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Doughs "Punishing Weather" Modlets

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doughphunghus

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The vanilla a18 weather in the game is a little happy springtime tame for the aftermath of a nuclear/zombie apocalypse, especially since you are surrounded by radiation zones where everything has been wiped flat and turned to dust all around you. These modlets attempt to recreate a world where the fat old sun doesn't really shine on you for awhile.

Generally these modlets change these factors in all the biomes:

- Adds more weather "variations" than the vanilla settings. This means in vanilla, there may have been 2 configs defining a setting (like Temperature) and now there are 3 or more.

- The "normal" settings have been set to be rarer, while the extremes more common. For example, a biome may have had a 50% chance of having a 50% CloudThickness at any given time. Now it could have a 10% chance of having a 50% CloudThickness at any given time.

- Changes to variations and settings have been tweaked for "more bad weather chances". More chance of hot/cold, rain, clouds, fog (Fog may not work right now, but the configuration is in there) and Wind. Wind is most noticeable as its much windier overall in all biomes.

- The biome "type" has tried to be respected in terms of temperature. This means for cold biomes, the changes to extremes is to be more cold, hot ones more hot, and "temperate" ones having more swing in both hot and cold. The extremes are not designed to kill you (its not suddenly 300F in the desert all the time) but it could get 30 more degrees than the hottest the desert normally gets, but this would be uncommon.

- Particle effects have been added to all biomes as some did not have any (like underwater) so swimming underwater yields murky water (like what you get when you fill up a jar). Particle effects have been turned up as far as they can go (in the core mod) so visibility is restricted in all biomes. Its generally very "dusty/smoky/snowy" wherever you go. The "Effects" override mods are to tune down the visual effects if desired.

- The "Survival" modlet makes it colder as you gain elevation. It likely needs tuning as it should get warmer as you go down to bedrock but I'm not sure how to set the settings for that.

These mods have not been tested much (just manually making sure they work) so if anyone finds anomalies, has better ideas that make the weather harder to deal with (but not insane), or know of similar existing mods please let me know or make suggestions! I would like to have them walk the line between "you can mostly make it if you prepare and plan. The extreme weather may kill you anyways sometimes so you need to pay attention" and "you go a little crazy just wanting the damn wind and rain and dirt to stop and the sun to appear".

Modlet: Doughs-PunishingWeather-Core:

This is the "core" mod.
Warning:
This mod likely does not play well with other biome weather modifying mods because it deletes the "weather" node on each biome that has it before adding its own. This was way easier than trying to make the modlet friendlier for other modlets by overriding all the similar/non unique environment nodes in the weather section as sometimes there's only one, sometimes there more.
Modifies the biomes to have more variation, with a tendency towards harshness and misery. Not ultra brutal but hopefully enough to make you need to pay attention to clothing/shelter. This mod allows for some "less brutal" weather but its going to be rare. Note: Every biome has had (vanilla a18) particle effects attached at a ChunkMargin = 1 (normally this is set to 7). so visibility is severely diminished in most cases. Since this setting may be too much impact (both visibility and FPS) for some people, the mod has some "overrides" you can add.
On Github:
https://github.com/doughphunghus/Doughs-PunishingWeather-Corehttps://github.com/doughphunghus/Doughs-PunishingWeather-Core
https://github.com/doughphunghus/Doughs-PunishingWeather-Core

Modlet: Doughs-PunishingWeather-Effects-Medium:

This is an override to the "Doughs-PunishingWeather-Core" mod. see "
Effects Overrides Note
" below
Changes the biome ChunkMargin particle effects to be higher, allowing more visibility and maybe FPS relief.
On Github:
https://github.com/doughphunghus/Doughs-PunishingWeather-Effects-Mediumhttps://github.com/doughphunghus/Doughs-PunishingWeather-Effects-Medium
https://github.com/doughphunghus/Doughs-PunishingWeather-Effects-Medium

Modlet: Doughs-PunishingWeather-Effects-Light:

