd reason, it looks like everytime I'm adding fog (just a little, not a ton, by the way) to a map in DP, its skybox turns into the color of the fog. Do you have any idea what I could be doing wrong?
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FrikaC
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Post by FrikaC »

Nothing at all. As LordHavoc always says to me when I complain about this "feature", skyboxes are an infinite distance away, therefore an infinite accumulation of any kind of fog will basically appear solid.

Of course, in the real world, the details in a skybox aren't an infinite distance away, nor does the fog extend very far up or along the horizon enough to completely wipe out everything. But...well there it is.
CocoT
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Post by CocoT »

Oh ok :wink: Thanks for your answer, Frik :)
I guess I'll go without fog, then, because I do like the skybox better over fog. Too bad this erm... "feature" is not toggable :wink:
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Preach
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Post by Preach »

I don't think it's the right way to do it. Wouldn't it be better to render the skybox fully, and then if people think their map should have the whole sky rendered fog coloured, they just supply a fog coloured sky? That way people could easily get the result they desire, either way, without needing a console command to do it.
Kell
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Post by Kell »

Though it's concievable that real 'skybox' features, such as hills or clouds can be visible through fog, this is because the fog density changes between the viewer and the feature. The most likely being a layer of fog at least a few kilometers across, but perhaps thinning out vertically at an altitude of only several metres. This leaves a fogless layer the rest of the way up to clouds, or obliquely across to the upper portions of hills or something. The fog in q3tourney5 stops at the upper sky layer, where clouds can still be faintly seen scudding dramatically above. I used to be skeptical of this effect, given my own interest in skyboxing, but I have since observed it in real life. So there you go.

However, the practical reason that omitting both skyboxes and fog is not that the features on the skybox are infinitely far away from the viewer, but because the features on the skybox are zero distance away from each other: i.e. everything on a skybox picture is actually flattened onto the same plane. So no fogging will occurr between e.g. the hills or buildings at different distances.

What you will see instead is the fog revealing the corners of the skybox brushwork, then totally failing to continue beyond. It makes the whole effect look fake faster than a silicone breast implant. Which should be the subject for your next mod btw.
frag.machine
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Post by frag.machine »

Kell wrote: What you will see instead is the fog revealing the corners of the skybox brushwork, then totally failing to continue beyond. It makes the whole effect look fake faster than a silicone breast implant. Which should be the subject for your next mod btw.
Yeah, Big Boobies Quake would be really kewl 8)
I know FrikaC made a cgi-bin version of the quakec interpreter once and wrote part of his website in QuakeC :) (LordHavoc)
Preach
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Post by Preach »

But couldn't you just have an appropriately foggy skybox to go with it? Like have most of the far away hills and stuff basically fogged out to the same colour as the fog at full distance, but then not fog out the sky itself. As long as everything in the skybox looked far enough away that the fog effect doesn't shift, then I think it would look fine. Plus if you don't like the effect it gives, you just make a map with a solid fog colour skybox, same effect.
FrikaC
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Post by FrikaC »

I like your avatar frag.machine.
Urre
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Post by Urre »

DP should just support fog-boxes (ala Q3) and this discussion would be moot.
I was once a Quake modder
leileilol
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Post by leileilol »

FrikaC wrote:I like your avatar frag.machine.
yes
CocoT
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Post by CocoT »

It makes the whole effect look fake faster than a silicone breast implant. Which should be the subject for your next mod btw.
Mmm... a boob-inspired mod...
Totally off topic, but it is kind of funny how sex-themed mods seem to have fallen off the face of the earth in recent years. There used to be tons of them in the Doom2/Duke3D times (even though they were often limited to people piling up rooms with obscene textures). Except a couple of sex-themed mini-mods and lots of "nude" patches (I'm thinking models in Unreal, for example), the trend has stopped. Or maybe I'm just unaware of such projects...

Erm... *cough* ... anyway...

I understand the logic of Lordhavoc. However, I also think that there can be indeed skyboxes that offer misty atmosphere that could still make fog look okay. But then, we'd have to test it to see. Are there other engines that allow that?
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Dr. Shadowborg
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Post by Dr. Shadowborg »

CheapAlert wrote:
FrikaC wrote:I like your avatar frag.machine.
yes
Haha, Edolon's arm wrestiling the Cyberdemon. And Cyberdemon isn't playing fair. XD

And oh my, is that Elexis Sinclair I see there?
Sajt
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Post by Sajt »

Offtopic time...

