Thicker, Fuller Clouds for FE

Thicker, Fuller Clouds for FE

07/30/07 by ShrikeHawk

I felt that the default in FE looked too much like faded white blobs

and not nearly enough like clouds. So I set about to change it.

My intention here was to make more robust-looking clouds with a higher

density and a greater "presence". I also wanted to create the more

complex shapes that clouds can form. The kind that makes you lay in

the grass and imagine what animal shape the cloud is.

I increased the random factor for the clouds as well, so scattered

clouds can be almost as dense as the default broken clouds and then

again the clouds could be very sparse. So you never quite know what

you're going to get. I like that better.

I wanted to fix Inclement Clouds too. Realistic or not, I felt that it

was too featureless and too muddy gray. I thought the cloudlayerbottom

didn't match the stormy gray of the horizon clouds. So I created a new

CLOUDLAYERBOTTOM5.bmp that I think fits the look of a stormy sky better.

I have increased the particle count in the clouds a lot. This is a big

reason for the thicker clouds. In defense of TK, I think he had the

default clouds the way he did because it would keep the framerates high

for most machines. This is a guess. I have not seen a framerate hit on

my machine (2.80Ghz CPU, @750Mb RAM, GeForce 6800GT 256Mb VRAM), but it

is possible that some machines may get an FPS degrade with this mod.

Have fun!