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Post by atharaon on Nov 20, 2020 11:47:12 GMT -5
Hi all, I've been checking back and forth unsuccessfully over the last year or two to see if anyone has figured this out, so I may as well just ask. Is there any way to change the orientation of a district, or the location where the sun rises? Please note I don't want to just rotate a lot or change sky colours, I want to know if it's possible to rotate the entire district or the sun's path itself. I ask because each district within a given world will have different locations for sunrise and sunset. You can check this out in game. Assuming the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, we can look at each district and determine how they are orientated. Unfortunately, there is no consistency across a given world, leading to weirdness like every district having a different "north", sometimes with a 180 degrees difference to another district on the world map. One example might be Windenburg: the island's "north" is to the right of the screen on the world map, while other districts have north to the bottom right or even the left! This inconsistency might not bother a number of people but it eats away at me to a ridiculous degree and has led to me abandoning attempts to remake the maps three times now. If there's some easy way to correct the issue by having the "North" direction the same in each district, this would help a hell of a lot more than trying to redraw maps, relocate lots and so on. Here's a visual that should help illustrate the issue. Please, please tell me there is some way this can be done!
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Post by MizoreYukii on Nov 20, 2020 14:09:24 GMT -5
Have you opened the world files to see if you can fix it? Here's a tutorial on adjusting the skybox which lists the files you need to look at, it should be in here somewhere. You can also try copy/pasting a specific world's sky files you prefer into the others if you don't want to bother researching it and want immediate results. If that info is stored there of course, but it should be.
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Post by Rubrica on Aug 3, 2022 8:21:08 GMT -5
Hello - apologies for necroposting (the rules for this subforum were a little unclear as to whether that's forbidden just for advertising CC, or forbidden in general), but I was wondering if anybody had made any progress with this, please? I'm trying to change the lighting direction in the high school neighbourhood of Copperdale, since it's aligned exactly with the lots and so the north/south faces of buildings hardly get any sun throughout the day. The tutorial MizoreYukii posted appears to no longer be available, and I've had a look through the EP12_HighSchool_01.world file myself but can't seem to find anything that's clearly associated with the sun lighting. There are some entries that don't appear to be identified by S4Studio and show up as 'Unknown World 2/3/5', so I was wondering if it might be something in those? Thank you in advance to anybody who can be of assistance!
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Post by MizoreYukii on Aug 3, 2022 15:16:46 GMT -5
Hello - apologies for necroposting (the rules for this subforum were a little unclear as to whether that's forbidden just for advertising CC, or forbidden in general), but I was wondering if anybody had made any progress with this, please? I'm trying to change the lighting direction in the high school neighbourhood of Copperdale, since it's aligned exactly with the lots and so the north/south faces of buildings hardly get any sun throughout the day. The tutorial MizoreYukii posted appears to no longer be available, and I've had a look through the EP12_HighSchool_01.world file myself but can't seem to find anything that's clearly associated with the sun lighting. There are some entries that don't appear to be identified by S4Studio and show up as 'Unknown World 2/3/5', so I was wondering if it might be something in those? Thank you in advance to anybody who can be of assistance! The file from the tutorial is World Timeline Color, but I don't see anything in there that directly mentions what directions the sun rises and sets, but it's the most logical place for it as it has other stuff related to the sun, etc. It's not Unknown 2, Unknown 3 isn't editable with S4S, and Unknown 5 I don't remember what it does but worth a try.
