I don't think it is easily moddable. Garat have stated that clouds is one of the thing that is much effort for little gain. It is both an aesthetic problem, a gameplay problem and a graphical complication. 1. When you want it just for the visual effect with no impact on gameplay have to be very careful with how much clouds there are and how transparent they. Making units outlined so they shine through the fog or clouds might be in direct conflict with this aesthetic. 2. When you want to force people to zoom in beyond the fog or the clouds in order to see units there. I really don't like this option as it hides information that the players intel already should bring and the game should IMO make it as easy as possible to access that information. 3. When you want it to have a gameplay effect without interfering with readability. Clouds can have several effects like decreasing LoS, damaging airplanes engines and metal dust blocks radar for example. This requires graphical solutions that highlights units underneath clouds or inside fog or allows the player to turn them transparent so he can see the terrain underneath it for example. Aesthetically this is in conflict with seeing the world as it is although unit icons already breach this aesthetic if you think it is important. Even though the inclusion of clouds, fog and dust might be complicated I think that PA should make their inclusion possible by settings and modders. The think that the aesthetic of clouds on a planet will be pleasing and serve well in eye candy. Gameplay effects of dust and fog could be interesting to explore but it might have to be done in a mod. Sadly the optimal way to play the game might be to turn clouds off unless they automatically turn transparent when you focus on a planet as an example.
That it should be a mod, and whether the game should support the mod, are two different topics. I only desire to address an assertion that it should be in the game "period". I think that flexibility in the engine is a very good thing to push for, but I rarely see people asking for that, they just want the feature that the engine flexibility would allow them to add via a mod. Uber has committed to having a robust mod support, so I think we should have more posts like yours, finding out if Uber has at least included/retained/developed the ability for things like this to be modded in later.
This would be interesting. A new planet type that reduces vision and radar effectiveness. Would bring in some unique and interesting gameplay changes. I would LOVE rings on planets.
Personally I think that the game should include clouds as an option. Some might say that people are only gonna disable the clouds but I think it is important that the clouds are supported in the game engine. Creating clouds from scratch might be hard unless it supported by the engine.
To create clouds like in my video the dev's would need to add an invisible sphere larger than the planet for me to attach the "Volumetric Diffusion Mapped Texture" too. If its not there i would have to "Hack it in" or as i like to say "Implementing code during late development" (sounds less uglier than hacking it in!!)
C&C3 had an interesting shader/texture scroll effect where the shadows of clouds appeared on the ground on especially clouded maps. I think that asset was wasted, as it appeared everywhere just for visual effect. "Shadows of clouds" could appear in areas affected by the FoW, instead of those areas just being darkened or greyed.
MMM cheap n nasty .. I LIKE , I LIKE I could do that have shadows of non existent clouds. and i like the idea of have it in the FOW area only too, then it doesn't interfere with gameplay
This is mostly arguing about semantics but if the game doesn't "support a mod" doesn't that mean that the mod have to rely on "hacks"? That's a big difference to if Uber are actually supporting a mod meaning that they develop code to support its' features and avoid to make changes to the game engine that breaks the mod.
OMG "hack" is such an ugly word !! It's called "Implementing code during late development!!!!!!!" LMFAO
Yeah, I will definitely try mod something like this it in if it's possible. That's if its not added during development.
