We shall fight in the dark.

[basti]

From reddit QnA with Higby:

Q: Will there be meaningful Day/Night Cycles?
Matt: the engine supports day/night cycle really, really well. We definitely want to take advantage of that.



Okay, day and night, cool.

YOu guys remember that one haloween event where the devs just changed the general lightning to quite a bit darker? You remember how awesome it was to fight in that light?

And i want even more!

So, here are some ideas:

1. The moon(s?) of auraxis need to be important as well. Without the earths moon, our nights would be much much darker, because the only natural light source would be stars far far away.
If you have ever enjoyed a cloud and moon free night out in the open, you know what im talking about. You can literally see billions of stars, but barley what is 10 feet away from you.
Now, that needs to be in PS2 as well. Let the moons have differen phases, cominbed with different light. No moon? no light, just that of those vehicles and bases. Big, if not several, moons? a quite white light shining everywhere.

2. Light sources. Now, nights are dark, and a tactical decision of every single armed forces in the world is to keep lights out during the night if you are close to the enemy. That means, vehicles, soilders, everything needs to have light sources that can be turned out. Imagine this Magrider collum, driving down the road during the night, just to get close the the enemy base. They turn out their lights, and suddenly the only reason why you know they are coming is the sound of their engines. You search for them, but you just know the general direction. Suddenly, they open fire, and you see this big purple flashes in the field, lighting up everything close to them, and suddenly, in the dark, a firefight starts, and the dark night is not so dark anymore.

3. Remember those history lessons of World war 2, and all those videos. Remember those videos where flak gunners used these giant lamps to light up enemy planes, allowing the flak to actually see them? I WANT THAT! :)



Any other ideas? :>

[Volw]

Any other ideas? :>

This under voice menu:

We'd better get back, 'cause it'll be dark soon, and they mostly come at night... mostly.

:rofl:

[bennybikerboy]

Dude, so stoked for night time.

I'm write with you with the whole "Turn off your lights, lads!" shit.
Honestly. I think it'd be the coolest thing to have night battles and see all the tracers and shit flying around.

I want it so bad and now we're getting it. I hope we can turn off lights and stuff on the base to and other stuff.

I also wonder if there'll be base security cameras or base security even?

[Bags]

Dude, so stoked for night time.

I'm write with you with the whole "Turn off your lights, lads!" shit.
Honestly. I think it'd be the coolest thing to have night battles and see all the tracers and shit flying around.



oh my god do want

[Volw]

I honestly don't think we'll get proper pitch black nights tho. More like earth full moon in terms of 'brightness'.

They'd need to implement some sort of nightvision but also having multiple 'working' lights would be a huge fps drain.

[bennybikerboy]

I spelled right wrong!

"I'm write with you"

[DxC]

They mostly come at night Mostly... now try sniping in the dark anyone whos daft enough to fire a gun in the dark will be met with another load of shots at them

ud have to shoot then run away very quickly!

[Bruttal]

Darkness rules

[Lunarchild]

Flash-lights anyone? How about night-vision goggles? :D Hrmm, maybe even, if you disable the gen, parts of the base go completely dark for a moment until the emergency lighting comes up.

[Sifer2]

I'm all for it so long as they make sure you can't just turn up the Gamma an be sniper of the century.

[Gwartham]

Sam Fisher goggles FTW!

[krnasaur]

I'm all for it so long as they make sure you can't just turn up the Gamma an be sniper of the century.


gah, beat me to it.

[LordReaver]

I'm all for it so long as they make sure you can't just turn up the Gamma an be sniper of the century.

Hackers will hack no matter what. If it's not one, it's another.

[Coyote]

I hope that during these night hours I can Future-Electrical tape my rifle with a flashlight. And a green laser. That would be awesome.

I can see how this could be not-awesome, though. In a base, at night, which has had it's gen blown. So you're inside, in the pitch dark. Granted it would be awesome the first 5 times. But having it on a daily basis would suck

[Hamma]

Early PlanetSide had more of a day night cycle and for some reason it was removed. One of my funnest fights ever in PlanetSide was in Beta when the cycle was still in. Fighting in the dark was an awesome experience I am happy to see we can have that back in PS2. :D

[SKYeXile]

Pulsar had lights allover it, willbe just like playing darkzone or whatever you americans call fighting with lazer pistols in a darkroom.

[Sifer2]

Hackers will hack no matter what. If it's not one, it's another.


Yeah but turning up Gamma isn't a hack. No more than turning down shadows to see people in dark corners better is. It's just all on the developers shoulders to make sure people cant gain advantage this way. Most of the time they can't which is why that night combat feature gets left out.

[BorisBlade]

Yeah and would be cool to get atleast some periods of quite dark areas. Not like night in WoW where its still bright, but real dark. And yeah could use the moon phases to keep those times much rarer. And tweak the day/night cycle so that its outta sync with real time (aka 22 earth hours = 24 auraxian hours). So if you play at the same time everynight your timer relative to game time shifts each day so that its sometimes day and sometimes night. Those 24 auraxian hours should be 14 day 8 night and 1 each for sunrise and sunset. Keeps most fights in the daylight where they would play better overall but still gives the night experience.

