Impactful Weather

[Loboling]

Something that I'd love to see, either in a mod or settings, is the weather conditions being more impactful. For instance, you literally can't stay out in the desert sun for too long. You CAN eventually find clothes that allow you to greatly minimize this, but it's always a factor. Not something you can ignore. Same with rain, it can be very dangerous if it rains and you get cold. Like you can actually die if you don't get by a fire within a certain amount of time. 

Wondering if I'm the only one that would love to make weather more impactful to the game mechanics?

Also, I think if it worked like this, weather should be a little more random and consistent. Like you could get mostly rain all week, then nothing for a week or a few days, etc. Very little rain in the desert. Pretty much impossible to be outside for more than 10 minutes (game time) in the snow biome without clothing. Maybe temperature variance from -20 to 10 degrees, allowing for some warmer days where you could explore and would try to make use of the time to get better loot. 

Anyway, just some thoughts, and praying someone will make a mod one day. 😜

[Pernicious]

Yeah, I think it'd go more back to its survivalist roots as well as keep those early game "need to pay attention to survive" kind of thing.

 

After week 1 or 2, depending on how you play, you pretty much have unlimited food and water, so being too hot or too cold draining food and water faster doesn't really have an impact. If we included things like:

1. Hit point damage from frost bite;
2. Slower reload from numb fingers;
3. Jittery cross hairs from shivering;
4. Blurred vision from heat stroke;
5. Limited run speed - even limited walk speed from heat exhaustion;
6. Lower capped health from sunburn.

Things like that would make you pay more attention to survival aspects, even if you have plenty of food and water... And it gives another use to Aloe

 

 

[Morloc]

I'd like this too. It's generally one of the legs of a survival game.

 

Visibility with rain and snow.

Rain snow and clouds should diminish ambient light.

Fog! Minimal visibility makes it scary.

Extreme storms should slow movement and perhaps occasionally "nudge" the player/vehicle a bit. More noticeable to smaller your vehicles is. Gyros would be very difficult to control.

Poisonous/radioactive rain/fog - Lose health if outside. 75% chance each day that crops die. Rare, but nasty.

Biomiasma - Stay outside in this stuff, and there's a good likelihood you get infected with...something randomly.

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc

 

[Kyonshi]

That's also one of my only problems with the game. There's and overcast in just 5 seconds, it rains and when it stops, sun comes out even faster lol.

 

Not only should extreme weather be more impactful, I'd like to see fog rolling in with different levels of thickness. The worst should be that you can't really see anything beyond 3 meters.

 

Rain should only be a problem if you're still wet while entering the snow biome though.

[ElCabong]

This works best so far in the snow biome. You can be in it and everything's just fine then a blizzard starts and you start getting cold even though you're dressed for the cold weather. I don't know if I want to take this too. Do you want youronly option is to get in out of the rain and not do anything until it stops? That would be kind of boring.

 

Some sort of diminished capability would be a better solution. 

[Urban Blackbear]

I fee like weather related illnesses would be little more than a minor annoyance that could easily be negated by the meds and food available. Other than early days when do we not have enough vitamins and antibiotics to deal with a few status ailments. More complex weather like blizzards and heavy rains wouldn't add any more realism or difficulty without snow and rain being able to actually accumulate like it does in the real world.

[Boidster]

14 hours ago, Loboling said:

Also, I think if it worked like this, weather should be a little more random and consistent. Like you could get mostly rain all week, then nothing for a week or a few days, etc. Very little rain in the desert. Pretty much impossible to be outside for more than 10 minutes (game time) in the snow biome without clothing. Maybe temperature variance from -20 to 10 degrees, allowing for some warmer days where you could explore and would try to make use of the time to get better loot.

 

Random and consistent? This right here is why the developers say that players will never be happy!  

