Okay, here's an idea that should be easy to implement that would add HEAPS to the game. And when I say "easy" I mean for anyone who has ever made an addon it should be REALLY easy, but for someone like me who has never made an addon in my life I mean IMPOSSIBLE !
:-\
I noticed when placing large objects, such as two story buildings, that the game logic always places objects at a height equal to the MIDDLE of the object (whatever that means). So if you place a two story building on a steep hill for example then half will be submerged (bad luck) and half will be floating in mid air (even worse luck).
So I thought - why not use this effect to create an addon that will simulate running water in creek beds ? All you would have to do is create a dead simple wedge shaped block say 40m long, 20m wide and 3m metres high, tapering from 3m down to 0m over its length.
You then ensure that all textures except the top are clear, while the top has a pale blue sheen, streaked in white highlights (sparkly clear water). If you could animate the top texture to sparkle etc that would be great but not essential. Finally, you simply add a resident sound effect that plays continuously, just like the Fountain object.
Now, if all goes according to plan, when you place this object in the centre of a gulley, with the lower end facing downstream, then the object should appear on the map at the height of the centre of the object. The upstream end will be suitably higher and the downstream end will be lower. It may still "hang" in space, but if you place another overlapping block downstream then the effect should be of a continuous, gently rolling stream.
(If necessary you could design the wedge to curve down at the end to simplify alignment issues when place on the map.)
The sides of the object should sink below the adjacent gully banks making the whole thing seemless. Because of this "blend" effect there would be no need for curves (like roads) - simply place each object end to end with a slight angle offset and the edges will take care of themselves.
You could make three different sizes of objects (rivers, streams, creeks), each with their own rise/run, texture (sparkly pale blue to muddy brown) and associated sound effects.
Of course this wouldn't be a perfect object - if the player went "underwater" (by going prone of whatever) he wouldn't necesarily drown (a good thing ?), and unless you added internal coloured bulkheads there would be no visibility problem underwater. I'm sure that both of these problems could be simply fixed though.
I have always thought that the OFP islands are missing two very major effects - waterways and clearly defined field boundaries. Feld boundaries are easy to fix, I'm hoping that the above idea might make the waterworks idea easy too.
Comments, suggestions, can be / can't be done ?
Roni
Topic: Adding rivers, creeks and streams to OFP (Read 1362 times)