This is an override to the "Doughs-PunishingWeather-Core" mod. see "
Effects Overrides Note
" below
Changes the biome ChunkMargin particle effects to be the vanilla a18 defaults, allowing more visibility and maybe FPS relief.
On Github:
https://github.com/doughphunghus/Doughs-PunishingWeather-Effects-Lighthttps://github.com/doughphunghus/Doughs-PunishingWeather-Effects-Light
https://github.com/doughphunghus/Doughs-PunishingWeather-Effects-Light

Modlet: Doughs-PunishingWeather-Survival:

This is a standalone mod that only modifies the weathersurvival.xml file. It should work well with the other "Punishing weather" themed modlets
Warning:
This mod may not play well with other weathersurvival.xml modifying mods because it adds a table of "same named" node properties of temperatures.
Changes the temperature as you change elevation.
On Github:
https://github.com/doughphunghus/Doughs-PunishingWeather-Survivalhttps://github.com/doughphunghus/Doughs-PunishingWeather-Survival
https://github.com/doughphunghus/Doughs-PunishingWeather-Survival

Effects Overrides Note: Only load one of these override mods, not all of them. If you load more than one only the one last loaded takes effect.

 
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I added some more clarification. Its hard to be specific as the biomes are all different and it would be hard to nail down exactly what has been changed, especially as the biome weather configs are normally set to be "x% chances of y weather occurring" and I didn't hardcode it to be "100% chance of rain all the time" (or cloud cover, or wind). I wanted there to still be some chance of "decent weather" as that would stand out if it does occur. I also didn't want it to be "super punishing" like always ultra hot or cold as there needs to be some general chance of survival most of the time if you're outdoors, or some time to escape (clothes or shelter) if it gets really bad.

However, if someone wanted a "always rains" or "always snowing and cold everywhere" I could add them as other override modlets to the core. I don't know enough about particle effects to create my own and I would love to have more variation than just the 3 vanilla has so every biome looked unique.

Additionally: It doesn't appear to be able to set the "thunderstorm" or other major, global weather from simple XML mods. If I could I would as that would fit the theme. Same with daylight. I really would love to knock down the suns power to be generally an eternal twilight during the day, but I don't think there's a way without changing the game settings to be just "less daytime". I'm actually thinking of making a modlet for that (but it's not weather per se.) so you can select 1,2,4,6,8, or 10 hours of daylight in the UI as it stops at 12, but that just makes it nighttime all the time (I kinda like that idea anyways).

 
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Same with daylight. I really would love to knock down the suns power to be generally an eternal twilight during the day, but I don't think there's a way without changing the game settings to be just "less daytime". I'm actually thinking of making a modlet for that (but it's not weather per se.) so you can select 1,2,4,6,8, or 10 hours of daylight in the UI as it stops at 12, but that just makes it nighttime all the time (I kinda like that idea anyways).
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I made a mod so you can choose to make it "dark all the time" One Hour of Daylight (or 0 up to 24) and apparently so did Claymore, who beat me to it :) Claymores Modlets: MORE OPTIONS

 
actually...while I don't see it being as cool as that mod (it has a lot of options,,,really cool big clouds too) and "longer nights lit by the moon with it's phases, new dangerous event: psi storm, reworked weather behaviour, distant storms, meteor showers"

- We can pull off longer nights already

- Someone in the forums I think has a mod that when it rains, its like acid rain.

- Meteor showers/psi storm/etc. "bizarre weather": I think the sorcery mod has a way to "summon" meteorsm so they're possible..as a concept. The current weather effects are not "expandable" much from what I've seen but you could add more "particle effects": and then tie them to weather to simulate am electrical storm" or ...blood mist might be interesting. I saw someone on here talking about wanting the radiation zones to move around (more like closing in) but it's not a mod I know of...

- Sirens would be cool. There's a mod capability that is "play sound in head" so that could work...you just have to trigger it somehow to coincide with a bad event.

