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Problems with creating convincing underwater haze/mist

Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2006 18:38
by Nash
http://nash.wanzafran.com/doomstuff/deepwaters.zip

After playing Phocas Island 2 and reading a comment about it on /idgames/ regarding the underwater scenes needing a misty kind of effect, I decided to try and make a deep water sector have underwater haze. It made sense anyway because the effect is there in other games too (Half-Life specifically comes to mind at this moment) and it was what made underwater scenes look more convincing and enhanced the atmosphere.

After a lot of trying, I was frustrated because I just can't get it to work. I've utilized GZDoom's 3-d floors for this. Logically thinking, giving the dummy sector fog SHOULD produce the underwater haze. Instead, it doesn't create any fog; it just blends the whole screen with the colour I specified, which does not create the richness a real underwater haze can give.

If you examine the file I linked above, deepwater.wad utilizes Transfer_Heights-style deep water which works perfectly, and is the exact effect I was trying to produce. Using GZDoom's 3-d water feature though, it just won't work. The reason I wanted to use GZDoom's 3-d floor line special for this is because I want the water to have translucency as well. While the Transfer_Heights method works perfectly, the water can't be translucent. :/

Is there a way for me to achieve this? Or shall I propose changing the behaviour of Sector_SetFade for 3-d floor waters to actually apply fog instead of blending the whole screen? I doubt the latter would get any kind of approval though. :P

Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2006 19:19
by Graf Zahl
There's a simple technical reason for this: The way fog works it is hard to use with translucent floors. So I had to work around the problems.

Re: Problems with creating convincing underwater haze/mist

Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2006 17:18
by chopkinsca
Nash wrote:After playing Phocas Island 2 and reading a comment about it on /idgames/ regarding the underwater scenes needing a misty kind of effect,
Heh, the water areas where the ares that went through the most changes. I could never get the water to look good enough. Set_fade would be ideal, except it only shows up when you are underwater, from above water the water doesn't have the fade applied to it.

I could have used non-translucent water, but the 3d floors for water is what made me use GZDoom instead of plain ZDoom.

Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2006 19:18
by Paul
That comment was made by me. Maybe if you had lowered the translucency for the water it would look fine.

Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 1:48
by Nash
Set_fade would be ideal, except it only shows up when you are underwater, from above water the water doesn't have the fade applied to it.
Sector_SetFade does not apply fogging, it simply blends the whole screen. :/

So I guess the conclusion is if I want nice underwater haze, I can forget about translucent water.

Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 12:03
by Cutmanmike
Nash wrote:So I guess the conclusion is if I want nice underwater haze, I can forget about translucent water.
:yup:

I have sea in my map. This one one of the reasons I can't have GZDoom 3d floor water:

1) No haze.
2) No Line_Horizon.
3) LAG.