[~Sylvia~]

Photon Mapping was being talked about as some kind of new thing back in 2004. It might have been too new at the time to be considered. It appears to have been available in DX7, and from the description appears to be at least partially used in OB (landscape seems to act this way). Which leaves open the possibility that they intended to use it with statics as well but it isn't working properly. Hence it would be a bug in the game.

Photon mapping isnt used in realtime. You'll need supercomputer for that. Oblivion landscapes is using simple shading. Gamebryo (Oblivion engine in case if you dont know) never had support of Photon Mapping. Those what you seen in early Oblivion demos in jail with shadows on objects were just usual soft shadows.

Z-buffering looks like it would be more related to fog, not light behavior with statics.

Z-culling which is a part of z-buffering can hide source of lights and models which isnt visible (behind the wall, out of fov, etc).

Lightmaps appear from descriptions to be performance hungry and might not have been considered for that reason.

Lightmaps is the fastest algo for fake static shadows. Was used in 99% of 3D action games, until PC became more faster for realtime shadows for everything (see Crysis).

So yes. "Unfondled" criticism sure seems to fit since we're dealing with what looks like a partially broken implementation of Photon Mapping in Oblivion.

Realtime Photon Mapping is a dream for not too distant future, as I said earlier. Modern top PCs will fail to render complex enviroment like in Oblivion at least with 1 fps. Even top modern engines dont support photon mapping, current pcs are too slow for it. Its only available for software renderers.

[Carlos Rojas]

You're all crazy!!! Just had to throw in my input...


Brumbek knows all, sees all. One might say 'Brumbek really knows where his towel's at.' (Reference to HHGTTG for the n00bs.)

Anyway, been working on meshes for just about 8 hours today. Just a couple things to fix. Chorrol is the project that never ends. But perhaps if I work a LOT tomorrow I can make my deadline. Twill be quite a day to celebrate once it's done. Thank you, resume activities minions.

I got the reference.

Don't worry about the deadline too much, Brumbek, I'm having a heap of issues getting the weather working, so it's not like you're holding back the next release or anything.

@ _Rancen_: Thanks for clearing that confusion up. My troll comment was simply because you had said 'bye' several times, but never left the thread, that's all.

[Jerry Jr. Ortiz]

NOTICE:

The 'All Natural - Real Lights - The Ayleid Steps Patch.esp' plugin has been made obsolete by the update of The Ayleid Steps to version 3.1. Please upgrade your copy of The Ayleid Steps to the latest version and remove this patch.

I shall be adding a note to the patch in BOSS about this, and the patch will be removed from the next version of All Natural.

[M!KkI]

I got the reference.

I can't believe that it took nearly 3 seconds for the pun to register, in my mind.

[emma sweeney]

Bad news on the Oblivion Gate weather front (seriously, no pun intended).

There's 6 different scripts that control Oblivion Gate weather, and two sets of distances at which they take effect. This is very annoying, and makes my life much more difficult. At least when I discovered that, it gave me reason as to why Kvatch behaves so weirdly.

I'll try to figure out a solution that'll fit all circumstances, but it's a toughie, so may take a while.

[Patrick Gordon]

Greetings. A Valentine's Day gift:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TQ1AZU4Z

Everything is done EXCEPT for the Mages Guild. I decided to release anyway since Mages Guild requires a bit more work but getting feedback on the rest will be helpful.

Also, I encourage people to check out the Mages Guild 2nd and 3rd stories to see how messed up it is outside the windows because then once I release the completed Mages Guild your level of appreciation and awe will be greatly increased, ha!

Anyway, I'd appreciate people trying this out. If you find errors or cracks or window/window frame issues, please let me know which cell and ideally take a screenshot. Use the tdt console command before taking a screenshot.

I managed to fix tons of holes and other issues Bethesda had in the original meshes plus I actually fixed a number of wrong texture issues some meshes had...one mesh had the totally wrong texture on an arch over a door, which looked hideous! Anyway.

FYI, meshes have all been PyFFI'd using 2.1.2.

And here's one pic showing the beautiful new window frames.

http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/jj317/Brumbek/ANChorrolPurdyFramesSun.jpg

...Now I'm going to go play a game and try to stop thinking about meshes, windows, NiBlocks, and such...at least for tonight maybe.

[Ross]

Greetings. A Valentine's Day gift:

...Now I'm going to go play a game and try to stop thinking about meshes, windows, NiBlocks, and such...at least for tonight maybe.

You are awesome. And btw, regarding all the garbledegook above - I like the interior weathers, buggy lighting or not, it's still much more immersive then what came with the game, especially when combined with real lights. This is one of my favorite mods, I'd not play without it.