Some thoughts:

- The only way I can think to do it myself would be to make some sort of plugin/proxy process to one of the server manager tools so that it could collect info as people play, and adjust the weather according to how they're doing (or whatever it wanted) as the admin tools have more control over the weather/game then mods do. I believe the server managers can create/destroy blocks, see what you're carrying, etc. In theory it could find where you are and then trigger something (change weather, create radiation zone and move it around?, maybe start creating water blocks around you as its raining and start filling in the area/flood your base, etc. I could see it dropping meteors on you as well (flaming exploding blocks). It would be an interesting idea but you'd have to run a game server to play it (not hard at all with this game, esp with single player, if you have the processing resources.). For the "play siren in head" you could just give all players a buff that would cause the sound to play...if you had this tool.

 
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I am by no means a modder or programmer. Just an avid gamer. :-)

That said, if you could apply an AoE effect to an invisible class of zombie it might be an interesting way to create a randomly moving ball lightning or cloud of gas. If you get to close it shocks you (ranged attack and flash of light).

If the 'invisible zombie' did not have sophisticated AI and just moved in a straight path, a few of them could provide an interesting obstacle as you either dodge through them as they pass by or run around them.

For something like that to be effective, there would need to be a way to make a spherical glow/cloud centered on a zombie. Probably something that the devs need to implement to make it work well. Again, I'm just guessing.

The same for the siren sound. 'play siren in head' would work, but it would be more interesting if there were sirens placed in the center of towns. Then, you'd hear them off in the distance, warning of a storm approaching.

You'd need to run for shelter within 60-120 seconds before the storm effects began. And wait out the storm inside.

A second siren would let you know that the storm had ended. Again, the sound of the siren from a city center encourages players to stay near a city... unless they can eventually build/buy their own early warning system that is only tied to the weather.

Each day, start a random timer 'if' that day is to have a weather event. When the timer runs out, sound the city sirens and begin the weather event. At least that is how I imagine it.

The weather even would decrease view distance, change temperature, create possible random effects (molotovs from invisible 'birds' in the sky?) and perhaps spawn a wandering horde during the peak of the storm.

 
if you could apply an AoE effect to an invisible class of zombie
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Actually, there *is* an "invisible animal" that actually spawns in vanilla. I'm not sure why its in the XML. There are some mods that remove it. Additionally: Someone created an "invisible zombie" but it's not totally invisible...so it's do-able. Adding particle effects is not too bad , I believe, to either. The only thing I don't know is how to change the AI so it wouldn't track you down but would move "at" you for a bit. I like the idea though....hmmm...something to think about.

t would be more interesting if there were sirens placed in the center of towns. Then, you'd hear them off in the distance, warning of a storm approaching.
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For having sirens (that work that are not player placed and powered) I don't think its currently "easily" possible as the game normally doesn't have these rigged up for sound (unless a player places them as something they own), and in a randomly generated map there are many cities that are fairly far apart, and the buildings in the are all random, so no guarantee of what you get (like you could get a city with no sirens). Having the sirens trigger as a warning that generates weather is a bit past my modding knowledge, but I could possibly see it if a server side mod was running the logic (still beyond me) to trigger everything in the proper sequence. If someone could do that then in theory they could do all sorts of cool stuff (like send wave after wave of challenges after you, maybe even you signal "I've built my fort, i'm ready. Do your worst" and it starts the scenarios) and that would be kinda cool as a different way to play this game. Hmmmm.....

 
Okay, spitballing again here. :-)

The vultures only come at you if your health is low. So, there is 'loiter' code associated with them.

Deer/chickens wander around but run if you get too close.

The Boars are the only animal that doesn't seem to care what you do, until you attack it.

If you were able to access that code or clone those animals into something new and invisible, then you might be able to use that to create AI that does not actively track down players but just moves around randomly.

As for sirens, the traders play a sound at a specific time of day that can be heard from pretty far away ('now open', 'now closed'). So, a siren-like ability is in the game. The question is can you 'clone' that and apply it to a prefab that is guaranteed to be in every major city center?

