Would it be possible to hunt after 9 PM?

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mirage58
Posts: 2
Joined: 19 Jan 2023 18:43

Would it be possible to hunt after 9 PM?

#1 Post by mirage58 » 19 Jan 2023 19:25

I find it odd that you cannot hunt after 9 PM. Did the devs limit it because the Prism engine cannot render night time properly or?
Tried to remove the its too late to hunt text via editing the local.def but then i instead get g_lc_huntoverquestion message ingame when i try to hunt past 9 PM
looks like ill need to dig deeper in the base.scs in other to disable this message.
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NmanMETA
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Re: Would it be possible to hunt after 9 PM?

#2 Post by NmanMETA » 23 Jan 2023 12:37

This is an interesting one actually- so, the "It's too late to hunt" text is basically just that, it's a text box, the text isn't what's actually ending the hunt, so removing it won't actually change anything.

Now, I think it is probably doable, though I'm not sure how you'd go about it. I think the first thing would be adding the times, so you'd want to make the slider for time a bit longer, and have more options on it.

The second thing you'd need to do is add new skybox textures, and this... is probably why night hunting isn't present in the vanilla game. You would need new skybox textures for all of the different time settings, AND all of the different weather configurations, and they're different for every map since the maps are not only different sizes, but you also wouldn't want an Arizona backdrop on the Pacific Northwest (Oregon) map. And all of those textures, bitmaps, heightmaps and the like, they do add up, and we're talking about 2009 standards for game sizes; the game is already fairly big for the time, over 500 mb. Decompressed it can be over a gigabyte if you mod it.

And that's just for the skyboxes; for night hunting, you'd a whole bunch of different shaders, in particular I think making the water not be either an eyesore or barely visible would be a chore, and there would need to be some form of lighting because to tell you the truth, navigating these maps in broad daylight can be difficult, doing so at night on the ATV or horse without good lighting would honestly be unfair. I think it'd pose an interesting challenge for stand hunting and long shots but navigating to the trophy afterwards would be next to impossible in the dark.

Is it doable? Yeah, it wouldn't be THE hardest thing in the world (I don't think anyway) but it'd get kinda tedious I feel like, it really all depends on how long you'd be willing to spend in GIMP/Photoshop/Paint.NET editing skybox textures, creating new ones, etc. But again, there'd be a lot of quality of life shortcomings like how the ATV doesn't have actual headlights, a horse can't really have headlights, and animals like black bears, wild boar and buffalo can kill you and would be extremely hard to see, again, to a potentially unfair level. It's still something I'd like to tackle once more complicated mods are made; like, I'd want to do something nuts like make the Ranger trucks drivable and have headlights and such, because something like that would actually enable a night mod to be more feasible.

Prism as an engine can handle it just fine, it does it in the trucking games from around that era without trouble, I just don't think Hunting Unlimited was ever focused on it.
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mirage58
Posts: 2
Joined: 19 Jan 2023 18:43

Re: Would it be possible to hunt after 9 PM?

#3 Post by mirage58 » 23 Jan 2023 17:56

NmanMETA wrote: 23 Jan 2023 12:37 This is an interesting one actually- so, the "It's too late to hunt" text is basically just that, it's a text box, the text isn't what's actually ending the hunt, so removing it won't actually change anything.

Now, I think it is probably doable, though I'm not sure how you'd go about it. I think the first thing would be adding the times, so you'd want to make the slider for time a bit longer, and have more options on it.

The second thing you'd need to do is add new skybox textures, and this... is probably why night hunting isn't present in the vanilla game. You would need new skybox textures for all of the different time settings, AND all of the different weather configurations, and they're different for every map since the maps are not only different sizes, but you also wouldn't want an Arizona backdrop on the Pacific Northwest (Oregon) map. And all of those textures, bitmaps, heightmaps and the like, they do add up, and we're talking about 2009 standards for game sizes; the game is already fairly big for the time, over 500 mb. Decompressed it can be over a gigabyte if you mod it.

And that's just for the skyboxes; for night hunting, you'd a whole bunch of different shaders, in particular I think making the water not be either an eyesore or barely visible would be a chore, and there would need to be some form of lighting because to tell you the truth, navigating these maps in broad daylight can be difficult, doing so at night on the ATV or horse without good lighting would honestly be unfair. I think it'd pose an interesting challenge for stand hunting and long shots but navigating to the trophy afterwards would be next to impossible in the dark.

Is it doable? Yeah, it wouldn't be THE hardest thing in the world (I don't think anyway) but it'd get kinda tedious I feel like, it really all depends on how long you'd be willing to spend in GIMP/Photoshop/Paint.NET editing skybox textures, creating new ones, etc. But again, there'd be a lot of quality of life shortcomings like how the ATV doesn't have actual headlights, a horse can't really have headlights, and animals like black bears, wild boar and buffalo can kill you and would be extremely hard to see, again, to a potentially unfair level. It's still something I'd like to tackle once more complicated mods are made; like, I'd want to do something nuts like make the Ranger trucks drivable and have headlights and such, because something like that would actually enable a night mod to be more feasible.

Prism as an engine can handle it just fine, it does it in the trucking games from around that era without trouble, I just don't think Hunting Unlimited was ever focused on it.
For now i only want to remove the hardlock that locks the game after 9 PM. As for the night skybox textures i think the cloudy skies can work with maybe a bit of tweaking.
Maybe something like this?
Attachments
testtt.png
Last edited by mirage58 on 23 Jan 2023 17:57, edited 1 time in total.
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