Which Rain?

[red_flame586]

Hi all, I'm thinking of putting rain in one of my maps, but so far i've seen at least three ways to do it.

1. Something to do with an entity creating rain in a cylinder
2. Something to do with collision detection rain
3. Something to do with rain that can be made with a brush

If people could tell me what each rain does, if there are any more, what are the advantages and disadvantages and maybe give some links on how to do them, I and I think others as well would really appreciate it.

 

[lana]

Well, I think you're talking about how the particle systems Valve created all produce rain in a cylinder, which is good but can show through walls if you're not careful. The collision detection was why Valve didn't use weather until then: because they didn't want it to show inside but they wanted it to be optimized. Collision detection was too expensive so they settled with not putting rain where it can be seen inside. The brush you're thinking of is probably func_precipitation. It doesn't produce the same rain that TF2 uses, and can cause a lot of problems if not used correctly. Best to avoid it. Use particle systems.

 

[Draco18s]

env_rain_001_collide I believe is a collision version of the rain used in Sawmill.
You might want to check on that, though (there is a collision version, I just don't recall its name exactly).

 

[grazr]

Psy made a collision version of the rain. But it lags every map it's used in.

Maybe someone can explain how Valve do it... i thought it was a brush tools texture/solid entity deal. I can't imagine a point entity-info_particlesystem handling rain very well in an open environment.

 

[honeymustard]

From what I could gather from viaduct, coldfront and sawmill is that it's simply done by very intelligently placing each info_particle_system entity. Just place one in your map, and see how it looks in game. Move it around so it doesn't clip through geometry and work from there. You don't need one per every [however many units they technically cover], as I said, be clever in how you space them out. If you do one at at time, you should be able to cover lots of ground (even leaving gaps) without the player noticing. Hope that made sense.