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I had a dream last night of this crazy idea to add some life to a map.  One thing i've hardly seen in Q3 maps at all as a whole is a thunderstorm.

Have a model composed of big autosprites inserted with misc_model around the map. That model's shader could be named 'lightningoff'



Have some nice thunder sounds ready. (Back in '07 I recorded a super violent thunderstorm and used some of that for the lightning gun firing sound. I should find that recording again.)


Have a trigger_always target a target_relay.

Have that target_relay target a target_delay.


Have that target_delay remap lightningoff to lightningon and target another target_relay.

That target_delay should also target ANOTHER target_delay to remap lightningoff to lightningoff after one second. Yes, "off" to "off"

That target_relay can target around 5 or more target-speaker entities randomly to provide a varying thunderclap sound


Lightningon is a shader with a flare texture blended with gl_dst_color gl_one with an rgbgen wave to keep the brightness down and fluctuating with noise.  This gives the illusion of the level being lit up without the use of a lightstyle'd lightmap (which isn't possible in q3bsp anyway)

Lightningoff is a shader that adds black (i.e. nothing is drawn)



I should make an example map of this soon.

Seems interesting, although I got lost in the passages.

Is that something like having an huge autosprite brush along the whole map, which is normally invisible but does became visible (white with some transparency) for an instant by now and then?

There certainly is a map which has a thunderstorm, just can't find it at the moment.

Edit:
Found the map; it's called "estatica"
http://lvlworld.com/review/id:1555

I know there is no lighting strucking dynamicly on the map, but perhaps it's a good inspiration source as it is one of the few maps with such particular detail in it.

I do remember one designed like if the time was frozen at the moment a lightning hit a tower. Very cool, but not the same thing Fromhell is trying... However, there are hundreds (or thousands) of Q3 maps I never played...

[Edit]
I was referring to "estatica", too. But as said, it's a whole different thing because there the time is like frozen, so there is no repeat of animated lightnings, and no need for "fake" dynamic lights.

PS: For some reason, this topic also reminds me of the "Troubled Sleep" map (http://lvlworld.com/review/id:879), although also that is a completely different thing (there was snow flowing down, not lightnings! No need for "fake" dynamic lights).

There's a more local and raw solution for adding lightning as a detail than the use of a shader as described;
blend a scrolling texture (that has the pallet of lighting) on the primary layer. This is a rather patterned solution; although the longer the palleted texture is, the less repetitive it is.

Of course FromHell's version kicks ass compared to this.

I remembered I read something about fake dynamic lighting...
... I found that here: (DO NOT LINK) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Mapping_manual/Advanced_lighting#Light_styles (taken from here: http://www.leveldk.co.uk/tut7.htm)
I have not tried that, but it looks like it's a limted feature, to be used for things like the flickering light emitted by a torch... I suppose it's not useful for what Fromhell needs.

However, do you know some map which uses such trick? I'm a bit curious...
By the way, I noticed OA 0.8.1 pak0.pk3 contains "q3map2_void3.shader" and "q3map2_void4.shader".... useless leftover from previous OA releases which included a couple of maps which used this trick, maybe?

Other than conceptual maps, I don't know any map which uses the trick I've described.

Spawn 100 rockets falling down from the sky? They will light the whole map all right ;)