Sandstorm

[Sp0ngeb0b]

In my new desert syle map, I would like to have some special effects and one of them is something like a sandstorm, or atleast some sand blowing around. Now, my problem is, how to realize that? I already thought about moving fog, but as far as I know, that's not possible in UnrealTournament. And spawning each particle of the sand could be a bit to much for the engine, couldn't it?
I would be glad about some ideas

EDIT: I just came up with using some sort of brown smoke, gonna test that out later. Ofcourse, suggestions still welcome

[Feralidragon]

Well, "brown-yellow" smoke was my first thought as well, but make them huge and spawn only a few. They can have bUnlit=False so they get lit by the environment, and their ScaleGlow have to be quite low.

Then you just spawn a few (5 or so), and let them move as the "wind blows".
To make the overall effect more realistic, you can spawn some small particles (about 20 or 30) like some small dry stuff.

Anyway, this is my idea in case I did it myself, don't know how well this would look though.

[JackGriffin]

Something like this I'd do in the HUD. It's not going to look right generated in the map unless it's beating the system to death with particles.

[>@tack!<]

if you draw it on the hud then i think it wouldnt be realistic if you faced a wall outside, and you see a sandstorm

[Sp0ngeb0b]

I had to see that a real sandstorm isn't realizable and therefore I decided to 'only' use moving sand. I scripted a spawner which will spawn the sand for a certain direction and also modifies some other variables like the size and speed of it. The sand effect itself is just an animated, masked texture with little sand grains.

Doesn't look that amazing, but using more than a few of the spawners result in a pretty nice effect and fits perfectly into the atmosphere

EDIT: You can check that out here

[Hook]

Did you try what Feralidragon suggested?

Well, "brown-yellow" smoke was my first thought as well, but make them huge and spawn only a few. They can have bUnlit=False so they get lit by the environment, and their ScaleGlow have to be quite low.

Then you just spawn a few (5 or so), and let them move as the "wind blows".
To make the overall effect more realistic, you can spawn some small particles (about 20 or 30) like some small dry stuff.

That sounds pretty good to me.
Also, take a look at the map called DM-AMariner.
It has sheets of snow blowing/falling - not too bad.

[JackGriffin]

if you draw it on the hud then i think it wouldnt be realistic if you faced a wall outside, and you see a sandstorm

True, you just do a trace to get depth of field (distance) and adjust the "sandstorm" accordingly. I've been thinking about this on the route this morning and I don't really see a good way to do it that won't heavily impact the server and won't look lame unless it's done simulated.

[Feralidragon]

if you draw it on the hud then i think it wouldnt be realistic if you faced a wall outside, and you see a sandstorm

True, you just do a trace to get depth of field (distance) and adjust the "sandstorm" accordingly. I've been thinking about this on the route this morning and I don't really see a good way to do it that won't heavily impact the server and won't look lame unless it's done simulated.

If I may, I think you're all thinking too "in-depth" here, too "realistically" imho.

The best "low-end" realistic effect of a sandstorm I've ever saw it's done in LOZ-OOT (Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time) in a N64 game (something much older than even Unreal itself), so there's no reason to not be able to pull another in UT.

Simply put, they used many things so you "could feel" the wind. In a sandstorm the only sand you "may" ever see is the one that directly hits you, the rest is just "pieces of aparent smoke" and debris. Don't think about "sand", think about "clouds".

Take a look to this video: http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/planet- ... storm.html
Also, I already saw someone at unrealsp making a very convincing "wind" effect in UT using giant smoke sprites with a very low scaleglow and moving at different speeds in the same direction, that could be done for sand as well.


As for server impact: spawn and render them from the HUD only directly (even if you have to set a globalDelta variable for Ticked events, I did that in NW3 and works like a charm with zero server impact from the effects), per player, like Jack sugested and very well.

Therefore:
Graphics: Nice if done right relative the sprites.
Server Impact: absolute zero guaranteed. Client gets the effect and manages it himself.

There are some things in the engine you have to look if you're doing it server-side, but when doing client-side and since it won't communicate with the server EVER, you have much more freedom for small details, but even so "not that much freedom" nonethless.

[JackGriffin]

Also you could easily borrow one of the unused vars in zoneinfo and cause the storm to render in certain zones only.

[Sergeant Todd]

Best sandstorm I've seen was in DM-Azufron by Solaris - but that was ut2k4.