Duke and Serious Sam... Grim Fandango and Horned Reaper (and someone)... Sam and Max... Probably gorilla from Black&White... Lemmings... Halo guy crashes into someone (maybe Carmageddon?)... Final Fantasy 7... Mistress from DK... Leisure Suit Larry... Cthulhu... Day of the Tentacle... LeChuck... I see Megaman and Quake2 guy-with-spike in the cloud of dust... Alice is getting a slice of Pacman from Pyramid Head... Quake3 Sarge and someone playing CTF... Caleb playing head soccer... Earthworm Jim... Alien vs Predator... Fallout guy... Legacy of Kain... for some reason the guy on fire makes me think of Lord British... The guy talking to the kids is probably from Warcraft3/WOW... Daikatana... Doom3 lost soul and Rayman amongst the summoned heads... the little animal from Creatures...

Hahaha, I like the character from FAKK2 taking off her clothes with an insane expression on her face... funny game

Dunno what Gordon Freeman is doing to Full Throttle guy though...

BTW, I assumed that was Diablo that was arm wrestling with Cyberdemon.

And that must be Prince of Persia guy on the dang spikes... man I hate those spikes...

That pic acknowledges a pretty good percentage of the good games ever made (and plenty more..) I like!

Anyone else get some I missed?
F. A. Špork, an enlightened nobleman and a great patron of art, had a stately Baroque spa complex built on the banks of the River Labe.
Quake Matt
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Post by Quake Matt »

Quake3 Sarge and someone playing CTF
Looks like Malcolm from UT to me - the symbol on the blue flag's definitely of Unreal origin! (Thunder Crash? Can't remember now.)
The guy talking to the kids is probably from Warcraft3/WOW
Haven't played WoW, but if he's from Warcraft III, it's definitely Arthas, which would make the sword Frostmourne.

Also, the beholder to the left of Arthas is wearing Sam Fisher's goggles. Along with the skulls is Morte from Planescape: Torment, and I think two of the others are MK's Scorpion (no idea what move causes that...) and, if I'm not mistaken, Romero's head-on-a-spike from the end of Doom II.

We've got the main char from MDK caught on Shub's arm and just above them I think is Nova from Starcraft: Ghost. In a similar vein it looks like there's a Hydralisk near the middle of the pic, too.

Further on the left I can see Kain from C&C watering some tiberium, above them is Painkiller's Daniel Garner staking a different Kain and Bloodrayne. No idea who the other two are, though. Just to their right is a sign from Vangers and up above them is a wanted poster for Agent 47 from Hitman.

In Lesuire Suit Larry's harem I can make out Lara Croft, the girl from NOLF (Elexis Sinclair, as Shadow said? Or am I thinking of someone else?) and what look like Princess Peach and a possibly a Warcraft Night Elf. And just below them, would that be the player character from Thief stealing the painting? I don't know what his name is, but I know he's got one!

Dotted around I've also spotted the main character from Another World/Out of this World and his mate, a WH40k Ork, a Worms worm, Maximillion from Evil Genius (and what could be a Sectoid from UFO in front of him), a Battletech Timber Wolf piloted by Abe, who's talking to the main char from Little Big Adventure, a bloke from Bomberman and the little selector thingy from the Sims hovering over the giant gorilla.

Yay for geekdom! I've only actually played about 1/3 of the games there, so I've probably got a few things wrong...

Edit: Back on topic, although it sounds appropriate that an infinite-distance skybox should create infinite-distance fog, I wouldn't think it'd be especially useful. As CocoT says, your skybox would be set up so it's already fog-coloured so your objects appear to blend into the horizon.
Last edited by Quake Matt on Mon May 28, 2007 8:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
xaGe
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Post by xaGe »

bomberman
Snake from Metal Gear
Kane from C-n-C growing tiberium crystals
Abe from Abe's Odyssey
Lower left you have heads of: Rayman & Scorpion
Leisure suit larry & his girls
Warthog & piggy from Duke nukem3d
Thief from the thief series
Max in bullet time vs black chic from the matrix
in the cloudy brawl I see a character from "Z" & Crusader from Crusader No regret & No remorse
Diablo is wrestling the cyberdemon
The other red demon is from DK
The Painkillere guy staking The bad guy from Legacy of Cain, BloodRaine & one of the Armymen guys


There is more that looks fimiluar, but can't remember...
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