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Post by Rubrica on Aug 4, 2022 10:51:04 GMT -5
Hello - apologies for necroposting (the rules for this subforum were a little unclear as to whether that's forbidden just for advertising CC, or forbidden in general), but I was wondering if anybody had made any progress with this, please? I'm trying to change the lighting direction in the high school neighbourhood of Copperdale, since it's aligned exactly with the lots and so the north/south faces of buildings hardly get any sun throughout the day. The tutorial MizoreYukii posted appears to no longer be available, and I've had a look through the EP12_HighSchool_01.world file myself but can't seem to find anything that's clearly associated with the sun lighting. There are some entries that don't appear to be identified by S4Studio and show up as 'Unknown World 2/3/5', so I was wondering if it might be something in those? Thank you in advance to anybody who can be of assistance! The file from the tutorial is World Timeline Color, but I don't see anything in there that directly mentions what directions the sun rises and sets, but it's the most logical place for it as it has other stuff related to the sun, etc. It's not Unknown 2, Unknown 3 isn't editable with S4S, and Unknown 5 I don't remember what it does but worth a try. Thank you so much for pointing me back in the direction of Unknown World 5 - I had actually tried it before, but I guess I must have been putting my file in the wrong place by mistake or something. Your post prompted me to give it another go, and I can confirm that Unknown World 5 does indeed control the sun/lighting direction. I still haven't figured out exactly what each of the values does - playing around with them randomly has ended up with the moon being visible high in the sky at midday, and another particular nuisance is that it's possible to tweak the numbers such that the physical position of the sun in the sky doesn't match up with the direction of shadows. I'll keep playing around with the values to see if I can get a better understanding; if I figure it out, I'll make sure to post it here for the benefit of anybody else coming across this in the future. Thanks again for your help!
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Post by MizoreYukii on Aug 4, 2022 16:06:56 GMT -5
The file from the tutorial is World Timeline Color, but I don't see anything in there that directly mentions what directions the sun rises and sets, but it's the most logical place for it as it has other stuff related to the sun, etc. It's not Unknown 2, Unknown 3 isn't editable with S4S, and Unknown 5 I don't remember what it does but worth a try. Thank you so much for pointing me back in the direction of Unknown World 5 - I had actually tried it before, but I guess I must have been putting my file in the wrong place by mistake or something. Your post prompted me to give it another go, and I can confirm that Unknown World 5 does indeed control the sun/lighting direction. I still haven't figured out exactly what each of the values does - playing around with them randomly has ended up with the moon being visible high in the sky at midday, and another particular nuisance is that it's possible to tweak the numbers such that the physical position of the sun in the sky doesn't match up with the direction of shadows. I'll keep playing around with the values to see if I can get a better understanding; if I figure it out, I'll make sure to post it here for the benefit of anybody else coming across this in the future. Thanks again for your help! Interesting! I'm glad that was the correct file in the end, and I'm excited to see what you learn. andrew Sorry to ping you, but we now know what Unknown World 5 is if you'd like to give it a name, or to follow the thread and then give it a different name once we learn more :D
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Post by Rubrica on Aug 4, 2022 20:45:58 GMT -5
Please let me know if I should be posting this somewhere else, because I'm aware that I've essentially hijacked somebody else's thread (sorry!), but I thought I'd share what I have so far; I'll probably carry on investigating tomorrow. So far, of the seven values in Unknown World 5 that can be edited, my main focus has been F1 and F2. I am kind of hopeless at explaining things in text, so I have created a 3D tool to visualise the path of the sun for given values of F1 and F2; you can access it here. (Sorry, it's a bit of a mess - the only things you need to change are the sliders for F1 and F2. You can also click the play button on 'D = Point(c)' to animate the sun's movement, if it isn't already animating when the page loads.) Basically, F1 and F2 determine the circle in which the sun and moon move. F2 is an angle in radians which determines the direction of the 'axis of rotation' of the sun and moon; in other words, on the applet linked above, it determines the line on which the centres of the two orbits lie. (The zero direction for F2 is, I suspect, one of the world coordinate axes.) Then, F1 is another angle in radians which determines the position of the sunrise/sunset on the horizon relative to the F2 direction; the default (i.e., when F1 = 0) is for the sun to rise in a direction 90 degrees to the left of the F2 direction and set in a direction 90 degrees to the right. Increasing F1 brings the sunrise closer to the F2 direction, until at a maximum F1 value of π/2, the sun both sets and rises in the F2 direction - in other words, it stays fixed there, even at night, so I suggest not increasing F1 that high. Also, a secondary consequence of this behaviour is that F1 determines how high in the sky the sun is throughout the day; specifically, it is the angle below the vertical the sun makes when it is at its highest at midday. Again, this is all pretty hard to explain in text, so I encourage you to just play around with the slider on the applet and gain an intuition for this yourself. To summarise, however: - F1: Determines the sun's zenith at midday - that is, angle the sun makes with the vertical when it is at its highest. (Also, as a secondary consequence of this, determines how close together the sunrise/sunset are on the horizon.) Measured in radians, between 0 and π/2 (roughly 1.571), though I see no reason why it couldn't also go as low as -π/2 (-1.571). I haven't tested that, though, so be on the lookout for strange effects. Things will also behave very weirdly for high values of F1, so in practice, this should probably be kept between -1 and 1.
