Dark Places let you change the colour balance with RGB sliders? 

 

oh, i thought you guys were actually interested in some kind of meaningful discussion. my mistake.

zwiffle: there is at least one ex-mapper. statistically about 5% of men are more or less, they rarely speak about it though. I know of 4-5 players but that's a fraction. 

RGB sliders for fog would be awesome... 

Yes, but should that override the mappers intentions? I mean, fog isn't chosen for a map at random.

That's not actually the point being made.

Of course if a map specifies a certain fog setting, the engine should honour it and the player should accept it. That's not in dispute.

The point being made is that where a map doesn't specify it's fog (or water alpha, or skybox, or whatever), right now there are two possible interpretations and both are valid:

(1) The mapper doesn't specify fog because the mapper doesn't particularly care, never thought to do so, or else the map predates engine support for fog.

(2) The mapper is explicitly specifying no fog.

Interpretation (1) is the only case where the player can go nuts with user-specified fog. This is the case that, if you look at the world through mapper-coloured glasses you, may miss becoming aware of.

Interpretation (2) is unambiguous: again, the mapper doesn't want fog and the engine should honour that. Again, that's not in dispute.

The problem is: how does the engine tell which of interpretation (1) or interpretation (2) is the case? 

#2 is the safe assumption. 

Set it to whatever the map is set to on load. Players can change it after load if they want to, but assuming the map is authoritative is the best way of respecting the mappers intentions.

If players change it after load, so be it.

That should really be the end of the debate. :) 

Reminder that the original point of debate was:

fog should reset after each map

And it's bloody blatantly obvious it should. 

if you look at the world through mapper-coloured glasses

Shame for us all, looking at Quake maps through mapper glasses on a Quake mapper forum. 

You are ignoring mh's insights on how people out there actually play Quake. Try looking outside the box some day. 

What if there was an additional fog-related cvar to toogle persistent fog that carries over across level changes and reloads. Could even be 1 = persists until loading a map that has a fog field of its own, and 2 = overrides maps' fog settings. Disabled by default, so only to be used by people who know what they're doing, who are aware of the possible unwanted effects. 

 

"You are ignoring mh's insights on how people out there actually play Quake."

Nobody here does that. And we all play Quake. 

 

I'm gonna say to make the fog command a mapper/mod setting that gets reset on map changes. With mods stuffcmding from triggers etc, doing otherwise is too unsafe.
If users want to override it, they can either do it on each map change or the engine can implmement something per-map like:
http://ezquake.sourceforge.net/docs/?commands#skygroup
maybe. 

I'm dismissing. 

Shame for us all, looking at Quake maps through mapper glasses on a Quake mapper forum.

Ah, but the question is: what's the purpose of releasing a map?

Sure, you can make a map for your own satisfaction (hell, even I've done that), but why release it? You release it to be played, by players, unless all you're interested in is a mutual back-slapping exercise among the mapping community. 

what's the purpose of releasing a map?

Can't justify working on it anymore. 

"You release it to be played, by players, "

Yes, and ideally they play the map you designed not the one they customized. :) 

I think there's a lot of cross purpose chat here, so I'm gonna try and post a few non-controversial things that everyone should agree on.

1. Maps with a fog key on should be loaded with those fog settings.
2. Going to a map with no fog key should reset fog to default in some sense.

There is a useful discussion buried somewhere in this thread, but it seems to be drowning amid people trying to argue in favour of 1. and 2. when actually nobody is arguing against them. mh, is this a fair point to start from? 

what's the purpose of releasing a map?

The feeling of self achievement of having a "thing" under my name being "out there". The knowledge that I've learned a lot in the process of making it. The enjoyment I get from playing it. The knowledge that my target audience might even enjoy it. And if they don't, I'll get earnest feedback from them, because there is no "mutual back-slapping" in this community at all. (But you probably haven't noticed that, because you're a complete cunt.) 

Because he makes reasonable well thought out conversation points and great engines? 

Both of those points are questionable to say the least. 

Also, my cocern wasn't even so much about the questions "what the player wants" versus "what the mapper intends" than the risk of accidentally, unintentionally or unknowingly 'spoiling' a map with the wrong settings. 

OK, I think I phrased my preamble wrong. I wouldn't want to go as far as saying nobody would disagree with 1 or 2, simply that at the moment it doesn't seem like anyone here does disagree with either.