Putting the horizon in Horizons?
[edit]I changed my mind and added a download link, it's at the bottom of the post[/edit]
The horizon in Horizons allways gives me a bit of an in the face feeling.
It appears to be to high and adds restricted feel the enviroment, well to me at least.
Quite often I notice there is a "second horizon" when flying high and the fadeover between two enviromental effects glitches.
Here it is:
http://www.ancientorder.org/Pics/example1.jpg
The location of this horizon feels more natural to me, the curve adds to that.
With Fridlekh's agh viewer I started editing the textures to see if I could change the horizon we normally see to that location.
Unfortunatly its not just one texture, to lower the horizon (without actually lowering that specific shell of the skydome model, wich I can't) you need to edit 30 files.
As far as I can see now that is :P
Here are the results so far:
Original horizon and new horizon next to each other, left is original, right the new one.
The mountains behind Kirasanct with full viewdistance on a original horizon (fogend distance 500 that is I think)
Same view with fogend distance set to 600 on a original horizon.
Again the same view, fogend distance at 600 and a modded horizon this time.
Note that all pictures where taken on the same ingame day time.
About 5 minutes apart to swap the mod in and out.
This is just a piccy I took in the same region that I though looked nice :)
So far this is probably the most useless mod ever made since it only works right when you set your fogend distance to 600 and your texture settings to highest quality or insane quality.
The difference is very little and the amount of work it needs is silly.
So why do I make it then?
Because I like the improved immersion a lower more curved horizon and different fogsettings give.
To me, it really is a lot more immersive to have a more clear view of the sky, a lower horizon, a curved horizon (considering you view in a 140 degree angle in third person mode) and to have large objects be a unicolor mass in the distance for a bit longer before it dissapears into the distance.
It gives me more of a sense of scale.
What would really add to the immersion for me would be if it was possible to for tulga to flag large land marks as render allways, im think of mountains, the spire, certain trees, etc
Items with the flag continue being rendered even if they are 10 times out of your viewdistance, you just see their outline and they have the color of the distance fog.
Imagine, standing just outside kirasanct and seeing valkors mountain looming over the horizon in the distance. Or seeing a huge far away mountain tower at the horizon as you look south from southmarch to Shepherds isle (i think thats the name, i mean the really big mountain island just south of south march)
now THAT would add a massive sense of scale in the game :)
The thing is not ready for release yet (some regions need tweeking and fade over looks butt ugly) and only those who can run HZ with most stuff on max can benefit from it I'm afraid.
Eventough it's not ready I'll release it anyway, as proof of concept to go with my suggestion that lower horizons and different fog settings are more immersive.
Download
http://www.ancientorder.org/Download...fofconcept.zip
installation
Simply download and unzip the zipfile into your Horizons root folder to install.
Example:
You have Horizons installed to C:\program files\Artifact Entertainment\Horizons (or in.C:\program files\Tulga Games\Horizons)
Unzip the file into that path. all files will be dropped in the right place automaticly.
Really important note!
You MUST set your texture detail to "highest" or "insane" quality.
You must use the following command to get the fog to display right:
/setpref fogenddist 600
removing the mod
Delete the following:
Horizons\resources_override\definitions\regions
Horizons\resources_override\textures\objects\skies
Horizons\resources_override\textures_agh\objects\s kies
)
