Weather Requirements Options

[xardy]

not hard to do this at all just make different models and or texture: one for every season and then just the current season models and texture load: winter = snow , summer= grass. The only thing that you need to do is check with the server what season it is in the area and then your computer loads the season models.

[exocrine]

Actually, you could probably get away with using the same models most of the time. The only ones that would to change would be deciduous trees in winter, and frozen lakes.

The main problem though, would be achieving a believable transition from one season to another. It would require a large series of textures, for almost every object. Not so much difficult as very time consuming.

[Shaidar]

Could be done just adding in transition periods. Say for Summer to fall there could be an animation of leaves falling that could start. Then when fall was fully set in the branches would be bare and there would be leaves on the ground. For Fall to Winter we see light flurries start falling in places and small patches of snow here and there, then when winter, we see snow covered ground and frozen lakes. Winter to Spring, we see patches of grass, and the lakes are only ice on the edges as they start to melt. Spring to summer, we see some flowers fully bloomed and others only buds, the rain storms that we would have in the spring would come less often.

Of course these are transistions so the actual seasons would be full set seasons.

[exocrine]

I just had another thought. It stands to reason that in the beginning of spring, melting snow would cause rivers to rise, and currents to quicken. While actually raising the water level might be too hard to implement, I'm sure the speed of the current could be altered fairly easily. This could lead to seasonally impassable (or at least difficult to cross) rivers, and if depth variations were implemented, seasonal flooding as well. It has some neat potential in my opinion.

If the ability to alter river/lake depth were implemented, it could also be used to simulate a drought for some sort of live content thingy. The rivers and lakes could gradually dry up. Actually, if you wanted to get really crazy, you could tie the water level to the amount of precipitation in the area. But I think that might be a bit over the top.

[andydzman]

heres the way blizzard works on things, i dont believe your working with the same budget. but you can run a separate server for different parts chunks so you minimize the load on each. you can actually run the weather on one server and the packets can be send every 5 seconds or so with only a kilobite or 2 of noncompressed data. the seperate servers for different parts of the game (e.g. weather/mob locations,movement and interactivity/ players/ players2/ players3 (depending on how many players on a server so not everyone gets kicked at once on a crash)/ npc's/ and so forth) can all then send their information to a main server which turns it all into one packet to be sent out to the clients.

it can be a simple Type of Weather=4 (4 would be a certain storm the client would know) then Drop type1=6 drop type2=3 Drop type3=5 (0-10 the client would know) and then have the server draw a rough random graphic x,y,z of the storm maybe limiting the storm to 500 locations like connect the dots and fill the storm in inside like 50052,2343,2324 & 23442,9144,2243 and so on and traveling at x knots in SSE direction. Drop type would tell it what to drop (raid/snow/wind/lightning a max of 3 per storm with 0 returning a nil value), size can change every 30 seconds just by changing a few of the location numbers the storm can grow or shrink. All this data will take 1-2 KB being sent, you can even send once every 5 seconds so its sure to reach all people within a certain ammount of time so one client wont know theres not a storm there and therefore the character on that client is immune to the weather effects. it provides for a more real time play with everyone getting the weather at once incase it doesnt receve the packet and keeps people from taking advantage of the situation who can lag intentionally or know they have lag.

this would be extrememly simple to create and would make for a very realistic 3d cloud or type of weather system that can grow, shrink, travel, hail for this time, then the server changes it on random based on certain rules given to it and start raining. or it can change based on the x.y location of land its traveling over. 1-2KB per 5 sec is something anyone can handle, then you have the rest of the 5KB other 4 sec and 3KB on the 5th second to send the rest of the data cause dial up is limited to 56kb or 5KB.

sorry im new to this forum here. I got in the wish beta but wasnt able to play because of work. ive been playing WoW since and i hate how much depth is lacking in it. my friends and i do not know how to program, we want to really bad, this is the career we would like to take and design mmorpgs... we were impressed with the posibilities wish had to offer when first reading about it. this seems to be going way beyond what we had hoped for.

[emeraven]

Your not a programer but you worked all that out, I'm impressed.

Welcome btw.