 

The weather system is supposed to work kinda how you've described here except I think it changes more frequently (maybe too frequently). Each biome has a few weather patterns with a probability for each. So here's the desert:

 

<weather name="default" prob="87">   <-- 87% chance of this weather
  <Temperature min="95" max="105" prob="1"/>  <-- 100% chance temp will be between 95 and 105
  <CloudThickness min="0" max="0" prob="33"/>  <-- 33% chance of no clouds
  <CloudThickness min="10" max="50" prob="66"/>  <-- 67% chance of some clouds (it says 66, but math makes it 67)
  <Precipitation min="0" max="0" prob="1"/>  <-- 100% chance of no precipitation
  <Wind min="8" max="25" prob="1"/>  <-- 100% chance of wind 8-25mph
  <ParticleEffect prefab="ParticleEffects/p_sandstorm" ChunkMargin="7"/>  <-- sandstorm particles
</weather>
<weather name="rain" prob="8">
  <Temperature min="95" max="105" prob="1"/>
  <CloudThickness min="55" max="75" prob="1"/>
  <Precipitation min="25" max="55" prob="1"/>
  <Fog min="1" max="4" prob="1"/>
  <Wind min="15" max="35" prob="1"/>
  <spectrum name="Rainy"/>
</weather>
<weather name="storm" prob="5">
  <Temperature min="95" max="105" prob="1"/>
  <CloudThickness min="90" max="100" prob="1"/>
  <Precipitation min="55" max="80" prob="1"/>
  <Fog min="3" max="15" prob="1"/>
  <Wind min="50" max="55" prob="1"/>
  <spectrum name="Stormy"/>
</weather>

 

Also, weathersurvival.xml exists, but almost everything is set to zero. Is this plugged into the game? Might address some of OP's wants.

 

<weathersurvival>

    <!-- Degrees per second in which heat the player generates from melee actions dissapates -->
    <property name="GeneratedHeatDecayRate" value="0"/>
    <!-- How much the player heats when doing melee actions that consume stamina. -->
    <property name="DegreesPerPointOfStaminaUsed" value="0"/>
    <!-- Maximum amount of heat that the player can generate from melee actions -->
    <property name="MaxGeneratedHeat" value="0"/>
    <!-- From 0-1 how much do you have to be surrounded before being considered "inside" -->
    <property name="EnclosureDetectionThreshold" value="0.15"/>
    <!-- How quickly in second it takes you to become fully soaked from rainfall -->
    <!-- If players core temp is below this value they will not dry off. -->
    <property name="DryTempCutoff" value="0"/>
    <!-- How much change you feel in the outside air temperature when you are 100% wet. -->
    <property name="OutsideTempChangeWhenInSun" value="0"/>
    <!-- How much 100% cloud cover can affect how much the sun warms you. -->
    <property name="OutsideTempChangeWhenInSunCloudScale" value="0"/>
    <!-- How much the temp changes when you run. -->
    <property name="OutsideTempShiftWhenRunning" value="0"/>
    <!-- How much the temp changes when you walk. -->
    <property name="OutsideTempShiftWhenWalking" value="0"/>
    <!-- How much the temp changes when you are idle. -->
    <property name="OutsideTempShiftWhenIdle" value="0"/>

    <TemperatureHeight height="0" addDegrees="0"/>
</weathersurvival>

 

 

 

[doughphunghus]

I think I remember a mod where all rain was “acid rain” and it hurt you, so you couldn’t  easily go out when it was raining,  nor go in water (as I think it was tied to the “wetness” attribute. I never played it, but this might be interesting, especially if “rain chance” were turned up a bit.  I imagine “wearing clothes” could have “wertness buffs” applied, and just drying off by a fire would make it go away, so maybe some way to degrade wet clothing/items would be needed to make it a real problem.

 

I’m in the camp of “want to be able to more easily die in bad weather if not suitably prepared”, just because it’s a bit more fun (for me) to have to plan out to be able to travel, and when driving around not be able to go from regular forest (safe zone) into the burned forest (as example) unless I have what I need and reequip.  Having every biome be deadly for different reasons (or even having random radiated zones on the map) is just a bit more to keep you on your toes and draw out the game more. 

I love the clothing system (lots of clothes and mods for them) but I dislike how most of it doesn’t really matter (just lock the neat stats). Having weather and biome specific weather hazards (that will literally kill you) would make collecting/crafting clothes and mods more of a necessity to move around the map. I would imagine that the “clothing you need” to live in the wasteland would be “top tier end game clothing) but it would be nice if you couldn’t wear that everywhere (like the desert)?

[Kyonshi]

Thank you @Boidster for those infos! I really wanted to have an understanding of weather coding and behavior.

 

Still, I'd like further clarification about this, if you can help there too.

 

In the line <Fog min="1" max="4" prob="1"/>, what do the min and max values mean? Fog thickness? Fog duration in minutes? In hours? If so, is it in-game or in real-time?