Now having a decent amount of night, atleast if you do real night, not "fake night", would require the proper headlights/flashlights etc. Honestly tho with the tech they have and what you can expect from the avg gamer pc wise, i see fake night much more likely. Atleast i hope they can find some way to give us some darker fights now and then.

What was the cont they had really dark for awhile? I know it was a desert one. Was it the old Oshur? I remember it gettin lightened up a patch or two later and i was disappointed.

[Zulthus]

This sounds really cool. Night fights would probably not only be fun, but look pretty amazing too.

[CutterJohn]

Don't see much point in having night. It will just be compensated for with some night vision device, which will be the stereotypical green.

Thats fine for a gimmick in some levels of an FPS, but half the time on auraxis will be nighttime. I don't care to play half the game with a washed out green with simulated lines so it looks like googles. Looks like shit.

I'll take a night/twilight cycle please.

[Raymac]

Don't see much point in having night. It will just be compensated for with some night vision device, which will be the stereotypical green.

Thats fine for a gimmick in some levels of an FPS, but half the time on auraxis will be nighttime. I don't care to play half the game with a washed out green with simulated lines so it looks like googles. Looks like shit.

I'll take a night/twilight cycle please.

Good point. Maybe they can say that Auraxis orbits a binary star system so daytime is 4x as long as night. Just thinking about all the lighting effects on that new engine gets me pretty excited about night fights.

[CutterJohn]

Good point. Maybe they can say that Auraxis orbits a binary star system so daytime is 4x as long as night. Just thinking about all the lighting effects on that new engine gets me pretty excited about night fights.

That could work. Have a big, close orbiting moon, and 1 of 4 cycles its a new moon and very dark, the rest of the time it could be twilight as it is now. Day, twilight, day, twilight, day, twilight, day, night.

[nathanebht]

Sunset sweeping across the map, light levels falling to true black. Weapon flashes, beams flying, blasts briefly illuminating. Vehicle headlights moving, search lights sweeping the dark. Time passes and dawn starts rising in the eastern sectors.

[Vancha]

I like the idea of having both a "light" night and a "dark" night to appease all types.

I've linked this picture before in threads about night-play, but this is the kind of darkness I'd like to see.

http://www.oblivionmodwiki.com/images/3/38/80nights.jpg

The kind of spectacle you'd get to see with the contrast of bullet tracers and explosions would be fantastic, not to mention seeing the silhouettes of galaxies drifting above you and such.

[Bags]

Yeah. Just no night vision IMO. I don't want green screen.

[CutterJohn]

[quote=Vancha;572949http://www.oblivionmodwiki.com/images/3/38/80nights.jpg[/quote]

So how exactly do you fight in an environment like that?

There would have to be night vision. And then we're back to the game looking like this:

http://0.tqn.com/d/internetgames/1/0/E/F/bf2sf01.jpg


Night vision looks awful. It works, and you can see, hence why its used, but its still very ugly. I see nothing good from making the nights so dark you have to use night vision to see. It has no real effect on gameplay, its just a stylistic choice to make the game look horrible.

[Malorn]

Perhaps in PS2 the headlights on the vehicles and MAX and such have functional use?

This could open up new implant options for low-light vision, flash-bang effects, more effective tracer-fire, etc.

But it probably shouldn't be too dark, poeple will just crank up their gamma as ghetto-night vision. But I suppose there's ways for that to not affect things too much.

They could also just do reduced visibily with cloud/fog effects.

[CutterJohn]

I don't think the engine could handle several hundred light sources at once. If it doesn't, then a light will illuminate a small cone for you, as per normal, and make you a target for everyone.

And if night vision where an implant, it would just mean everyone pretty much has to sacrifice an implant slot to it, since night time will occur every couple hours. Now we just have 2 implants at night instead of 3, and get to view the game in an amazing washed out green color.

[Tikuto]

Helmets with auto-night-vision goggles.

How fucking awesome would that be, really? :huh:

[basti]

There are plenty of ways to let you see without the need for green crap vision. :-)

[Gandhi]

I'm thinking something like this:

1) Draw all static geometry (trees, walls, ground etc)
2) Run a postprocessing shader that desaturates all colors by some amount
3) Draw all player and vehicle geometry
4) Run a postprocessing shader that desaturates quite a bit less to keep color recognition
5) Draw all weapon effects to a separate framebuffer
6) Run a standard Bloom postprocessing shader on that to give weapons some glow
7) Put it all together and push it to the screen

This has the effect of putting a much bigger emphasis on weapons fire at night time, while the desaturation mimics how our eyes work in low light. Ideally weapons fire would behave like small light sources, but I have no idea if the engine could handle that.

It would turn into a totally different game at night. Aircraft would become much more stealthy, you'd probably hear a vehicle before you see it and a big battle would be one hell of a light show. Infantry could be pretty stealthy too if they hold their fire until they're in position. Different challenges. I think that's more fun than "Oh look it's night, better turn on my night vision goggles".

Just a quick and dirty mockup to give you an idea of how this would look. It would probably be quite a bit darker ingame, and obviously you'd have to do something about people just turning up their gamma settings.