I've seen invisible blocks in cities when I've flown around in the map editor. If one of those is guaranteed to be in each city, that might be what you attach the weather-warning siren to.

Hopefully some of the devs will see this thread and realize how awesome it would be to add some of these features/abilities into the game so modders can tweak them. *fingers crossed*

 
I really like the idea of this mod, but when I tried out Core with Survival it just seems to be foggy and rainy every day. The foggyness/smokyness is my biggest complain. If I were to try one of the overrides would that increase visibility and reduce the overall foggyness?

 
If I were to try one of the overrides would that increase visibility and reduce the overall foggyness?
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Yes :) If you load either the "Doughs-PunishingWeather-Effects-Light" or "Doughs-PunishingWeather-Effects-Medium" modlets (Don't load both, as the Medium one will simply take precedence) with the Core modlet it will make it easier to see, which is all these modlets do. They don't change any other variables in the Core.

More info:

I'm testing a bunch of mods in the game and the Core modlets purpose was to make some sort of "base mod, hard mode" to then override with other mods as I felt that more often than not a "punishing weather" mod would want to lean towards hard gameplay so there would be fewer "override mods" to make it easier. For visuals, the Core basically makes sure all biomes have particle effects and makes all the particle effects "the lowest possible setting" so yeah, its very visibility limited. I didn't want the other variables like temp/rain on super hard mode and just make it impossible to survive (by default) which keeps the Core at least be playable by itself, if you chose to do so, but I see most people wanting to add an override. Once I get the core defaults tweaked I'll likely release a bunch of other overrides (like make it snow everywhere, or make the forest hard to live in to force people out of it...or something, I'm not really sure yet.)

I put the "Overide" modlets out there as I played the Core for a little bit (and read a lot of forum posts) and found out that a lot of people don't prefer that much restricted visibility in general. Currently I'm playing with the Core + Medium override and it feels pretty good most of the time. I'm also playing with 100% nighttime mode modlet so there's never a sun. I really really wish there was a way to just turn down the sun and not drop it to eternal darkness because the weather modlets look a lot prettier (clouds, etc) when there's some sunshine coming through

 
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Okay, spitballing again here. :-) ....
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For the vulture, that's not a bad idea. It appears it just uses "animalTemplateHostile" and then turns off some of the AI (so it won't break blocks, etc.). I'm not sure how it decides to "not" attack you until your health is low though, but there are some variables in there I'm not familiar with. I think this is going to take some understanding of the in game AI "states"...but seems doable

For the sirens: I don't think they can be cloned in with standard XML modding against standard/vanilla POI's. Using a server manager though it might be possible by spawning in an item, or maybe some sort of "standard POI" that you could force to always be in a "city" (I have no idea how to do that). There *is* a block in the game called "loudspeaker" which appears to be the one for the traders (vs. the one players make/find called "speaker") BUT it's of a class called "SpeakerTrader" so the times it activates are not accessible via XML modding (well, you cannot turn it on and off at will)

 
I wanted to check back and let you know I played a number of hours with the Medium mod added too and it made a HUGE difference and put it spot on with what I was looking and hoping for. So for me to get optimal config it was core + medium + survival

Thanks again! Really appreciate this modlet pack.

 
I wanted to check back and let you know I played a number of hours with the Medium mod added too and it made a HUGE difference and put it spot on with what I was looking and hoping for. So for me to get optimal config it was core + medium + survival
Thanks again! Really appreciate this modlet pack.
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I'm glad someone else is enjoying it :) I was doing some thinking about the "core" being very visibility limited (and maybe looking into making some custom particle effects...maybe) and it dawned on me that if you can't see very far, then in theory you don't need the trees/grass, or anything rendering very far either so maybe you could set all the game rendering settings really low and actually gain FPS since you can't see anything anyway :) If it works I'll post the settings to use. Maybe it will turn out to be some sort or weird enhancement for FPS contained players...or something.

 
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