Indroduction: This guide will teach you how to make a day/night cycle, using some basic effects and triggers, and learn how and why they are being used. If you have some experience with triggering, then this will be not be too complicated to understand. Keep in mind that this is one of the many ways you can achieve this effect. Some others day/night cycle triggering requires Looping, which sometimes makes people confuse. The below example is just a regular 5 trigger day/night cycle which doesnt require much skill to work it out.

A). A day/night cycle is a very clever feature to add to an scenario. An average day/night cycle consist of 4 lightings, following this order; Dawn, Day, Dusk, and Night. You can create a larger day/night cycle by adding more lightings into it, or even customizing and creating your own lighting via notepad.

Effects & Conditions: The reason why we are using Set Lighting effect to build a day/night cycle is because is the only effect that will cause the lighting in the entire scenario change. You must also realize that when there is a changing lighting, it will occur in all the places of the scenario. It is impossible to make a certain lighting in one corner of the map, and another different lighting in another place of the map at the same time, not even possible using the Lighting editor, or manually creating a customized lighting.

another effect is required in order to create a day/night cycle is Fire Event. fire event is in charge of activating triggers which werent set to be active, and therefore, these triggers which are unactive are unable to work, unless using this effect. when using this effect in a day/night cycle, it will be in charge of activating the following lighting.

The only condition used in a day/night cycle is Timer. this condition is in charge of activating the effect set lighting and fire event after the desired amount of time is reached. Timer works in seconds.

Getting Started: Now that you know what effects/conditons and why you are using them, is time to know how to use them and get them to work. The first thing you must realize before triggering is:

1).Select the starting lighting on the Lighting option NOT with the triggers.
2).Decide When the different lightings will activate, and How long each lighting will last.
3).Now that you have the main ideas already, its time to work on the triggers. The following sample has 300 seconds(5 minutes) for each lighting,and Default(Day) set as the starting light.

MAIN:        X Active || NOT Looped || NOT Run Immediately
Effect:        Set Lighting: Dusk
                 Fire Event: TRIGGER_2
Condition: Timer: 300(5 minutes)
TRIGGER_2: NOT Active || NOT Looped || NOT Run Immediately
Effect:           Set Lighting: Night
                  Fire Event: TRIGGER_3
Condition:   Timer: 300
TRIGGER_3: NOT Active || NOT Looped || NOT Run Immediately
Effect:          Set Lighting: Dawn
                  Fire Event: TRIGGER_4
Condition:   Timer: 300
TRIGGER_4: NOT Active || NOT Looped || NOT Run Immediately
Effect:           Set Lighting: Default(Day)
                  Fire Event: TRIGGER_5
Condition:   Timer: 300
TRIGGER_5: NOT Active || NOT Looped || NOT Run Immediately
Effect:          Set Lighting: Dusk
                  Fire Event: TRIGGER_2
Condition:   Timer: 300

B). In General, the trigger called MAIN Starts The Cycle. After 5 minutes, it will fire, making the lighting Dusk activate and activating Trigger_2 with the condition of waiting 5 more minutes. After the 5 minutes have passed, Trigger_2 will fire, activating Lighting Night, activating at the same time Trigger_3 with the same condition, which makes the next lighting activate after 5 minutes. Same procedure apply’s for Trigger_4. However, after Trigger_5 has been activated by Trigger_4, Trigger_5 will not activate the starting trigger of the cycle which is Main. It will activate Trigger_2, which is the next lighting that goes after Dusk.

ATTRIBUTES: You can also make your Day/Night Cycle more realistic by adding sounds to a different lightings. For instance, Default(Day) would combine with bird sounds, and Night would combine with Wolf and Crickets sounds. You might as well be able to make other sorts of events when a lighting takes place. You can apply this same method to other things such as units moving from one place to another without stopping. You can download a Day/Night Cycle Template i created as an example. you can download it Here

HINTS: Group the triggers, and name them to make your scenario more organized. If the cycle is not working, check whether you accidently checked a “Run Immediately” or a “Loop” Box.

FINAL NOTES: By reading this guide, you are now able to make a proper day/night cycle. If you couldnt managed to work it out, i would encourage you to keep trying, and downloading my day/night cycle template to guide yourself. you are also free to use the triggers in this .scx template for your own personal use. Download Template HERE

[This message has been edited by auron 2 (edited 10-23-2004 @ 04:56 PM).]