🎨 How map colours work
Read this once before you touch a colour picker. Joint Ops has six colours you can set, two of them work at half strength, and there are two ways to set them: fixed for the whole map in MED, or changing during the match with Nile or a WAC script.
The six colours
| Colour | What it changes | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Fog (distance haze) | The haze that things fade into as they get further away. Far hills, trees and buildings end up this colour. | 0-127 (drawn double) |
| Horizon (fog band) | The band of sky right behind those far-away things. In WAC it is called skyfog. | 0-127 (drawn double) |
| Sun / moon light | The colour of the direct light from the sun, or the moon at night. | 0-255 |
| Sky light (from above) | The soft light that comes down from the whole sky, filling in the shadows. | 0-255 |
| Ground light (from below) | Light bouncing back up off the ground onto the underside of things. | 0-255 |
| Lightning flash | The tint of the flash when lightning strikes. | 0-255 |
Every colour is three numbers: Red, Green, Blue, each from 0 (none) to 255 (full). 0,0,0 is black, 255,255,255 is white, 255,0,0 is pure red.
Fog and horizon are at half strength
The game doubles the fog and horizon numbers before it draws them. So a fog of 100,50,25 shows on screen as 200,100,50, and anything above 127 is already at full. That is why fog boxes say 0-127.
- MED's Map Colours window does the halving for you: you pick the colour you want players to see, MED stores half.
- Everywhere else you type the half value yourself: General Information's own Fog Color (0-127) box, Nile's Fog Color and Horizon Color actions, and the WAC commands
fogcolorandskyfogcolor.
Typing 255 into a fog box does not give "a bit of red": it is double full strength, so far objects turn into flat, solid red shapes. Halve the colour you want: for a red haze of 220,40,40, type 110,20,20.
Always set fog and horizon together
Far-away objects fade into the fog colour, but the sky behind them is the horizon colour. If you only change one, distant things stand out against a sky of a different colour, like cut-outs. Give them the same colour (or close) and they blend in. MED's Map Colours window has a Horizon same as fog tick box for exactly this, ticked by default.
The day/night cycle
Every Joint Ops map uses an environment file (.env, picked in MED's General Information) that paints the fog, horizon, sun, sky and ground colours over the course of the day, again and again while the map runs. That is why a colour you set the normal way never stuck before: the next tick painted over it.
With the FMJ DLL, a colour you set holds: the day/night cycle keeps running for everything else, but the colours you set stay. Set a colour to any number above 255 (for example 999,999,999) and it lets go again, going back to the map's own colour.
Two ways to set colours
| MED Map Colours | Nile actions / WAC script | |
|---|---|---|
| When | The whole map, from the first frame | During the match, whenever your event fires |
| Saved in | The map itself (.bms) | The map's script (.wac) |
| Reaches players by | Every player gets the map header when they join, so they already have it | The server sends each change to every player |
| Fades | No, it is just there | Yes, with colorfade(seconds) first |
| "Off" (above 255) goes back to | - | The MED colour if the map has one, else the day/night colour |
Use both together: MED for the map's normal look (a dusty tan haze), scripts for moments (the sky turns red when the base falls, then back).
Who sees the colours
| Server | Player | What the player sees |
|---|---|---|
| FMJ DLL | FMJ DLL | Everything: MED colours and scripted changes, also when joining late (within 30 seconds). |
| no DLL | FMJ DLL | MED colours only (they come with the map). Scripted changes never arrive. |
| FMJ DLL | no DLL | The map's normal day/night colours. Nothing breaks. |
| no DLL | no DLL | The map's normal day/night colours. Nothing breaks. |
Things that are not colours
- Fog Distance (General Information) is how far players can see, in metres. It is separate from the fog colour.
- Water Color and Murk are the water's own settings in General Information.
- WAC also has
floor,ceilingandcloudcolour commands. The DLL sends them to every player, and the day/night cycle does not touch them, but we have not tested what they change on screen yet, so they are not covered in the guides.