- F2: Determines the direction of the axis of rotation for the sun and moon. Measured in radians, between -π and π. Another way to think about this is that it defines where North is.
- F3, F4, F5 and F6: Not sure yet - however, the good news is that the overwhelming majority of the game's worlds use the same values for these, so you're probably pretty close just sticking with what's already there for the world you're modifying, or going with 22.08628, 16.56471, 27.60785, 64.
- F7: Seems to correspond in some way to how dark the world is considered to be for the purposes of outdoor lighting switching on. That is, at F7 = 0, outdoor lighting will behave as normal, while for higher values, lights will come on earlier in the evening and switch off later in the morning. For high values (around F7 = 1), outdoor lights will stay on 24/7. Most worlds leave this at 0, but it can be used to nice effect - for instance, in the high school region of Copperdale, the sun rises quite late in the morning, so having F7 = 0.2 ensures that the lights stay on until sunrise so kids aren't arriving at school in the dark.
Oof, that was longer than anticipated, sorry - I do tend to ramble. As a final parting gift (at least until I carry on investigating F3 through F6), I have also compiled the lighting values for every world in the game for your perusal, which you can find here. Edit: Having woken up and looked at this again, it's obvious that it's way, way clearer to just think of F1 as being the sun's angle from the vertical at midday, so I have edited the post and the applet to reflect that.
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Post by andrew on Aug 5, 2022 21:15:14 GMT -5
Hey Rubrica, Thanks for the great information! Do you have any suggestions on a better name for the resource and its field names to replace F1-7?
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Post by Rubrica on Aug 6, 2022 6:36:26 GMT -5
Hey Rubrica , Thanks for the great information! Do you have any suggestions on a better name for the resource and its field names to replace F1-7? Hello - I'm not too sure, since I still haven't got round to figuring out all the values, I'm afraid, and without knowing those I would be hesitant to suggest a name for the resource itself; for all I know, F3 through F6 have nothing to do with the sun at all. For the others, though, I would suggest maybe 'Solar Zenith Angle' or 'Sun Zenith Angle' for F1, 'Sun Path Direction' or 'North Direction' for F2, and 'Outdoor Light Threshold' for F7? Edit: If anybody else wants to help with F3 through F6, I would appreciate it, because I have absolutely no idea what they do - I've tried changing their values to all sorts of things in all sorts of worlds and, unless I'm making a mistake with putting the files in the wrong place again, they don't seem to change anything at all. The only things I have noticed so far are: - Their 'default' values, used in the overwhelming majority of worlds, seem to be 22.08628, 16.56471, 27.60785, and 64. In fact, there are only three worlds which change these values at all:
- GP01_Forest_01 (i.e., the forest lot from Outdoor Retreat) is notable in that all four of its F3-F6 values have been scaled by the same amount (x0.484374915) from the default values - however, altering the values in this lot has produced no effect for me.
- The only other world to change F5 or F6 is GP09_SMG_01, which I think is the Black Spire Outpost from Journey to Batuu (although I have no idea what the SMG stands for, not having played the pack myself.) Interestingly, in this world, F3 through F5 all have the same value of 59.58432, with F6 at 71.
- Finally, EP07_LocalIsland_01 (Ohan'ali Town in Sulani) changes F3 and F4, to values of 19.07451 and 10.54118. These represent scaling values of exactly 19/22 and 14/22 from the default values, respectively.
The fact that these values do actually get changed by the developers at all, however rarely, suggests to me that they do in fact do something - but I am completely at a loss as to what. Edit 2: Today's (2022-08-30) patch notes suggest that the angle of the sun in Copperdale was changed by 6 degrees, and the new values agree with this (specifically, there was a change to F1 of 6 degrees in the high school neighbourhood and 5 degrees in the other two neighbourhoods; all other values remain unchanged), so we do at least now have official confirmation that F1 corresponds to 'sun angle' (or, more specifically, the zenith angle).
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