Except that black fog is not fog at all (unless you're in a coal mine, in which case it's still not fog, but at least manifests with similar properties*). It's an arbitrary way of faking darkness and reduced visual acuity, which the presence of distant lighting screws with terribly. *For that matter, fog is used more for haze than fog. Go figure.
I tried darkening the fog quite a bit as Christ0132 suggested. For some reason I expected the fog to actually appear black, but it really just appears less luminous. Extending the end distance of the fog didn't really work though. I can see that it prevents some of the visual problems, but it's not the look I'm going for.
Black fog is simulating fog at night. Normally fog is light grey, when there's no light, it's black. Have fun coding fog into a dynamically lit effect, which makes no sense because it's supposed to be an optimizer.
I didn't say darken it, I said make it black, as in 0 0 0, then it appears black, because it is black. And the look you're going for won't work, you have to lengthen the fog distance a lot, if you want to have closer fog you will need to use particles to create actual volumic fog, and then use large glow sprites to give the impression that the light sources are diffusing into the fog.
Well okay, it was a fairly liberal interpretation of your suggestion Chris0132'. I do tend to treat most suggestions as general ideas. I feel that often people skip over defining the problem and straight to a solution when suggesting something. Other times I just like to get a better idea of how things work through experimenting with different settings. If my deviations trouble you I can certainly refrain from saying any of it was your idea. But honestly your information so far as been quite helpful and I really appreciate the help.
I don't mind what you call it, I'm just pointing out if you want it to look good, make it black. Source is pretty old, it doesn't do things automatically, so if you want to simulate something you need to more or less look at every aspect of it, and find some way to recreate it by hand. Fog is a useful tool but it doesn't behave like fog, it just passes for it on some maps in some lighting conditions, night time maps with tall buildings isn't one of either. Fog in source looks exactly the colour you tell it to look, because it doesn't really exist, all it is is everything on screen being replaced by that colour over a distance, except for the skybox which stays as it is, so if you tell it to look grey it will look grey, even if everything else is black.
Except then you need to have a skybox that fades to black, so it doesn't work any better than any other color that matches the skybox. (On that note, Icely will need a black skybox if he does make the fog black like Chris is suggesting.) As far as dynamically lit effect, Chris has the right idea with using particles. DX10 video cards are much better at swap buffer management.
Black fog at long ranges as chris said makes things look dimmer farther away, and makes thing's look like silhouettes.
No you don't and no he won't, not if he follows my instructions completely which is why I stress that using a long max distance is important in order to prevent the fog becoming solid. Even if it did become solid it would simply turn, as empty said, everything into sillhouettes against the skybox, which is a perfectly valid look because things usually do sillhouette at night against a brighter sky.
Exactly, how many dark places have you gone at night and noticed that all the trees and buildings are the same colour as the sky.
My problem with that is that any sky bright enough to cause silhouettes will be strong enough to illuminate fog, thus causing it to be something other than pitch black. Any fog strong enough to be pitch black in the face of a lit sky is strong enough to obscure that sky. For that matter, local lighting in a city is often strong enough to change the practical color of fog even if the ambient light from the sky cannot. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v444/Himselfpix/Cell Pix 5/SMT5600 Pix/foggy1.jpg Pitch black fog, sky is black, lights still dimly visible in the distance. http://www.wunderground.com/wximage/viewsingleimage.html?mode=singleimage&handle=EHL18&number=230& Blue fog, sky is presumably blue, blurry silhouettes. http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035774131@N01/307377910/ Black fog, sky is black.
The ground is always darker than the sky. The point of the fog is not to imitate fog, I explicitly stated you need to add actual particle-based fog for that. The point of the fog is to fade the background out. This is not difficult to grasp. I also said you need to put in glow sprites to imitate the effect light sources will have on fog. Bloody well read before you reply because I am very tired of repeating the blindingly obvious for the hard-of-thinking.
You've managed to completely ignore the first and third photograph in my post. All I'm saying and all I've meant to say is that black 'fog' does not work well without a black skybox and that using it simply to fade out diffuse lighting at a distance is incorrect. I've also given photographs and logical evidence for it (without attempting an insult), and especially to counter your claim that a black fog on a bright skybox "is a perfectly valid look because things usually do sillhouette at night against a brighter sky" by establishing that it does not happen in a fog thick enough to be black for photographical purposes. Either you have something that establishes otherwise, or you prefer stretching realism for the sake of a different standard that you feel is more attractive. I'll take either; for the latter, I'll simply agree to disagree on its attractiveness, but I can agree to the merit of the method if in fact there is one.
Perhaps discussion on the merits an personal opinions of various implementations of fog should be moved to another thread.
my impression so far: - needs moar cover - needs moar cover - needs moar cover - needs moar cover - needs better vehicle designs - nice map :D
Fog Town Beta 3 is now available. The map should start looking a little better now with more of the buildings taking shape and much improved fog. The increase in detail means more cover in a lot of areas too and I'll be interested to hear which areas have enough cover and which ones need some more. Tanks got a bit of attention. They will now spawn more frequently, and armour type will no longer vary depending on the number of points held by each team. Instead BE will always get Reflective and NF Absorbent. I might still vary the engine or amount of armour, but for now I'm trying no change. Enjoy. Some Screen Shots from Beta 3
And now you broke the vehicles some more aswell and a broken resource D: Man....reflective vs absorbant...so imbalanced it's not even funny
