Enviro-Torque

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Authors Notes:
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This is my first patch. I did not have a lot of time to detour from my project to work
on it but I wanted to make a contribution. I hope you find this useful, and that
as you find improvements - you will submit them in return. It is good, but not perfect.

If you e-mail me (email in profile)
new patch files I will galdly add them to the resource. I hope to do another
maintenance release based on the comments below in a couple months,
but probably not till Q1-2006. (unless it's something HUGE ;-)

Enjoy!

(edit: June 28th, 2008 - Things got moved around on my website recently. This resource link has now been updated, to point to the correct location.)


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Current Resource File:
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envTorque-1.zip

Original Sources:
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GameManager Resource

Celestials Day/Night Cycles Resource
Dynamic Skies Forum Thread

Works With:
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This should patch to:
- TGE 1.3
- TGE+Lighting Pack (1.3.5)



Justification:
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I'm new to Torque and found the above three resources incredibly
usefull. I also found them severely out of date. The mod was easy to
get working but the patches were a bear to merge by hand, bug-fix, and then
integrate into each other.

I figured that the three of these resources went together logically and
there was no reason for someone to go through the work I did all over again.
I was also afraid that if no one put out a maintenance release to any of them,
they would be lost to the sands of time when TGE 1.4 rolled around.

So here it is -


Included
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- Stand-alone "GameManager" mod - updated
- Enviro-Torque patch/mod


What Is Enviro-Torque
--------------------------------
Good Question.

Enviro-Torque has 3 components:
- Celestial day/night cycles with seasons
- Fractal Skies for dynamically generated sky patterns
- GameManager Date/Time and Weather system

I did not write any of them. I simply updated them to patch with the
current version of Torque, added in all the known bug-fixes and combined
them into one larger system. Some minor new features made it in too. :-)

You can read about the gameManager in detail in the (included)gameManager.txt file.
It's most important purpose is to bring dynamic weather into the mix.

The Celestial portion of the patch implements a sun that rises and sets
and moves with the seasons, as does the real sun. It also colors the sky,
terrain, and objects based on the time of day, and makes it get lighter/darker out.

The Fractal skies is a feature that creates a random sky pattern
using a fractal calculations. It is good for very light clouds. It can be turned
on/off with the:
FractalSky = true/false
at the top of sky.cc


Work In Progress
-----------------

One of this resources goals have yet to be accomplished: The GameManager
turns clouds on/off based on the weather. Unfortunately a "clear-blue" sky looks
fairly freakish in torque.

The FractalSkies is excellent for giving just a wisp of clouds.
With a little more tweaking, it should be perfect for texturing the sky on a
"clear" day without making it look overcast.

Then on a cloudy day we want to turn "on" or switch to our normal
.bmp storm clouds. This switch is what I'm currently stuck on.

For now you can select whether you want to use FractalSkies or
.bmp skies on a 'cloudy' day using the true/fals value listed above.

Last note, this is a living resource. If you submit fixes I will try to
update it from time to time. thx.




Current Status of Resource:
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CRITICAL BUGS REMAINING:

- Need to finish dynamic weather integration with fractal-skies
- - Very Light clouds for "clear skies"
- - Big storm clouds for "story skies"
- - - (w/ or w/out fractal)

- If the weather is "clear" at game initialization, it mistakenly shows a
cloudy sky. It will abruptly fix itself when the sky changes to "cloudy".


NON-CRITICLE BUGS:
- Player and objects remain 'glowing' at night
- - Only a partial fix is available for this, and it's BAD.
- Terrain Shadows don't move - Apparently this has NEVER been an included feature...


OTHER-ISSUES:
- (?)

FIXED:

NOTES:
- Chances look good for a 1.4 if I release soon.
- - Any Takers?
- I don't believe this version has network support. sorry.