Can you modify weather with map ent-modding? (And are thunder and lightning doable in JA?)

[Dusty]

I had an idea for the Korriban level in JA SP, I wanted to make the outside portion be dark and stormy, and to therefore have lightning strikes and thunder in the background. Is that possible with only ent-modding?

 

Come to think of it, is it possible to do thunder and lightning in JA?

[mrwonko]

No, since you need to define the inside/outside zones you'd have to add brushes, which is outside the scope of ent-modding.

 

And thunder/lightning are not supported out of the box; you could create an effect and add that via ent-modding, but it probably wouldn't look all that pretty. If I were trying to create lightning I'd go for a sun-style white light that can be toggled on briefly, but that certainly requires a light compile. (In general you'd probably want to change the overall lighting if you want a nice dark thunderstorm.)

[Dusty]

I guess it's not possible to change lighting via ent-modding? I guess lights/light sources aren't technically entities?

[mrwonko]

Correct.

[ensiform]

They are entities in terms of GTKRadiant / q3map2 but q3map2 strips them normally and the game does not make use of them.  The light information is stored elsewhere in the bsp.

[ensiform]

No, since you need to define the inside/outside zones you'd have to add brushes, which is outside the scope of ent-modding.

 

And thunder/lightning are not supported out of the box; you could create an effect and add that via ent-modding, but it probably wouldn't look all that pretty. If I were trying to create lightning I'd go for a sun-style white light that can be toggled on briefly, but that certainly requires a light compile. (In general you'd probably want to change the overall lighting if you want a nice dark thunderstorm.)

Thunder/lightning are supported in SP with the rain entity afaik... Possibly with some extra stuff?  But I'm pretty sure the lightning, etc is triggered by it.  Cannot work in MP.

[Clan FJA]

i think it is possible to put a fix lightning which hit every X seconds.

Put a lightning effect, then enable/disable it with a script and a loop : enable - wait 1s - disable - wait 20 s - enable - wait 1s - disable - wait 20 s....

[z3filus]

yea that's how I'd do it too, @@Clan FJA  ,that's the most logical way to do it, and I already thought that lighting is possible atleast with lugormod ?? using effects and scripts

[Clan FJA]

yes, and you can do that for every mod and basejka, not only Lugormod.

 

For example, the creator of project_rocketlauncher used effects and scripts for the explosions in the low room.

 

And I used that too to point objectives on some maps (using the kothos recharge effect) : players know what console to activate thanks to that. When they activated the good console, I disable the effect and enable a new effect in front of the next objective.

[Didz]

Dynamic lights can be added server-side (think CTF flags being carried). I think the entity was called misc_dlight, but I don't remember. They don't look as good as lightmapped light, but they get the job done when you just need a simple point light in an area. I may be wrong, but I think it's possible to use these for negative lights too where they darken an area.

 

As mrwonko said, inside/outside areas for weather need to be in brushes that are on the client. You could go with full-level rain (Korriban might have really leaky ceilings) or there might be basejka .efx files you could make use of and maybe scale them up. I think there are already effects for lighting strikes and sounds for thunder, and these can be scripted like Clan FJA and zeƒilus mentioned.

[Dusty]

Yessss. It may be doable...

[eezstreet]

SP has a special entity called trigger _ lightning I think. It does exactly what you want: spawns random bolts of lightning within a trigger.