Archive: 22 posts

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I am trying to make a level that will have a section of rain in it. The problem is that I am having trouble coming up with a good solution The best one I have come up with so far has been with a dark matter bar covered in emitters that kick out paintballs... They don't hurt you, but they definitely interact with your character, giving it a really real feeling... The problem is that it eats up the thermometer like nobody's business. Any thoughts?

2009-03-12 02:05:00 Author: dobi6 Posts: 359

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Perhaps rather than many emitters, one or two on a very fast piston emitting at a fairly fast rate as well. You should be able to tweak the emitter(s) to counter the effect of the locomotion, but I'm just theorizing - I've not tried it. I have seen glass used with a well timed emitted "lifetime" so that it would dissipate just out of reach. Looked really cool - wish I could recall the level or creator names for you.

2009-03-12 07:08:00 Author: v0rtex Posts: 1878

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OCK could be of great help for you here. Please take a look to its level "The Legion" (PSN: OCK). It's raining at the strat of this level. The effect is impressive, but he said that it was thermo-eater...

2009-03-12 08:34:00 Author: Takelow Posts: 1355

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Perhaps rather than many emitters, one or two on a very fast piston emitting at a fairly fast rate as well. You should be able to tweak the emitter(s) to counter the effect of the locomotion, but I'm just theorizing - I've not tried it. I have seen glass used with a well timed emitted "lifetime" so that it would dissipate just out of reach. Looked really cool - wish I could recall the level or creator names for you. This is a good idea. Maybe instead of flipflopping the emitters around, make it follow the player (I have a good rig with a three way switch for that, ask for a writeup if you are interested). That way you only have to make the section a bit larger than one screen. It probably will eat the thermo any way you do it... It's a toss up between eating and devouring I think. A bit of advice: make the rain particles (if you use glass or something) as simple as possible, just a few corners in them. Using the standard drop shape is asking for trouble.

2009-03-12 08:41:00 Author: Wyth Posts: 263

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What I did for snow in Shadow Moses was make a couple panels of snowflakes that covered a large section of screen, then set two emitters to alternate them (for randomness effect). Rather than one emitter for each raindrop, a panel of raindrops might be more thermo friendly, I'm not sure. A thermo saving solution might be to emit the raindrops as thin-layer objects in the background such that they pass entirely behind your level. You would want to do this, because unlike snow, you dont want raindrops accumulating on the ground. I would think that thin-layer material-based raindrops are more thermo friendly than paintballs.

2009-03-12 11:19:00 Author: Thegide Posts: 1465

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It might also be worth trying to connect multiple drops or snowflakes with beams shrunk to invisible. Since this would cut down on the actual number of objects emitted, I think it should reduce computing load as well.

2009-03-12 12:12:00 Author: tameturtle Posts: 150

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Okay, here are my thoughts: Create a lot of paintballs around the size of your "section" and collect them as 1 object. then use 1 or 2 emitters. To keep your thermo from going too crazy, make the player stick to 1 or 2 planes, and only emit on those planes. Also, raise the speed of the paintballs, and lower the lifetime. Use a camera to limit the field of view, and make your emitters closer to the ground, to further lower the lifetime. For longer sections, use a proximity sensor to activate the rain on the next emitter before the camera reaches that area. Also, you dont need as many paintballs as you think. Go with quite a few less, and use the rain, and thunder and wind sound effects to help with the realism. For added realism, use 2 emitters, with different groups of paintballs, and make them alternate their emission using the sync option. Hope this helps!

2009-03-12 12:19:00 Author: TJapan Posts: 225

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Thanks everyone... I think the large panel of paintballs might be my way to go. I was having an emitter for every drop... the first rain bar wasn't too bad when I did it, but when I captured it as an object it went crazy.... I will try the groups thing and attach them to proxi switches so they only go off when you are in the direct area. I will let you know if I get it working

2009-03-12 15:46:00 Author: dobi6 Posts: 359

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Keep in mind with the thermo - the rest of the level design is really going to determine if this ends up being a problem. The "rain drops" will eat up the "separate moving objects" thermo. So, if most of the rest of your level is glued together and has minimal objects moving around, you can have a pretty good rain without affecting you too much. But if you plan on having a lot of separate unglued moving objects in the level, you will probably need to figure on a compromise.

2009-03-12 19:30:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430

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Leaving stuff unglued increases your thermo? The level I am working on has most layers not glued together so that I can work on them. So if I glue them together it will start to give me more room on the thermo?