[nathanebht]

There are plenty of ways to let you see without the need for green crap vision. :-)

A combo low light plus infra-red vision? Really don't like the green screen idea too.

[xcel]

*ehem* Are you guys forgetting radar? That kind of make night stalking obsolete. Plus the devs are never going to design the game to that point of darkness...they just won't, for so many reasons....

It's quite idealistic...

[p0intman]

i want night vision.

[CutterJohn]

There are plenty of ways to let you see without the need for green crap vision. :-)

Obviously. Several hundred years in the future I imagine that green crap vision will be a childs toy in the bottom of a box of cereal, and the 'night vision' used by soldiers an augmented reality derived from multiple frequencies of sensor, and likely used during the day as well.

Still, the green grain-o-vision is a very standard trope, so its to be expected if night vision is used at all.

[2coolforu]

The day/night cycle was partly in Planetside, if you went really far away from the action to one of the little Islands off the coast of Forseral it would get pretty dark around 0300 Auraxis time, but it was more like an overcast day on Earth than a full-blown night.

Night time will add a nice dynamic for stealth though, might actually be able to properly sneak in to an enemy facility, also Terran galaxies will be like stealth-planes at night time with their matte black colour :D

[BlazingSun]

I am the terror that flaps in the night. I am the termite that devours your floorboards. I am the surprise in your cereal box. I am the batteries that are not included. I am the onion that stings in your eye. I am a special news bulletin that interrupts your favorite show....

[Lunarchild]

There are plenty of ways to let you see without the need for green crap vision. :-)

EQ2's Ultravision? :D

http://eq2.stratics.com/content/gallery/screenshots/eq2_999993.jpg

It actually did help to see in the dark, though I'd still prefer flashlights and more artificial light sources.

[Infektion]

Early PlanetSide had more of a day night cycle and for some reason it was removed. One of my funnest fights ever in PlanetSide was in Beta when the cycle was still in. Fighting in the dark was an awesome experience I am happy to see we can have that back in PS2. :D

I remember that... I also remember signing up for fileplanet just to get into the beta. LOL!!!

[Vancha]

So how exactly do you fight in an environment like that?
Silhouettes. I also imagine there'd be somewhat of a snowball effect...two enemies bump into each other, they both light up firing at each other, some soldiers fire at them, other soldiers fire at those soldiers etc.


There would have to be night vision. And then we're back to the game looking like this:
I'd hope they could some up with something better than the green screen of grain if they felt they had to put in "night vision". Hell, they already made something better than that with darklight.

Still, I'd argue that the idea of night that dark isn't to fight as normal. It's a time for mobilization, insertion, flanking, guerrilla warfare, clandestine ops etc. Though I suppose certain classes could gain access to thermal scopes or something.

[Bags]

Though I suppose certain classes could gain access to thermal scopes or something.

Then people would only play those classes at night.

Upon rethinking it I don't think total darkness would work so great, as cool as it may be.

[Volw]

Do you realise how much work would it be to add thermal textures to everything in game? :huh:

[basti]

Then people would only play those classes at night.

Upon rethinking it I don't think total darkness would work so great, as cool as it may be.

It depens how they set it up. Making total darkness cool requires light sources. While you propably wont have 1000 dynamic lights, faking most of it and just have a few real light sources would make stuff look cool while not killing your FPS.

Total darkness is quite cool from time to time, especialy with lights. But it needs to be fitting for the gameplay. With the little information we have, we dont know if the gameplay supports that at all, of if it would just be madness (imagine bumping into a enemy soilder just because you didnt see him ^^).


In any way, i hope for nights, no matter how dark they really are. Wait and see, or turn on the lights to see. ;)

[Vancha]

Do you realise how much work would it be to add thermal textures to everything in game? :huh:
Though I suppose certain classes could gain access to thermal scopes or something.
The point was that you'd need to look through a scope as opposed to having it active all the time.

Then people would only play those classes at night
Correction: People would only play those classes at night in areas with no light sources. Who knows if a class or two might have a "light"* on them, or how far that thermal/NV equivalent would reach?

* - Nothing that impacted performance too much, obviously. Perhaps a faux-light rather than a proper one if it'd be too big an ask.

[Gandhi]

Do you realise how much work would it be to add thermal textures to everything in game? :huh:
Vertex colors ;), since all you'd need are simple color gradients.

http://mrdoob.github.com/three.js/examples/webgl_geometry_colors.html

[CrystalViolet]

I don't think I've ever played a game that has properly implemented night vision. Things I'd like to see.

*True 24 hour day/night cycle. Of course each continent would be in a different time zone, so it would always be dark somewhere.

*IR illumination/lasers as attachments for weapons and vehicles. These would only be visible through night vision devices.

*A full skill tree based on night operations. This would allow you to add night vision to any vehicle or weapon , and promote outfits to specialize in night raids.

[Volw]

Arma2 + Operation Arrowhead has a fairly decent night vision along with thermal vision.

[ZeroOneZero]

Night fights=fun fights. I just need to turn up the brightness, that way I can actually SEE. Well lite rooms suck for night fights. :(