[Alexxxxxx]

Great news.

I look forward to trying them out tonight.

[Laura-Lee Gerwing]

Greetings. A Valentine's Day gift:

Wicked, time to go check these babies out. I'll get the data merged into the main ESP and have at it. (Oh, look, main ESP already has it, just needs the statics)

[Caroline flitcroft]

Just checked out a couple of Chorrol interiors, very nice work. :thumbsup:

Some screenies of interior Oblivion Gate weather in the Oak & Crosier interior:

http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt255/WrinklyNinja1/Oblivion%20Weather/Oblivion2010-02-1515-52-08-18.jpg
http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt255/WrinklyNinja1/Oblivion%20Weather/Oblivion2010-02-1515-52-12-74.jpg
http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt255/WrinklyNinja1/Oblivion%20Weather/Oblivion2010-02-1515-52-17-92.jpg
http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt255/WrinklyNinja1/Oblivion%20Weather/Oblivion2010-02-1515-52-31-29.jpg

It would never happen in game, but I was testing colour balance and stuff, and happened to be in Chorrol while doing so.

EDIT: Regarding Oblivion Gates, there are two different sets of distances at which they change the weather in vanilla:

1. Normal->Oblivion at <4000 units, Oblivion->Normal at >5000 units.
2. Normal->Oblivion at <8000 units, Oblivion->Normal at >9000 units.

At the moment, the weather script is only taking account of the first type. These are all your random gates, and the only gates in the second catagory are the main gates for each of the cities.

I'm working on trying to get the weather script to play nice with vanilla's Oblivion weather script ATM. I've identified all the cities' gates, so now the proper distances are applied in the weather script for them.

[Nathan Risch]

Anyway, I'd appreciate people trying this out. If you find errors or cracks or window/window frame issues, please let me know which cell and ideally take a screenshot. Use the tdt console command before taking a screenshot.

Many thanks for finishing these meshes. At last, there are no more ugly blue windows at night to break the immersion.

Judging from a short test, the meshes are excellent done. I noticed only one small issue, also that is not related to the mesh but only a missing texture file: In the chorrolhouseupper04interior03.nif, the windows are linked to a file GlassWindow11ArchInterior.dds, which is missing, so these windows don?t show up in the game. I guess you just overlooked it while building the package.

[kasia]

I've run across a slight problem in that the weather script detects the distances (particularily the oblivion->normal weather distance) before the oblivion gate script does, so it sets the correct weather, and then the oblivion gate script releases the weather override, and so AN loses weather control.

This is all theoretical, as it happens faster than even my spammer plugin can record, but based on the values of the weather script variables, and the odd occasion where the weather script has done its stuff after the gate script.

Apart from that though, I think I've gotten the Oblivion Gate weather, interior and exterior, sorted.

[Suzy Santana]

Many thanks for finishing these meshes. At last, there are no more ugly blue windows at night to break the immersion.

Judging from a short test, the meshes are excellent done. I noticed only one small issue, also that is not related to the mesh but only a missing texture file: In the chorrolhouseupper04interior03.nif, the windows are linked to a file GlassWindow11ArchInterior.dds, which is missing, so these windows don?t show up in the game. I guess you just overlooked it while building the package.

Good catch. I've uploaded a pack with the texture. Thanks for testing it!

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TQ1AZU4Z

[He got the]

Game is having none of me getting within 500 yards of Chorrol today, so I settled for checking the ones used in Hackdirt.

chorrolhousemiddle07interior.nif has a small gap to the left of the fireplace that lets light through: http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/8684/screenshot398.jpg

[Max Van Morrison]

I was just running in and out of the coast guard hut in Leyawiin, testing out the oblivion weather, when I suddenly realised for the first time how badly Beth did matching up interiors and exteriors. I was slightly aware that interior and exterior dimensions didn't match up all the time, but this was new to me.

Inside the hut, I could see the Oblivion gate weather through any one of three windows. Outside, however, two of the windows were shuttered, while the third plain didn't exist. Good job, Beth. :facepalm:

I'd imagine Brumbek's probably trying to stab me after only just realising this, when he's had to deal with it from day one.

I'm trying to get AN to apply its weather once you've exited the weather effect area of an oblivion gate, which isn't so much a problem with AN as the vanilla script interfering, and also trying to figure out why the weather is reset to vanilla when exiting an interior that is within an Oblivion gate's effect area. It hasn't got a problem when you're going inside, and the weather script seems to be working properly, with all the right variables having the right values, but for some reason it doesn't work going outside. I think that the latter issue is the same as the former issue, and that vanilla just loves to screw things up.

