Super Fog

Author: Zagibu

This tutorial will teach you how to add fog to JK levels using the included superfog.cog. First of all, you have to know that fog in JK is a difficult thing (not for the lvleditor, but for the cogger), and that it can't be done very well. The most common way (used in superfog.cog) is to add a greyshade to the display via the NewColorEffect() verb. The main problem of this method, though, is that you can't see any fog from a non-foggy place. There are ways to work around this problem, and we will discuss one later. Now let's start:

Build your level. Place a ghost thing where you want the fogcenter to be. The fogcenter is not really the center of the fog, but the position where the fog's intensity reaches maximum. The fog gets lighter when moving away from the fogcenter.

Put the superfog.cog into your level (Placed Cogs F7). Fill in the fields as listed below (for a quick fogtest with standard grey fog, fill in the fogcenter, fogsector and offsector fields and leave the default values in the other fields):

fogcenter The ghost's thing number.

maxfogred Intensity of fogcolor's red. Maximum value is around 290.

maxfoggreen Intensity of fogcolor's green. Maximum value is around 290.

maxfogblue Intensity of fogcolor's blue. Maximum value is around 290.

maxdistance Maximum range of fog in JKUs. The fog will slowly fade out when moving away from the fogcenter, until it reaches 0 at maxdistance.

linear This determines the fading style of the fog. Set 1 for standard linear fading or any other value for square function fading. Basically, the second style fades out slower than the first one.

fluctuation This is the max amount of random color that will be added to your basic fog color. It makes the fog more realistic, IMO. Put in 0 for no fluctuation.

psychedelic This is the fluctuation style. If set to 0, the fluctuation will be equally added to all three color values, making a standard grey fluctuation. If set to any other value, the fluctuation will be calculated for all color values seperately.

interval The fog update interval in seconds.

fogsector0-19 If the player enters these sectors, fog will be displayed. You only have to enter passable sectors, which border on nonfoggy areas (doorsectors, passable windowsectors, ...) and sectors, which contain walkplayers.

offsector0-19 If the player enters these sectors, the display will be cleared from fog. Enter sectors, which border on foggy areas (usually the sectors bordering on sectors you entered in the fogsector fields).


`fogcenter`	The ghost's thing number.
`maxfogred`	Intensity of fogcolor's red. Maximum value is around 290.
`maxfoggreen`	Intensity of fogcolor's green. Maximum value is around 290.
`maxfogblue`	Intensity of fogcolor's blue. Maximum value is around 290.
`maxdistance`	Maximum range of fog in JKUs. The fog will slowly fade out when moving away from the fogcenter, until it reaches 0 at maxdistance.
`linear`	This determines the fading style of the fog. Set 1 for standard linear fading or any other value for square function fading. Basically, the second style fades out slower than the first one.
`fluctuation`	This is the max amount of random color that will be added to your basic fog color. It makes the fog more realistic, IMO. Put in 0 for no fluctuation.
`psychedelic`	This is the fluctuation style. If set to 0, the fluctuation will be equally added to all three color values, making a standard grey fluctuation. If set to any other value, the fluctuation will be calculated for all color values seperately.
`interval`	The fog update interval in seconds.
`fogsector0-19`	If the player enters these sectors, fog will be displayed. You only have to enter passable sectors, which border on nonfoggy areas (doorsectors, passable windowsectors, ...) and sectors, which contain walkplayers.
`offsector0-19`	If the player enters these sectors, the display will be cleared from fog. Enter sectors, which border on foggy areas (usually the sectors bordering on sectors you entered in the fogsector fields).

That's all of the fields. Don't forget to hit the refresh button...

Two more things:

The color values of this cog sum up. So, if you have two cogs with overlapping maxdistances, you might get full white fog fx in some areas. Make sure that the distance between two fogcenters exceeds the sum of the two maxdistances.
If you have an open area with fog and a building with a portal to this area, you can set the portal sector's surface (the one that can be seen from inside the building after setting it's geomode to 4) material to a solid white (e.g. whitey.mat, included in zip file) and set it's face flags to translucent. That will give the player inside the building the feeling as if he was looking into a foggy area (set up the fog without this addition and nobody outside it's range will notice it). Have a look at the included level.

[Zagibu]