A mod to change times of sunrise and sunset
I dare to think it can not be one of the hardest things to change the overall hours to something different. But I would like to see different times for different seasons. With daylight set to say: Spring 7am-8am, Summer 6am-9pm, Fall 7am-7pm, Winter 8am-6pm. Or something among those lines.
I'd already have plunged the game into eternal darkness with the Alaska mod. Tongue
Although the timing for lighting may be inaccessible, certain areas can be modded and/or certain custom objects can be made as work-arounds for this interest in different degrees dependent on the degree of one's determination:
But, it can be a long process and a lot of works though.
Note, one needn't do all of the folowings dependent on how far one plans to go.
Also note I tend to give out different infos for more various readers in my limitted attempt.
1.custom objects: by means of bhav, to sync with the sims timer, line in changes in material types and states (shader functions, txmt file names, etc.) and/or mesh states (for various outlooks.)
- The custom object may be a combo package consisted of both lot and neighbourhood objects.
- such sky objects have to be huge to cover the scopes of the largest working lot 60x60 (grid square) and the neighbourhood for each case
- may check some cumtom sky projectors / objects and Inge's mods for this as references or study subjects. google, mts2, etc.
2. lighting.txt modding and modding on several shaderS: by altering all the available values.
the lighting.txt modding is relatively obvious (RGB(A), degrees, scalar, geom xyz, etc.), but the moddings of shaders take some basic understandings on what graphical components and material types as functions are involved. For the very general looks of the neighbourhood and lot,
* neighbourhood (neighbourhood terrain, neighbourhood water, neighbourhood objects, neighbourhood sky, lotskirt water [the infamous "in-lot * neighbourhood water flood" since NL and also the beach/ocean/sea in EP6 BV "beach lots"], etc),
* terrain (lot terrain, terrain paint/ground covering, terrain water [pond/lake], terrainsnows/hail [hail is just a parameter value for snow], XRayCursorMaterial, TerrainLighting, etc),
* lotskirt (in-lot day/night/season/weather lighting settings, etc ),
* pool [esp. the pool suface day/night switch for coloration],
* roof (roof top and roof snow),
etc...,
and their correlated shaders are necessary to be taken into consideration at the same to cast a certain matching graphical effects.
If one is anal about the cell-shading inside a room, one has to dig into the wall, wallPS and celshad shaders as well. Probably the floor and floorPS shaders.
Should one be really anal about the lot im[poster in neighbourhood view, modding on the imposter shader is necessary too.
Generally, if it's just simple constant colorations, one has only to deal with RGBA values in the scale 0.000-p, where "p" is unknown infinity dependent on how much the HWs can produce!
RGB: 0.000000=<?=<infinity
a value of "1" for R or G or B == 1X power of the input R or G or B value
a value of "2" for R or G or B == 2X power of the input R or G or B value
...
so, RGB values can larger than 1 fbut can't be smaller than 0.
For alpha-transparency,
A: 0.000000=<?=<1
the scale is from 0 to 1, where "0" is null/invisible/valueless while "1" means opaque/non-transparent/non-translucent. "visible transparent colours" are in the range between 0.000000 and 1.
For shader switches/checks:
If one has to alter all the day/night switch tunings
find/search the significant string "
tsIsDay
" in the boolean (true/false) switch "if (tsIsDay)" in shaders.
Reminder: never assume no "if ... not", or others just simply because of the above example given.
The RGBA sequence for the "colorScalar" is either in the form of (R,G,B,A) or (R,G,B) A.
That's where the colouration is defined normally. Surely, they themselves can be internal, global, external, or local variables. May check the default attributes for them if necessary. In some but quite probably unnecessy in this case, they can be just based on the algorithms as in the cases of swim-pool surface, vector-reflection in mirror, blur censor, etc.
For the seasons and weather lines, esp. in the lotskirt shader
may find/search, make up, alter, etc the followings as needed...
seti currSeason 4
currSeason
seti kSpring 0
kSpring
seti kSummer 1
kSummer
seti kFall 2
kFall
seti kWinter 3
kWinter
set weatherSuffix ""
weatherSuffix
seti currSeason (tsSeasonEnum)
currSeason
if (tsIsCloudy)
if (not tsIsCloudy)
tsIsCloudy
ref:
search in TS2wiki for
matshad
or
0xCD7FE87A
http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?title=CD7FE87A@ findable in material/material.package at the same subdirectory as "3D" or "sims 3D" (where txtr, gmdc, lifo, etc are stored)
@ readable in the "plug-in" view in Simpe
If one wants animated lighting shading, textural animation is the simplest. Algorithm-based ones can take some brain juices to fit that in.
Please be persistent, patient, understanding that occasionally something just don't work even if it appears viable. It's not necessarily about whether one is awesome or not, but may be about:
- that some lines are in other shaders here and there (there're at least 57-59 shaders among different EP, SP normally have no new shader or shader version),
- that there may be some conflicts (lol, the shader codes inTS2 are not the state of art type, alright? ),
- that probably not all but most shading codes can be found among all these madshad files (some may be in the exe, dll, and other game files, just my speculation only),
- or how the followings work together
* a particular video card (or some as in cases like SLI) used,
* Dx version(s) used during rendering,
* monitor,
* game settings used along different possible game versions (like default [the "config" folder in the programme folder] and the custom one [in "my document" --> "... sims 2" --> "config"?] video configs,
* TS2 default hardware checks [among some more primitive shaders] )
Well, as for multiple versions for all game versions, you can count the amount of the work if that's also your goal!
different shaders can have different versions in different EPs, and the installation has to be well prepared and organised. Or, nightmares! :giggle:
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