Weather Requirements Options

[Mole]

This discussion is to gather specific ideas about weather and its implementation in our game.

What weather should we have? Should certain weather be limited to specific areas? How diverse should things be?

These are just a few questions to get ideas started.

We'll keep this thread open for discussion for 2 weeks, after which we will stop collecting ideas for version 1 of our game.

[Mole]

I love all of the weather related ideas that have been coming up. There are lots of great ideas in this thread!

I think that weather should have some affect on the players, even if it is just minimal.

If a player is running around naked in a snow storm, then they might take some damage from cold or they might lose some mana or something. A similiar thing should happen if they are running around in a desert. After a while they might start to lose hit points from damage from the weather, or accuracy suffers, or stamina, or something.

I think this would add realism to the game and would help to keep the grind out of the game.

[Pashta]

it would be nice to have a blizzard type weather in the mountains were you have to say make a fire or go in a cave to keep warm or something.
you could have rare creatures that only appear in the most dangerous weathers like a yeti in a blizzard(rewards for killing him would be soemthing like yeti fur that keeps the user warmer than anything else he can buy)


Phoenix

GREAT idea!! I also loved Jerky's dust storm idea, I LOVED Morrowind soooo much. Please put dust storms in! :)

[Razaekel]

If i remember correctly, there was a member on the forums who was looking at meteorology or something similar. I talked to him about the possibily of creating a wether simluation system for Wish, that would rely on algorithms and interaction with other locations to create as realistic a weather system as possible. for example, looking at the map here, there would be a fairly constant inland wind. but I'll use the east side of the continent for an example, where the win will be coming in from the east, thus running into the mountains on t he east side of the continent, or passing over the marshlands on the southeastern corner. If we use real-world examples, the mountains woul cause just about all the moisture in the air to drop out on the east sie, thereby creating a very dry wind coming off the west side and across what would most logically be a desert, thus creating a desert on the west side of the mountains and a lush rainforest on the east. and so on and so forth yada yadda :-P

[Jerky]

That member was Kalldrexx who has unfortunately been pulled away from the project. I do not know if this was temporary or permanent, but he also changed his major away from meteorology to business management. So either way, as it stands now, we might not be able to utilize his knowledge of weather. I don't think that this should stop us though. We could at least get a fairly simple system going on our own, IMO.

[silmaril]

It's all just a matter of high we prioritize this. If we put this at the top of the list as one of our selling points, we can do a . It just takes time to develop, and eventually money to run the simulations.

Personally I see this as something that's cool to have. Some very simple simulations would be nice, but nothing very complex. It is afterall a game we are making, and not a world simulator. Everything must be seen in relation to the "fun" (FUN FUN FUN:) aspect, and while some weather would indeed be fun and interesting, I don't think making the simulations very complex and realistic would improve the player experience of the game all that much.

[Jerky]

I agree, not everything can be in (unless we get our meteorologist back (and he codes too)). Requests need to be prioritized. This is already in the works, hence we are moving to XP Web and trac. We only have x amount of programmers and if something is low on the list, it will just have to wait. Basic weather is more of what we need. The extras can wait and see if we have the resources to throw at them later.

[sblmnl]

yep, yep, keeping it simple is always the best idea. The main aspects to be determined are wind and topography, which impact on wet/dry areas and drive the currents etc. As we have the map (GRATZ!! It's FABULOUS!!) the wind/currents can be reverse-engineered pretty easily from that? even without a meteorologist.

What do you see as extras? I'd really hope snow/dust storms and the other stuff can be included, so that it can affect mobs/players/items:

eg:
- when sailing you need to take the wind into account when plotting your course (also currents but thats probably getting a bit complicated)
- you'd lose stamina/accuracy if you dont have enough clothes on in the snow - some races (if we have em) will be more cold/heat tolerant than others of course
- weapons and metal/leather armour may suffer in an excessively damp or humid environment, needing protection or maintainence
- love the idea of weather-sensitive mobs (like the yeti), heh dragons probably dont like to go out in the rain either, I see them living near that desert area or the caldera (is it still active?)

I also see realistic (without being tooo detailed) weather systems that actually MEAN something other than just looking pretty, as a big attraction.