[james kite]

Game is having none of me getting within 500 yards of Chorrol today, so I settled for checking the ones used in Hackdirt.

chorrolhousemiddle07interior.nif has a small gap to the left of the fireplace that lets light through: http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/8684/screenshot398.jpg

Excellent work! Thanks for reporting this. I'm sure there are a few more spots like this. Let me know if you find any more! I'll fix this one and update my pack this weekend. I also on plan on hopefully finishing Chorrol Mages Guild this weekend.

I was just running in and out of the coast guard hut in Leyawiin, testing out the oblivion weather, when I suddenly realised for the first time how badly Beth did matching up interiors and exteriors. I was slightly aware that interior and exterior dimensions didn't match up all the time, but this was new to me.

Leyawiin is the worst. Some other cities are mostly correct, like Chorrol and Skingrad. But in Beth's defense, I understand why they wouldn't go to the effort to have them match. Anyway.

[Peter lopez]

edit: appears I was just unlucky!

[JeSsy ArEllano]

Not sure if it's the same as what was happening to me, but I got in a way when all it would do is rain. For days and days, just rain, straight rain. I changed the weather unsticker variable to 0, and it stopped raining :shrug: Coincidence? Maybe. I have no clue what that SL function is. But whatevs.

[Richus Dude]

Not sure if it's the same as what was happening to me, but I got in a way when all it would do is rain. For days and days, just rain, straight rain. I changed the weather unsticker variable to 0, and it stopped raining :shrug: Coincidence? Maybe. I have no clue what that SL function is. But whatevs.

IIRC, when you are NOT using a scripted weather mod (Enhanced Weather used to be a unscripted one in its first incerantions, but nowadays I suppose it's not true anymore), e.g. vanilla weather only, then the Streamsight component of Streamline could make the weather stay forever, to stick. The weather unsticker shoul be able to prevent that. But: If you are using a SCRIPTED weather mod such as All Natural, the weather unsticker would mess with the weather. Therefore the Streamsight setting should be 0, as for disabled. In general, when using a weather mod nowadays, set this to 0, when on vanilla only, keep it at 1.

[stevie critchley]

The readme states that the WeatherUnsticker should be left off.

As for weather lengths, the longest a weather can last is 17 hours, and the shortest is 1 hour.

[KRistina Karlsson]

I didn't know where to post this, so I guess i'll post it in both. Sorry, but this is too good of a feature to lose .

The Weather Inside portion of this mod. I wasn't sure whether it is Storms&Sounds or All Natural that could be causing the problem. Or a combination of both?

I will enter a building, and I will hear the outside sounds as it is supposed to work for about 1 minute, and all of a sudden the "torrential rain" sound will play for about 2 seconds and the sound will cut out all together and I will lose all weather inside functionality until I reload a saved game where it IS working.

This happens every time and it is quite annoying, I have to run through a building in a minute tops and out to get my weather inside sounds to stay. :wacko:

I have OBSE, newest v18 beta and all.

Anyone know what is going on? I would love to get my weather inside sounds back!

Thanks

-J

[scorpion972]

Can't be this, we apply our inside weather sounds through our interior weather, which can't be switched on or off like how you're describing. A fair few others have also described hearing this sort of thing before, so perhaps something's wrong with Storms & Sounds?

[Bloomer]

Can't be this, we apply our inside weather sounds through our interior weather, which can't be switched on or off like how you're describing. A fair few others have also described hearing this sort of thing before, so perhaps something's wrong with Storms & Sounds?

Perhaps, I use your indoor weather filter as well for other mods support in wrye bash. I don't know if that could somehow conflict with Storms&Sounds also attempting to apply, in this case, it's weather inside sounds to Better Cities via the Storms&Sound BC patch.

[Johnny]

Some time ago there was a mod called ZILO which had once been related to Real Lights. Does anyone tell the difference between them ATM (apart from the latter being included in Weather: All Natural)?

[sophie]

ZILO is a WIP (unreleased) dungeon lighting overhaul, which the last time I'd checked had only overhauled some ayleid ruins, so it's far from complete, even though it looks pretty good. Real Lights is complete AFAIK, apart from bug fixing and relatively minor changes, and affects most places, including exteriors and non-dungeon interiors.

ZILO's never been related to All Natural. I've helped Zinni out with the code for light-emitting ayleid stones, and am interested in ZILO, but there's no connection between the two mods besides the fact that I've inputted to both.