Peremeter walls

Andy · Post by **Andy** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 10:14 pm

I know all the brushwork basics, but in the stock levels like Destroyed Village and Ramagen, they have these peremeter walls at very odd angles, and I cant seem to do that in my level without screwing up the textures or proportions, and i end up with overlapping brushes. Any help?

Also, the 3 numbers that determine sundirection, I know the third one is useless, but what do the first two represent?

crunch · Post by **crunch** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 10:45 pm

The best way to angle brushes for what you want to do is to hit E on your keyboard, with the brush selected, and adjust it that way. You may still need to adjust textures depending on the way you shape the brushes; use S to open the Surface Inspector to manipulate the texture on the brush.

As far as sunlight and direction, the first number is how high in the sky your sun will be.
The usable range is 0 to -90, with 0 at the horizon, and -90 high noon in the sky.
The second value represents the NSEW direction of the sun. Usable range is 0 to 359 (360 is 0 again). For realism, a second value between 90 and 270 is my recommendation.
0 is North
90 is West
180 is South
270 is East
Obviously, this moves the sun counterclockwise around your map from the North.

omniscient · Post by **omniscient** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 12:22 am

the third value is not useless. the 3rd value determines the location of the horizon. 0 is obviously best.

Post by **Bjarne BZR** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 12:32 am

omniscient wrote:the third value is not useless. the 3rd value determines the location of the horizon. 0 is obviously best.

Thats total news to me... Can you explain that a bit more? What would be the effect of using something other than 0 for the 3rd value?

omniscient · Post by **omniscient** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 1:11 am

id be happy to. say for instance u design a map at sunset. u havee big hills in the distance at u want the sun to shine just over it, like dawn. wet the number higher and viola, higher horizon. or say u build ur map and somehow the ground ends up to be at -2110 or somehting (happened to me once) u can make it lower so u can get the right effect. its not very helpful, just one of those little things that might help once ina blue moon. if this is new to u though, i might be wrong, gues this topic i should expiriment more with, my previous develeopment may be off. EXPIREMENT TIME!

Post by **Bjarne BZR** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 8:29 am

omniscient wrote:EXPIREMENT TIME!

Go for it!

crunch · Post by **crunch** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 10:15 am

It is a good theory, omniscient, but unfortunately not true.
The placement of the sun has nothing to do with where your ground is in relation to the z-axis.

If you make your ground at 5000 vs. at 0, a sundirection of -45 90 0 still puts the sun 1/2 up in the sky, in the west.

The sun direction is dictated by the PLAYER ORIGIN. Put simply, it is bound to the player. It will not rotate with the player, but it will travel side to side with him/her. No matter where you go outdoors in your map, the sun (when set at -45 90 0) will be 1/2 up, in the west. Your map can be 10,000 grid wide North to South, and still if you are as far North as you can go and turn to the west, there's the sun directly in front of you.....go as far South as you can, and there it is, still.

Changing the third value has no bearing whatsoever on the placement of the sun.

Post by **Bjarne BZR** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 1:19 pm

Does the experimenting confirm this omniscient?

omniscient · Post by **omniscient** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 12:06 am

hmm well i guess i was worn,g must have just been a coincedence. i will expiriment tomorrow, im a littel busy right now.