The campaign of this mod takes place during the Seven Hour War. You mostly command armies of Combine Synths and Advisors, but on some levels you will play as the Human Armies, and on special levels you get to play as a Gonarch commanding Headcrabs, or as Glowing Antlion Guardians commanding Antlion Colonies. In Co-Op mode, both players play as one army of the team. They share resources and work together against the enemy. In Multiplayer Local, 1 player with up to 3 ally bots against 4 enemy bots, play against each other. Teams to be chosen involve Combine, Americans/Germans/Japanese/Russian, headcrabs and antlions. Online multiplayer will be like local multiplayer, but with actual living opponents, open slots being replaced by bots. The armies are vast, the stories are vast, the combat is vast. Everything you can expect out of the seven hour war, and more. WE ARE RECRUITING!!!!!! We need programmers, skinners, modelers, anyone who can help is welcome to an interview!
I'm basically converting cubemaps into skyboxes. This one is a basic, fairly generic skybox. I referenced some of the geometry from a place in Russia. The green/orange beams are there because of the wide spread effects of the portal storms from black mesa (the entire reason the seven hour war happened)
The particle effect will be enhanced and used ingame... Most likely, but without getting so close to the camera, mostly in the background. Since this is a skybox, you can have close up detail without worry, as it will be occluded. It will just look like a huge beam in the background.
Having gameplay in several places on the planet allows for more than seven hours of gameplay, simply because they can overlap.
I forgot to mention I need to change the base sky to match lighting.
I won't put too much detail into the skyboxes, ever, unless it's a night time skybox, and needs stars. Otherwise, detail isn't really needed. I'm speaking specifically about resolution... However, stars can be made with particle systems or models, so it's not that much of a concern.
cool nice to see you helping ^_^
Nice, will it be animated? :D
looks sweet huh, and if it gets animated, it will be way better.
Well there are two things I can do... I can animate the skybox, or I can put a small scale particle effect in the 3D skybox in an actual map...
The second idea is much better, performance-wise.
Looks interesting.
An animated skybox is almost impossible, and even if you managed to make an incredibly complex sequence for the VTF, it'd be on the limits of the engine's capability. It simply wasn't designed for that kind of work.
A much, much easier method is how Valve themselves do it; in-hammer 3D skybox particle effects.
Both Dear Esther and Sabotage use these methods.
Out of curiousity though - as an avid RTS player I've never seen the sky in any of those games, just fog - ergo, why do you actually need the skybox?
I never planned on animating the 2D textures... We have a particle effect that's large enough to not require a 3D skybox... Having the beams in the skybox textures just helps create an optical illusion I find fascinating.
Also, if we can do it, why not do it? I think having a black void, or fog, just looks unprofessional.