Weather Effects in Thief 1 A heinously vague tutorial by Riff Alright, alright, I hear you from here. "What!? There's no rain in Thief 1!" Well, you're right. there isn't. But there ARE particle effects that can look like rain. That said, here goes. Bear with me, because it's my first tutorial for anything. I found it by buggering with the particle effects while trying to make a fountain. I assume you've already made your starting stuff. Step 1: The H20StreamFlat That should be fairly self explanatory, really. Put in an H2OStreamFlat, found in the ->SFX->WaterFX->H2OStream in the object heirarchy. Throw it wherever you want your "rain cloud" to be. The water drops will appear on a level with the center of the object box. If you go into game mode now, all you'll see is the little dinky trickle from Bafford's sewers and other places. Step 2: The Spray Nozzle Under the object properties for your H2OStreamFlat edit the ->SFX->Particles setting, and find the heading "colour (palletized)". Changing the number will change the colour. (I used 237. Default is a greeny colour.) Then, check the "Spin/Pulse group" and set all the spin speeds to 0. For some reason, this makes the trickle of water diffuse into a much larger area. To change that area, play with the "fixed-group radius" field. Bigger numbers, bigger cloud. Now head into game mode and see your handiwork. Step 3: From Dripping Toilet to Drenching Torrent What? You don't like my little half-hearted attempt at weather? Alright, you asked for it. Also under the ->SFX->Particles dialog, change the "number of particles" heading. Bigger numbers, more raindrops. Makes sense, right? If you want, you can change the size of the drops by playing with the "Particle Size" field. Jump into Garrett's shoes and see what you've made, and don't forget your umbrella! Step 4: Hurricane Riff, or, Horizontal Precipitation Alright, that's cool. Now, throw in an ambient sound, a nice loud wind. Look in LiquidEgg's ambient sound tutorial for how to do that. If you go into game mode, the rain will be falling straight down, even though the wind is howling. Looks pretty weird, huh? Here's how to fix it: Under the ->SFX->Particles properties, there's a heading called "gravity vector" with three fields beside it labelled X Y and Z. The Z variable effects how far the rain will fall. Use a negative number, or your rain might go upwards (I haven't played with that.). The X and Y variables effect the movement of the rain along the X or Y axes. Higher numbers, more horizontal movement. Negative numbers just move the opposite direction. Set those to whatever you want, and go look at your home-made storm, complete with driving rain and howling wind. Step 5: Getting it Where You Want it Your rain will start at the same height as the H2OStreamFlat's centerpoint, and has an area ROUGHLY equal to the fixed-group radius. To make that a bit more accurate, go to the "Particle Launch Info" entry under the H2OStreamFlat's properties, and change the "box min" values to: X:-0.1, Y:-0.1, and Z:-0.2, the "box max" values to X:0.1, Y:0.1, and Z:0.2. Setting "Min Radius" and "Max Radius" both to 0 also seems to help. Step 6: Wet and Wild Ready for some fun with the waterworks? Here's probably the creepiest thing I've seen yet: Change the colour of your rain to 45, and go look at it in game mode. Don't tell me that isn't the least bit chilling. I mean, come ON! It's raining blood, for god's sake! Among other weird things are upward rain, touched on above, and the cyclone effect. For cyclonic rain, change the spin speed (Just below Spin/Pulse group in the Particles dialog) of one of the axes to anything other than zero, and your rain will spin in a cyclonic motion, with bigger numbers making a faster spin. Section 2: Snow Rain wasn't enough. Oh no, not for me. So, as the big black letters above most proudly decree, I came up with snow. The fact that I was trying for fog is completely unrelated, but, anyways, here goes. Like the rain, I haven't played with this too much, but it seems to work in the tiny little place I tried it in. Step 1: Your AirCrystalCloud Self explanatory. Create an AirCrystalCloud, found in the object heirarchy under the heading of ->SFX->GasFX->CloudFX->AirCrystalCloud. Stick this bad boy in your level, and resize it to fit the room. This may not be necessary, but it seemed to help for me. At the very least, it's less likely to disappear when you look at it from odd angles. Now, if you just pop into your level, you'll see a little puff of smoke. It doesn't look much like snow, so let's change things up. Head into the Particles heading, the same one you used in the Rain section, and change the "Particle Group Motion" pull-down to "Immobile". Also, to make the snow fall down, instead of float up, change the "gravity vector" Z field to -0.25 or something like that. Then, change the alpha value to something a little bigger, so your snow looks more solid. Also, you should know that these AirCrystalClouds are ornery little bastards, and they like to make themselves HUGE without warning while you're in game mode. I don't know what tips them off, but if they do get too big, just resize them down again. Step 2: Getting From Puff of Smoke to Skiff of Snow Now, to change from an upside-down smoker to a nice, cheery winter scene, here's what to do. Go to the AirCrystalCloud's Particles properties. Check the box marked "Spin/pulse group" (Sound familiar?) and then turn the "fixed-group radius" to something a little tastier, maybe try 6 for now. You can always make it bigger later. Then turn the "particle fade time" field to 0, and check the box marked "always simulate group" and uncheck "Particles start launched". I don't know what they do, but they keep your AirCrystalCloud from becoming too big. Step 3: Christmas Cheer, or Cold Day in Hell? Right now, you've got a little Christmas cheer falling from the sky. That's no fun, so let's drop some fluffy white death on our level, shall we? Open up the Particles dialog, and change the "number of particles" field to something big. The bigger your "fixed-group radius" is, the more you'll want. This affects the amount of snow falling. If you change the "particle size" heading, you'll get bigger flakes. Step 4: Blizzard of Ozz Remember how you made the rain look like it was wind-blown? Well, that works with the snow, too. Just, be careful not to make it go too fast, or it can quite conceivably get all over your level. It doesn't stop when it hits a wall, you know. If you do feel the need for horizontal white fluff, make it blow AWAY from your buildings. That way, it'll just drift over the null-space outside your level, instead of coming in through the roof and walls of your nice little cottage. Step 5: Wild Winters, Fun in the Sun, And How to Keep the Two Separated Just like rain, the snow appears about halfway up the AirCrystalCloud, but it looks better if you can see it coming from a distance. It also looks better if it only goes where you want it to. That said, here's how to do it. Open up the "Particle Launch Info" entry in the AirCrystalCloud's properties, and set the "Box Min" values to X:-0.1, Y:-0.1 and Z:-0.2. The "Box Max" values should be X:0.1, Y:0.1 and Z:0.2. "Min Radius" and "Max Radius" should both be 0. Also, setting "Min Time" to 1 and "Max Time" to 10 keeps the snow from disappearing before it hits the ground. Or, rather, passes right through it. Step 6: Other Cool Stuff Argh... A terrible pun, but it was necessary. You could probably use this effect, with a bit of tweaking, as ashes from a large fire. That's really about all I can think of. Any other ideas would be appreciated. Well, I hope that's of some interest to you. It's not all there is for instant weather, not by a long shot, but it's the best I can do. I only figured it out a few minutes ago and just went and wrote it down. If anyone knows how to do lightning effects, you could probably make a damned fine storm in your level. Questions, comments, or flames, e-mail me at rubroken@altavista.com. If this is of use in a level, I'd appreciate my name somewhere in the acknowledgements. Riff