Interacting with the Sun
Older/Work In Progress Page
- This page was initially written for an older version of Helix, has not been updated, and may be out of date!
- Contributions are more than welcome (see buttons at the top right of the page).
How to integrate and communicate with the Sun and Light.
In HELIX, we allow the greatest possible customization to be made on your servers and packages. And to make it even easier, we've included some built-in functions in the game which helps integrating and customizing your Servers.
A very important concept in HELIX is the Sun. We provide some methods on World class which allows the scripters to, in few lines of codes, modify the current Time of Day, Sun Speed, Environment Colors and even change the Weather and Fog.
For the methods of interaction with the Sun exposed in the World to work, it is necessary that your Map is loaded with a sun that our API can identify it, and for that to be possible, we created the method World.SpawnDefaultSun().
Spawning the Default Sun#
Once you run the method World.SpawnDefaultSun(), the game will destroy all (Unreal) Actors with the tag Sun and will spawn a brand new Actor which contains a Directional Light, Sky Light, Fog, Clouds and some others components which you will be able to control with World methods.
Tip
Because of that it is important to set all your Actors with Sun tag when creating Maps!
Warning
Sometimes if you use SpawnDefaultSun() in some maps, you may notice you will end up with two Directional or Sky Lights, this means the Map wasn't configured with the Sun tags.
Interacting with the Sun#
It is possible to change Several aspects and settings from the Sun.
Info
All methods available for customizing the Sun are listed in World Static Class page.
Some examples of methods are World.SetTime(hours, minutes) or World.SetFogDensity(density) which will change the current Time and the Fog, respectively.
Weather#
We provide some basic methods to change the Weather of the World. You can use the method World.SetWeather() to select from a predefined selection of Weathers, or create your own Weather using all the methods the World provides.
Weather Types#
| Weather Type | Sun Intensity | Fog Second Density | Fog Height Falloff | Sun Light Color | Sky Rayleigh Scattering | Sun Temp. Multi. | Sky Light Intensity | Wind |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clear | 150 |
0.005 |
0.2 |
Color(1.0, 0.9, 0.8) |
Color(0.17, 0.41, 1.0) |
1.0 |
1.0 |
0.25 |
| Rain | 10 |
0.025 |
0.03 |
Color(0.82, 0.9, 1.0) |
Color(0.73, 0.8, 1.0) |
2.0 |
0.3 |
1.0 |
| Cloudy | 10 |
0.1 |
0.01 |
Color(1.0, 0.9, 0.8) |
Color(0.73, 0.8, 1.0) |
1.25 |
0.2 |
0.3 |
| Thunder-storm | 5 |
0.5 |
0.025 |
Color(0.82, 0.9, 1.0) |
Color(0.73, 0.8, 1.0) |
2.0 |
0.25 |
3.0 |