Cloud Effect (In place of water)

I had an idea for a style of map where instead of water, there'd be clouds (like if the map took place in the sky...). The closest I can get is this:



Any suggestions on how to make it look nicer and with less possible lag? emote_confused Thx :D

first off i reccomend removing the waves. lol they just don't look right. as a matter of fact i will tell you how to do it. just one sec i will edit this. other than that man this thing rules. freaking cool.

ok to remove waves go to secnario than select map options. than uncheck show waves of cliff shores and uncheck show waves on rolling shores.

Zachary (hope he's doing ok) could use this in his map for Heaven. I mean, I doubt hell's gonna need water, and all you would have to do is give all the units the ability to walk on water, right? I think it could give Heaven that extra classic look. Then again, that may involve a lot of extra work, and he already did all of the terrain (which looks really nice 0_o ). Hmm...emote_confused

P.S. Thx! I thought it was a pretty spiffy idea. I'm glad you did, too. :ggani:

EDIT: K, I'll try that and get back to ya.

hehe no problem man. hey and btw you think you could let me in on how exactly you did that? i would like to be able to do similar things as well.

Well, here's a new shot:



:( There's just one problem...it's extremely laggy. :saddened: It's somewhat of an optical illusion. The water tint is given 100% transparency, so, it's there...but you don't see it. Floating right at water level are units that have the model of the "Cloud" ability that those night elf units have. Illidan naturally has the ability to stand on "water" so...all-together it gives the illusion that he is actually standing on clouds. :ggani: Except...seeing as the clouds are special effects...it's veeeerrrryyyy laggggyyyy. If only there were a way to have the same effect without the laggy baggage. :bangH:

you can make all units walk on the water. there is a doodad called invisable platform. i believe under bridges. only problem with that is that it may make your unit go under the clouds but he will still walk. try it out. and if it does not work try changing the z axis to something high. maybe than it would work.

emote_confused But, he's already walking on the water(clouds). That isn't the problem. The only problem is the massive lag it produces. That's what needs fixing. :(

There isn't a way to get rig of lag. The thing that causes the huge amount of lag is the partical emmiters used in the cloud model. Get rid of that, and the model doesn't exist.

Why not make a new destructible based of Invisible Platform and give it the cloud model? That would work better that having units, plus it would let any unit walk over the clouds without having to change things in the Unit Editor.

That's what he meant. Ok, I'll try that. I guess this pic is useless, but I'll post it anyway. Brb. :D

The platforms aren't working...I guess this idea is useless without a way to make it happen...and without the massive lag that the cloud effect creates...sigh...:( Thx for trying anyway, guys.

just another thing to add to this in case you didn't know. you can make any unit walk on water. quite easy to do. just change thier movement type from foot to amphibious. they will than walk on water.

whoa... very nice... it does seem a bit laggy from the SS... onl;y if there was a wya to reduce the lag............:bgrun:

to make all the units walk on water, open the object editor, go to the units' movement type and set its movement type to "amphibious"

trust me it works:D :D


as for the lag, you could try to make the clouds using a special effect

who nows it might work

Increase the scale of the model so that you can place fewer over larger areas. If you're brave enough you could modify the mdl to decrease the z-height, or make it a doodad so you can freely edit the z-height so that it only scales over the x and y co-ords. Also if you're brave enough you could open up the mdl and find the BGR (It's backwards in mdl's) numbers and change them to make nice white fluffy clouds.

Many months ago there was a short-lived mod project to recreate an old game called Netstorm that involved building bridges between islands in the sky. Back then I had no idea about the finer points of mdl editing, so I consigned myself to retexturing all 45 water frames into animated clouds. The results, at the time, were unfortunately less then impressive. But this relatively simple alternative does have some merit with a bit of tweaking.

~kharma

A very interesting idea, if you can fix the lag that is. Personally I don't like seeing the ghouls selection scales so low though...