2009-03-13 06:08:00 Author: dobi6 Posts: 359

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It's more about that the layer can't be moved about, Glueing something to (possibly via different other materials) the floor or dark matter does lighten the load on the engine. Does not necesserily means that your thermo will drop, depends on if the thermo is high due to memory (lots of stickers, materials), movement (loose material), complex shapes etc.. It always shows the highest troublemaker of above mentioned so reducing one that is not a problem at that moment won't necissarily drop the thermo. CCubbage and I discussed it somewhere on the "everything else LBP" subforum, look it up!

2009-03-13 08:45:00 Author: Wyth Posts: 263

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if you want an easy and good looking rain and lightning generator, search for "Rain/Lightning Generator" by C---Box (might be less hyphens)

2009-03-13 14:11:00 Author: RickTheRipper Posts: 345

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if you want an easy and good looking rain and lightning generator, search for "Rain/Lightning Generator" by C---Box (might be less hyphens) Awesome. I am good on lightning, I have created a nice repeatable lightning rig that works well, and works on a switch. It is the rain that is getting me.

2009-03-13 14:28:00 Author: dobi6 Posts: 359

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Just as an additional note on what Wyth and I said above - the reason I was mentioning glueing is because each piece of rain acts as a separate object which can be hard on the physics thermo. Making sure objects that don't need to move are glued to dark matter (or glued to another piece of material glued to dark matter) keeps the thermo for the physics engine at a minimum, so that there is room for rain. These are the kind of tidbits which are really nice to know when you're trying to build a big level with a lot of things going on. And if you build the level keeping these things in mind up front, you won't suddenly have a lot of cleanup work to do near the end. I glue a LOT of things together because of this, but I build in separated sections to I can keep it pretty flexible.

2009-03-13 17:56:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430

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That is really good to know... I am building in sections, and have a lot of pieces of big stone that are sitting on blocks of dark matter, but you think if I glue them to the dark matter then they will not count as part of the physics engine? Very good to know... This should help a lot. My related question to this is should I assume that as long as things are part of a section of dark matter that they don't count?

2009-03-13 18:50:00 Author: dobi6 Posts: 359

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If anything is glued directly or by proxy to dark matter, it changes the physical properties so that the physics engine doesn't have to worry about it reacting to surrounding objects. This lessens the load. There is actually a message that will appear in LBP Create mode if you start having too many separate objects (either directly in the play area of emitted) that say something like "There are too many objects. Try using less objects or glueing your objects to dark matter".

2009-03-13 19:37:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430

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Here's my idea which it think might help save some thermometer. Just make a lond row of paintballs or hand made raindrops, this row will cover the area where you want it to rain, then save the whole row as an object and place 2 emitters one put it so it drops the rain where its supposed to, the other to drop the rain a little to the sides and with a different timing from the "other rain" to give it a better effect. I think since the whole rain is thrown by only 2 emitters rather than from many and the rain is in whole rows rather than many single raindrops it should save up a lot of space, altho i haven't tried it, so is not 100% sure, but theorically it should work. I'll test this later and post the results.

2009-03-14 18:23:00 Author: Silverleon Posts: 6707

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I've tested this pretty extensively, and the problem is it's not the emitters that take the thermo. It takes the complexity of the objects inside the emitter multiplied by the amount that can be emitted at once and raises the thermo by that much. So there isn't much of a difference between a single emitter with a complex object and multiple ones with simple objects.

2009-03-14 18:30:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430

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I built a rain bar (row of emitters on dark matter) which worked really well, the problem is that as soon as you make it an object and try to have more than one rain bar, the thermo goes crazy! If I have enough room and get it into my level I will definitely let people know

2009-03-14 20:44:00 Author: dobi6 Posts: 359

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Um.. seems my idea didn't work termometer-wise, well, here's another idea. If i'm not mistaking copying bojects takes less space than making them a-new so why not make one emitter with one raindrop and copy it-paste it multiple times in semi-low places that blend in your environment. Since the lower you emit the rain the less of it will have to appear so it should save up some space, just remember to reduce the "Max emmited at once" option to the least you can.

2009-03-15 03:06:00 Author: Silverleon Posts: 6707

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One more suggestion, though. Even though it appears the thermo goes crazy, keep in mind (based on what Wyth and I mentioned) - it MAY not matter. The thermo you are seeing that is going crazy itsn't THE thermo, it's "a" thermo. So, let's say you have a level that uses 30 different types of material - you wouldn't even see it go up since the material thermo is the one displaying. So, as long as the level you are designing doesn't use a ton of separated objects, this rain technique may not cause overall usage of your thermo.

2009-03-15 03:59:00 Author: CCubbage Posts: 4430

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hmmn.... Good to know... I have a very restricted palette of materials. I am making a old horror movie themed game, so the materials don't matter as much as it is all black and white.

2009-03-15 04:13:00 Author: dobi6 Posts: 359

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