[Jerky]

Don't even get me started on Sailing! I love that idea, but that is for another thread. Has anyone played Zelda: Windwaker on the gamecube. They had a fairly simple approach to it that was very fun (IMO). Wind directions were pretty steady and they definitely had an effect on sailing. You had to tac back and forth unless you had wind directly behind you. This would actually be a simple algorithm based on angle. I like the idea of ocean currents, but maybe that is somethign to add in later.

I think there might be a way to make dynamic storms and keep it from using server bandwidth/resources. If we were to make an anomaly (storm, hurricane, snowing, raining) just have a beginning and an end (so the server only communicates that this has begun, and then only communicates that it has ended. Or, possibly, have it send once every 5 minutes that a storm is happening (so just in case the first packets got lost and this client doesnt know) and then, when it is over, it sends sunny packets once every 5 minutes. Then, the client, based on what it gets from the server would have a number of different versions of 'storm' that it could do, and this would only be for immersion/diversity. A storms intensity (in this example) would not change the amount of effect it had on a player (not unless the intensity was also sent every 5 minutes or whatever). In this case, we could have many different type of weather going on and have the client (renderer) taking care of it all. We could make penalties (ie. slowing down movement, or cant cast a spell) constant during these intervals, so as to not cause problems on clients with bad connections, but still have their intended effect. This would make it so the server/client communication does not get complicated, but would also allow us to have many differnt varieties of storms (weather occurances).

[Mole]

I think that having some "realistic" weather would be a good thing for the game. I am all in favor of doing this too. But as Sil has said, we are not making a real-world weather simulation engine -- we are making a game.

With that in mind, I think that we CAN have weather patterns and that we CAN have changing weather and that we CAN have storms, etc. The thing we cannot do is make them follow some sort of "real world" pattern.

This is something that I would like to see in our game. At this point having weather patterns would be a low priority. Weather would be something that we would add near the end.

[Sirholmes]

I agree with weather patterns, that come across the map. Rain, Snow, Heat and Dry.

Eg. in the dessert it rains very little, so when a weather pattern is triggered the vegitation should be effected, ponds with fish, uncover rocks and treasures, things should be greener. These things should be as rare as the rain. Extra points ect.

[nero5684]

I'm glad I found this thread before I posted another full of that stuff heh. It pretty much covers everything I was thinking about Weather (at this time)

There is one thing though that was only lightly mentioned, and that was with the ideas of seasons. I think that plants should be specifically seasonal (yes, this would take research on what plants grow when and what they produce at any specific time.. though this could be generalized into 2-3 seasons, the 'growing/blooming season' and the 'dormant' season, and maybe the third could be a season in which they produce a different type of resource, say in spring blackberry bushes produce vines which could be used for whips or something, and then in summer it produces fruit, and then it's dormant.. something like that) I just think the idea of seasonal plants would be nice.

Oh, and maybe have weather affect the terrain (in the desert, the winds can create constantly shifting dunes so the terrain is different everytime. If there is a hurricane or strong wind, trees, and maybe buildings, can be leveled and lightning can strike and cause fires)

[exocrine]

I think Nero's suggestion af seasonal resources holds a lot of promise in terms of trade, especially if growing seasons vary based on location.

As another blackberry example, imagine that blackberries are a required ingredient in a few recipes, spells and dyes. In the spring and summer, blackberries can be harvested throughout the north end of the continent, and in the south during the fall and winter. It could be set up so that as the northern supply begins to diminish, the southern supply begins to increase, such that total availability never changes, but there would be areas of high and low availability. If NPC buy/sell prices changed based on supply and demand, this would create an opportunity for traders to make a few bucks by moving resources from one area to another. During the winter, players could buy blackberries cheaply in the south, and sell them at inflated prices in the north.

Thoughts?

-----
Exocrine

[Shaidar]

I think that seasons would be an awesome way to implement price inflation/deflation with a purpose. It would also provide traders with a general idea of what is needed where and where to go and get it. I think that an over all change of scenery though would be too difficult, it would be nice but its not needed, just do the basic MMO style weather. The resource fluxuation could be done fairly easily I would think, just set it up so that when the code says its winter it also says all black berry bushes in region A are barren, or whatever.

[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.