Allright heres the duststorm, devs upload to svn go! I dropped this into my empires SVN and for some reason the res is at like 100,000 and nfi why. It works fine in my current 2.24 version of empires. There are particle effects on a 60 second cycle and the particle effects are included, however they are pretty laggy so I wouldnt have them on by default. I dono if you guys can make an option to turn them on or off, or if you just want to not put them in the particle manifest and let people that want them turn them on themselves. But I would NOT recomend having the particle effects running by default. -changed all sand/rock textures -changed ruins textures and added some pieces, also made ruins continue into 3d skybox a ways. - increased fog distance -made HDR bearable(actually I prefer it with HDR now, looks amazing) -added support for particles of a dust storm -made map edge seamless -added a map edge grid. -cant think of other shit, read spotlight thread for more. Click to Download
Is it really good to make the map edge seamless? I mean, it's just kind of... there, over some parts of this map. An invisible wall. It should be easy for players to see where it is, otherwise it'll be really annoying at times.
I still contend that appealing to the silliness of players who fail to glance at the minimap or recognize where they are is a waste, but the laser grid map edge is perhaps the most acceptable workaround - better than having the map edge look awkward (3D seamless skyboxes are what you're supposed to do in Source by adjusting the appropriate texture scale & lightmap scale for the map and the 3D skybox portion of the map), that way the map looks aesthetically correct from a far, but players who get near the edge will immediately realize they're there. However, if this is going to become a standard, I'd prefer that the devs investigate ways of drawing the grid somehow, rather than needing mappers to do it with this workaround.
