How do yo get translucent water?

How do you get water to be translucent? I’d like to be underwater and see the devil fish coming at me. I tried 0.00 murk but I still couldn’t see. Is there a good colour the water should be to enhance clarity?

Thanks

Hi there

Oh it’s been a while since I fiddles with that.
I think it depends a bit on the terrain of what configured in it.
Try a few different ones to see if there is any diffence. Try not to fiddle around with the water settings as it usually is not always successfull.

Alternatively, if you have NLH “Niles Little Helper” I think you can adjust it there.

What editor are you using?

Which terrain file are you using?

I’m using NileJ4F.
Any terrain file really.
But I had a Klong village on stilts DM using DFD1, Full00 Env, and if you fall in the water, you get attacked by piranhas.
Trouble is you can’t see the piranhas coming at you, and it would be nice to do so. That’s why I’d like transparent water.

I have to disappoint you: Yes, it can be done but.. there is a problem with the DF terrain files!

The designers of the DF terrains have used extreme murk as default. All other terrain files have transparent water by default.

You need another terrain file, basically anything that does not start with DF, e.g. DVXG1 and you should be able to see clearly under water.

Choose any of the DF terrains, e.g. DFD1 set Murk at -99.00000 with NILE.  Please note murk of -99.99999 produces the same results as -1.0000!

Now change the murk to -100.0000!!!! No more murk but a strange white glow over the surface you can’t get rid off!  Change of colours makes no difference, trust me. Do mind if you want to edit these values with notepad or another text editor you will need to use -0.99 or higher for murk and -1.00 for translucent waters.

If you do want murky water with the other terrain files you need to set an extremely high value in NILE of 10000. This will produce a similar strange glow but this time it affects NILE instead of the game. In your NPJ you will find a corresponding murk of 100.

PS: You can rebuild with a new terrain to have visible piranhas OR keep your current files and SIMULATE their presence with wac to save time!

Thank you that is excellent information. I shall investigate with new terrain.

Okay, so I opened my Klong River map in NileJ4F, and swapped out the current terrain and chose DVXG1 as suggested. Then I saved. I went back in again and selected all the objects and dragged them to a good position, and now all I have to do is adjust heights on the terrain. So I thought I’d test the water, as they say.
I went into the mission and the DVXG1 water is murky. No different to what I had in the DF scenery.
I then went to Nilej4F, changed the murk to -99.00000 and saw the milky surface. Same with -1.0000, -10.0000 or -100.0000. Not a nice effect.
However, when I went to test the game, the water was just the usual default murk as it always seems to be.

Thanks for trying to help anyway.

Make a testmap with the DVXG1. trn, an environment file and a start marker.

Okay yes that did it. Must have been some carry through when I swapped terrain under the village.
Water looks a little sludgy from above, and underwater is realistically sludgy but you can see a fair distance ahead. So that works for me.
Murk is set at 0.50, so presumably if I drop it to 0.10 it will be more clear, and if I raise it to 0.90, it will be murkier.
But I like the present effect, so I’m sticking with it.
Benefit is that when you fall in the water, at least you have half a chance of gutting the piranhas before they bite your head off.
Thank you.

Okay so the crazy thing that is now occurring is that the Deadly Silver Fish just float there in the water ignoring you. I tested in another translucent water DVXG9. I tried Deathmatch, Team Death Match, and Co-operative versions; giving the Silver Fish Team numbers of 0, 2, 3 etc, different to my own. At no point did they bother swimming around.
And yet in my original map with a DF Terrain and murky water, the darn things swim around. You can hear their splashes. Sometimes when you fall in, you actually see one coming right up to you with teeth showing – the last thing you ever see.

Yes, decreasing murk will make the water clearer and increasing will generate more murk until you can’t see a thing of course depending on which terrain file you use.

Check if the fish don’t have the attributes inactive, blind and/or coward. They will ignore enemies.

But since you had it working and liked the effect, why not revert back to that situation?!

Ah, now that’s the “if at first you don’t succeed, give up” approach.

What we have learnt is that fish with identical properties behave differently in different terrains.

DF Terrains have active fish but murky water.

DVX Terrains have translucent water but inactive fish.

Maybe somebody knows why. And maybe nobody knows why.

IndioBlack wrote:

Ah, now that’s the “if at first you don’t succeed, give up” approach.

Maybe you should not say you like something if you don’t like it. It’s confusing. 😀

There is  a b s o l u t e l y  no relationship between AI behaviour and environment or terrain files. 😨

//terrain = DVXI1.TRN

//1002 = DEADLY silver fish  – does not have the same properties as the red river fish!! 😝

if ssnalive 1002 then
PLOOP
if ssnnearssn 1002,player,50 and ssnalive player then
ssn2ssn 1002,player
endif
END
endif

This is just a test set up. It’s better to add a waypoint or maybe some algae on the water where the fish spawns so you can redirect the fish back to the algae when the player dies. Use the algae ssn in the nearssn command instead of the fish ssn to prevent the fish from swimming under ground. The algae will also block the fish from view to add an element of surprise. 🤓

I’m sorry but you don’t seem to understand.

I’m using NileJ4F.

It is my experience from the missions that I have created, that in a DF Terrain with murky water, if you use any fish or sharks of a different team number to the players, they will swim around and they will attack you if you are in the water.

In the DVX Terrain with the translucent water, they won’t.

I did test missions to prove it, and I proved it.

So it is my experience that there is a difference.

There may be some other factor involved that I haven’t determined yet, like type of mission, team numbers used, whether it is sea water or inland water, or whether I was just having a bad day, but I haven’t found it yet.

Thank you for the syntax, but I don’t do that stuff, I get by with NileJ4F.

That’s awesome!! I will stop participating in the mapmaker forum as of now. Thanks for the heads up and good luck with your maps.

Bye then.