 

Sub-question (if I'm still allowed): is there anything that controls the time the weather effects take to roll in and out? Like I said earlier, they just happen so quickly, it's a bit immersion-breaking. I'd like fog and rain clouds to gradually set in slower than what we currently see.

 

Thanks again for any hints you could provide 🤘

[Pernicious]

7 hours ago, Boidster said:

 

Random and consistent? This right here is why the developers say that players will never be happy!  

 

 

It could be just his way of phrasing. In Melbourne, (Australia), the city has a reputation of having "four seasons in one day" which I personally experienced. Landed in 30*C heat, reached a high of 38. Became blustery in the afternoon, with a very cold southerly (Remember that in the southern hemisphere, southerlies come from the antarctic, not from the equator) and by the evening, it was in the high teens and stormy.

 

But it's very rarely like that in Sydney where I live. If it rained today, good chance it'll rain tomorrow. Eventually it'll clear, and you'll have a few clear days before it gets rainy again.

 

If you read the sentence after the one you quoted, he's asking more for Sydney weather than Melbourne, not contradicting himself.

[Boidster]

16 hours ago, Pernicious said:

If you read the sentence after the one you quoted, he's asking more for Sydney weather than Melbourne, not contradicting himself.

 

I agree. I was just poking fun. Next time I use two   .

 

17 hours ago, Kyonshi said:

In the line <Fog min="1" max="4" prob="1"/>, what do the min and max values mean? Fog thickness? Fog duration in minutes? In hours? If so, is it in-game or in real-time?

 

It's the density of the fog. The value goes up to 100 (only in the water biome, so, literally under water I think) so I think a value of 1 is just the tiniest hint of fog/haze and 4 is a slightly-less-tiny hint. The highest non-water-biome "max" value is in the Pine Forest, which has a "fog" weather type (7% chance) and a range of 16-27.

 

17 hours ago, Kyonshi said:

Sub-question (if I'm still allowed): is there anything that controls the time the weather effects take to roll in and out? Like I said earlier, they just happen so quickly, it's a bit immersion-breaking. I'd like fog and rain clouds to gradually set in slower than what we currently see.

 

I didn't see anything obvious in the XML. I'll need to dig into the code to see if I can find the timer.

 

One point of additional context for weather: (this is explained at the top of biomes.xml) all of the values in the biomes are limits placed on the global current weather values. I'll use the desert example above:

 

Quote

<weather name="default" prob="87">
  <Temperature min="95" max="105" prob="1"/>
  <CloudThickness min="10" max="50" prob="66"/>

 

Assume that the above "default" weather is in effect for the desert. And assume that the global weather values are:

 

Temperature: 75

CloudThickness: 70

 

The biome values place lower-bound and upper-bound limits to the global weather, so in the desert you'd have

 

Temperature: 95 (because this is the lower limit of temp for the desert, and overrides the global 75)

CloudThickness: 50 (because this is the upper limit of CloudThickness for the desert, and overrides the global 70)

 

What I don't know is how global values are calculated, or how often. Is temperature a flat RNG curve from 0-110 degrees? Or is it more of bell curve with moderate temperatures being more likely? Clouds, Fog, Wind? No idea. The XML talks about Fog and Temperature values being "added" to global values, but I can't make sense of that yet. So I'm pretending that the biome values are absolute degrees F and %thickness of Fog.

 

 

[Kyonshi]

Again, I appreciate your explanations @Boidster. I'm curious to fiddle around with those when I'm home.

[Roland]

Impactful weather survival is definitely on their to do list. They are aware that it is not very impactful presently.

[Matt115]

12 hours ago, Roland said:

Impactful weather survival is definitely on their to do list. They are aware that it is not very impactful presently.

Well... there is no chance for storms. earth quakes , sandstorms ( i mean solid sandstorms), floods so... nothing can be done honestly - desert is hot, snow is cold and... that's all.  

[Roland]

4 hours ago, Matt115 said:

Well... there is no chance for storms. earth quakes , sandstorms ( i mean solid sandstorms), floods so... nothing can be done honestly - desert is hot, snow is cold and... that's all.  

I agree that where weather is the topic there is no chance for earthquakes…

[Matt115]

23 minutes ago, Roland said:

I agree that where weather is the topic there is no chance for earthquakes…

Nah it's weather too - story time. In polish mountains you can find "weather stone" - stone hanging on rope with text (few lines) - wet stone = it's raining, stone is flying - wind,

stone is vibriating = earthquake