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Day and Night Cycles


timowade

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2008 called they want their dead horse back.

 

i heavily doubt anyone notices them in games that have them, and certainly few games that have special quests or mob spawns "at night"

 

 

and if it's so easy to code this, why don't you code yourself up an mmo with yoru fully realized and actualized mmo dream then? pretty easy stuff right?

 

I don’t think anyone is suggesting it’s a piece of cake, just that it’s not as difficult, or such a complex concept as a lot of people thinks. A lot of people seem to think that a lot of coding is required in order to establish the length of the day/night cycle before even implementing it.

 

Personally it’s not a game breaker for me and I understand the artistic reasons behind it. However it’s something I’d like to see worked on for the future as it would improve my gaming experience.

 

Ask yourself one question. What is the most iconic scene for Star Wars? Most people will come up with one of two answers.

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I saw Bioware staff state in a video interview a long time ago that there would be no day/night cycle because they wanted to use fixed lighting in an artistic manner to create the best possible scenery. Considering my characters always look either white as a ghost or too dark to see properly, I think they should just go ahead and implement a day/night cycle now.
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I saw Bioware staff state in a video interview a long time ago that there would be no day/night cycle because they wanted to use fixed lighting in an artistic manner to create the best possible scenery. Considering my characters always look either white as a ghost or too dark to see properly, I think they should just go ahead and implement a day/night cycle now.

 

Thing is that the engine they use, doesn't supports it.

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OK so I discovered something on Taris that I want to ask you all...

 

PVE server- Taris as republic= day only

 

Taris as empire = night only

 

Is it the same on a pvp server? Is it day or night only? is it both? neither?

 

 

 

I am so confused about this... and would love a day/night cycle...

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its either an engine issue, bioware is too lazy to do it, or they just refuse to

 

its not that hard to code specific day/night cycles for each planet

 

would be nice to see tattoine desert at night, i think it would look great

 

it doesnt even have to be an even 50/50 day night... some planets could only have 6 hours of day time while only having 18 hours of nighttime

 

or they could have more extremes and make day/night cycle last for weeks or even months on end... would seem more realistic imo

 

 

maybe one day

Edited by SuperomegaOP
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Thing is that the engine they use, doesn't supports it.

 

I'm not sure where you heard or read that but, in the video interview I saw, they specifically stated that the only reason there is no day/night cycle is because they preferred to create ideal lighting instead of such dynamic lighting which would give a much more unpredictable result. I even remember them using a term like "art" to describe what they wanted to do with the lighting.

 

If I could remember which video it was I would be more than happy to link it, but it was a long time ago now.

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I'm not sure where you heard or read that but, in the video interview I saw, they specifically stated that the only reason there is no day/night cycle is because they preferred to create ideal lighting instead of such dynamic lighting which would give a much more unpredictable result. I even remember them using a term like "art" to describe what they wanted to do with the lighting.

 

If I could remember which video it was I would be more than happy to link it, but it was a long time ago now.

 

And you believe it? When someone says this of "art" its becasue they don't have any idea of how to do it, look to all of BW games, can you find one of them with day/night cycle? appart of baldurs 1? Don't tell me NWN2 becasue thats obsidian.

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And you believe it? When someone says this of "art" its becasue they don't have any idea of how to do it, look to all of BW games, can you find one of them with day/night cycle? appart of baldurs 1? Don't tell me NWN2 becasue thats obsidian.

 

I'm not saying I believe or disbelieve them, I'm open to the possibility that maybe they were indeed just too lazy to implement a day/night cycle. I am just saying what their own words were on record.

 

The only thing I have trouble believing is that the engine flat-out doesn't support it, because it's such a basic thing that games/engines have been able to do for many years now. Even Minecraft can do it.

Edited by PJEBarlow
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day/night isnt a feature that didnt make the cut, it is something that was left out by design.

 

they put planets in the time of day that is most fitting of that planet. so for instance it is always night on nar shadaa because vegas just isnt vegas during the day, and neither is space vegas.

 

same applies for every planet.

 

 

no this is not a theory, it is something bioware themselves have said, but i can't be bothered to track down articles that could be several years old.

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day/night isnt a feature that didnt make the cut, it is something that was left out by design.

 

they put planets in the time of day that is most fitting of that planet. so for instance it is always night on nar shadaa because vegas just isnt vegas during the day, and neither is space vegas.

 

same applies for every planet.

 

 

no this is not a theory, it is something bioware themselves have said, but i can't be bothered to track down articles that could be several years old.

 

i understand nar shaadaa but still alot of planets in lore have day/night cycles and they really should be in

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http://www.heroengine.com/about/about-heroengine/

 

This is the one they use, they ahd to reescribe it from 0 because it was too old, instead of reescribe Aurora engine, (their own engine from all the rest of BW games) I guess it was EA choice..

 

I knew they used HeroEngine and

do day/night cycles.

 

So they either wanted to "show their artistic talent", which in my opinion failed as the lighting is often pretty bad when not in a conversation with an NPC, or they simply could not be bothered implementing it.

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i understand nar shaadaa but still alot of planets in lore have day/night cycles and they really should be in

 

 

yes there are tatooine nights, we even see them in a movie, but a scorching hot desert just doesnt feel as hot in the middle of the night.

 

im sure there is a sundown on tython, but bioware decided that early morning fit the jedi world much better.

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Epic Fail then...

 

Yeah TBH, got to say it is.

 

I don't make my characters too pale, say 6-7 shades from whitest on the human ones, yet in the game world they are often either far too over-exposed and look like ghosts or have a ruddy complexion, or they are under-exposed and look like they have a shadow all over their face.

 

Rest of the game looks nice enough, in my opinion, I just think the lighting fails when it hits character models and they might as well have gone with dynamic lighting from day/night sources since you'd get similar results anyway.

Edited by PJEBarlow
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There is some weather in certain areas...

 

as for day/night cycles, it wouldn't be day on every planet at the same time, given their differing orbital positioning.... would be a nightmare to implement IMO. Glad they didn't try, it'd be one more thing for people to complain about.

 

nothing orbit crap in this game each "planet" is just a zone.

 

so it would be easy to.

 

but even this would be to much to ask, they cant even test their patches properly before pushing them live.

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And you believe it? When someone says this of "art" its becasue they don't have any idea of how to do it, look to all of BW games, can you find one of them with day/night cycle? appart of baldurs 1? Don't tell me NWN2 becasue thats obsidian.

 

It's believable because it's true. It's almost impossible to make things look good in every kind of light (and that's true in real life, too). And this isn't the only game where the devs have used this reason to nix day/night cycles. Programmers may shrug at it, but artists tend to be horrified when their stuff looks bad...

 

Now, if they wanted to, they could've made day and night levels (no cycling) and optimized the art for each, but that really means two lighting passes for each level. Not an insignificant amount of work.

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... Even wow has day night, even lotro, even EQ, even all the games I know that are not BW and for ... sake... I really took artistic Screenshots in Lotro during day and night and their changes... I have awesome videos of it!
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Yeh I felt a bit sad when I saw Tattoine and thought: This would look wonderful during night time! But there's no such thing...and maybe it's because of having played WoW for so long...but when i'm playing at night, and it's like 11 in the morning in the game...it isn't as funny to me.
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disagree, it is useless.

 

Ofcourse it would be useless, it's a cosmetic/atmospheric/ambience improvement.

We're not talking about combat mechanics here... But some of us like persistent worlds to be persistent, and anything that adds to that is a nice touch. Being day/night cycles a part of that, for sure; as well as weather changes.

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