Long as I’m in nitpick mode, though, one additional random thought: would it be feasible to take the sky “lampshade” and tilt it a few degrees off vertical? That might be enough to give you a quasi-realistic sunset effect extending just partway around the horizon.

On the other hand, it might be hard to implement for reasons I wouldn’t understand, or it might just not look right. I dunno. This is the Internet; I don’t have to have a clue in order to type stuff here…. ;)

Please don’t stop giving feedback. :)

Firstly, I would like to apologise for any anguish, mental or otherwise that I have caused by my previous post. This was not my intention. I guess that I thought since so many other people have been commenting on the project, one more wouldn’t hurt, however since mine was one of the comments specifically picked out in your response, I guess it must have.

I have re-read my original comment above, and while I can appreciate that nitpicking is not a good thing, having thought about it, I think that different people value different parts of a project differently.

To be honest, I don’t understand much programming, but I do know what a sunset looks like. I would have made the buildings blocks with random blobs of light as windows and called it a day with them, but those extra steps you took make it look a lot more interesting.

Likewise, I would have spent more time on the skyline, because I don’t know how to make a car overtake another one, but I do know how a skyline should look.

These are just different flavours of awesomesauce.

It was my impression that you were trying to make something that looks ok from a distance, but wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny. Amongst a city made of buildings which look pretty good, having a skyline which has a literal line all the way around it didn’t feel up to the same standard. Since you normally have such attention to detail, I wondered whether looking at still images with a band of sunset had prompted something like my 5th comment in the 2.5 years I have been reading the site.

I really do appreciate that you create posts such as this one, that is after all the reason why I keep coming back to this blog, and it is the only blog that I regularly read.

Over a whole day has passed since your comment and this response. I have actually been thinking about this, and commenting on blogs in general because such things prey on my mind sometimes.

I know a lot of the ‘u r teh suxxors’ type comments come from the fact that the Internet gives you anonymity, and when re-reading my comment, I wondered whether if we were face to face I would have said the same thing.

I came to the conclusion that, yes, I probably would have.

However, I don’t think that I would have got the same sort of reaction (Except the bit about the dog) because if we were talking, then it would have come as part of a discussion, rather than an unexpected stab from the shadows.

As a person who takes such things seriously; does that make it alright? Ultimately, I guess that only you can decide how you feel.

The Internet is an impersonal medium, which is why things like real shops will probably never truly disappear, as the ability to look at the things that you are buying will always be liked, but the art of conversation is being hurt by the fact that people can say whatever they want.

Hmm, my last sentence made me think that you have full editing / deleting facilities for comments, so if they bother you, no one need ever know that these comments ever existed, but that is the subject for another 500 word long comment, so for now I leave you with the following:

You = great
My previous comment (Plus a few comments from others) = great -1
My future comments = 0

Once again, apologies for any annoyance caused, I suggest you name a zombie after me on Left 4 Dead if you feel that bad.

P/S by the way, the dog enjoyed the walk.

You may not realize it, but you already knew how to generate clouds years ago. There’s no getting around the fact that clouds are fractal. One can get pretty good clouds using a fractal terrain generator, in which one generates opacities instead of elevations.

One can also do tricks like pre-biasing the landscape elevations (skyscape opacities) to give higher opacity toward the horizon, and even have a nonlinear transparency “waterline” that changes “elevation” toward the horizon.

Of course, you’d then project all this onto your horizon bitmap so you don’t have to worry about rendering the skyscape.

I think you’ll be pleased with the clouds you get using a fractal landscape algorithm. It might be just a few tweaks on your existing past work.

-Alex

Increasingly demanding feedback is, unconsciously, a compliment of your work. It happens because like-minded people see the potential in something you’re doing, see that you’ve caught the spirit of it, and the crowd surges forward to take advantage of the opportunity.
Because geeks tend to be concerned only with ideas and the expression thereof, the feedback is insensitive and selfish.
At least it’s a sign of success.

If you’re surprised by the demanding reaction to a 30-hour hobby program, try devoting 3 years of your life to an old FPS mod. Now that’s a sharp lesson in human ingratitude :P