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I was wondering if it would be possible to have the lightning from Graveyard in a track without it having the rain? Also if it can be done how would i do it?

It's just an animated backdrop like the one seen in Godzilla.

Ok if it is just the backdrop then why when i clone Graveyard i still get the rain and lightening even if i put a different backdrop in?

This is a hard question. Firstly, the lightning is controlled by the weather mask - which can be set using traxx 1.3/1.4 or if you edit the sit file. You can find a few notes on the sit file here. But more. Graveyard is not the only track with lightning. You will see lightning on all tracks if you run them in the rain. The thing with Graveyard is that you can't run it in anything except the rain.

So far, nobody has separated the lightning from the weather. It seems to be controlled just like the sun and the moon and the rain - all of them from within the game. What I mean is, the sun appears when it's clear, and the moon appears at night, and the lightning appears during rain. Not a lot is known about exactly how these things work. One thing is certain, and that's that it is not the backdrop. Rather, it is a texture effect controlled by the game. However, we all know that these things can be altered. The trouble here is to figure out how to do it. If I was going to start playing with lightning today, I would start by looking in the sound scheme file since I suspect that the lightning is triggered by the corresponding thunder sounds. If one could de-code the weather mask value in the wav sequence I think that would be a big step toward achieving this goal. That is, if it's possible. I mean, just think. If this is possible, you'd be able to have the moon during day or the sun during night. At this point in time, I just haven't played with deciphering what is hard coded into the game and what is not.

Please let us know if you make any discoveries.



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- Phineus

Ok was wondering what the .cl and .Ra files in the data folder were for and if they have anything to do with whati want to do??? Also the .LTE file...

Just stabbing in the dark here... first time i even thought about trying something like this.

In one of my MTM2MARS levels i achieved this by using a weather mask.BUT sorry i cant remember it i'll try & find out the weather code i have it written down somewhere.I also did this by editing the stock files which determine the colour of the raining sky.I made my mars levels sky colour red and for some reason this got rid of the rain (i could still see the lightening but the lightening was red instead of white.Also if you want to do this in a level you could have the altitude of the level low at about 50 and put the ground boxes up really high (200+) yu will not see the ground boxes but there might still be rain in any areas you miss.You can also make a backdrop like OP's dark star backdrop and have the sky totally blue or black or whatever and when you se the weather to rain it wll not rain you will ony see lightening.

I'll be back

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---> HAC-MAN
---> Keep On Hackin'
---> Hacman@start.com.au

A wee bit of tech info about lighting and light tables, from the <a href=http://ymscorner.com/mtm_tracked_faq.htm>MTM1 tracked faq</a>

Q: If I wanted to make a night time race, would it be possible? If so, how could I set the light?

A: In the LEVELS Directory, for the track file that you are working on (i.e. MYTRACK.LVL) there will be a line that has something like "earthsky.raw" down in the middle of the file. If you change that entry to "stars.vox" (without the quotes) and save your file off, you should be able to get a night time stars effect for your level. There are some other values down near the bottom that set the light level and the light vector. Their range is from -65535 up to 65536. You can experiment with these to see the effect. Each time that you make a change, you should go into the FOG directory and delete the file associated to your track (MYTRACK.FOG, MYTRACK.LTE). This forces the game to rebuild the fog and light tables for your track. Be very careful doing this and make back ups before editing any of these files.