Weather Conditions

[aubergine]

Been doing a *lot* of research in to weather recently...

I've come to realise that nature tends to tell you what it's planning in advance, so you can get yourself prepared.

For example, with decent cloud representation, it would be possible to quickly glance at the sky and work out what weather to expect (and thus what weapon/propulsion penalties to expect) later in the game.

Would pro gamers be interested in a weather system if it gave them hints as to what to expect, and thus allow them to adapt their build/research order to take advantage of weather before it arrives?

[Shadow Wolf TJC]

Reminds me of the random Ion Storms that may appear on multiplayer/skirmish games on Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, though those could optionally be disabled. Such a gameplay change may require the addition of code that would adjust unit speeds, either in general, or when moving over certain terrain. It might also require being able to change some tiles into other tiles in the case of snowstorms, heat waves, etc.

As far as means of informing players that the weather is changing should go, I believe that many players (myself included) would rather prefer to keep their view towards the ground to better see their battlefield, than to look at the skybox to see what the weather is going to be like. Rather, I believe that players should instead be given a message notifying them of an incoming weather event.

In any case, I doubt that pros would want this system to be forced upon them. It could be made optional, or as an addon, but not mandatory.

[aubergine]

Yes, we'd need access to get and set terrain-propulsion modifiers.

In the case of snow storms, all that's needed is access to ambient lighting that's more flexible than the current setSunIntensity() function. Just by increasing or decreasing ambient light you can give the effect of frost or dull cloudy skies, etc.

The weather would certainly be an optional thing, perhaps used in custom campaign missions or challenge games initially. In terms of pros not wanting to look at the sky, I disagree - if upcoming weather would nerf certain propulsions/weapons/systems, they'd want to know and take advantage of it. It will need little more than a quick upwards glance for the trained eye and it's less obtrusive than the videos I've seen of pros constantly checking the intel screen on 2.3.9. People already change camera position and angle regularly throughout a game, the occasional upward glance isn't going to get in the way.

Also, depending on time of day, there are also things that will be clearly visible on the horizon. For example, a red sky at dawn indicates that a storm is approaching, seeing sundogs as the sun rises, or a halo around the sun, also indicates storms. Over time, things like wind direction could be applied to in-game smoke effects (from damaged units/structures, projectiles, etc) - the direction of the smoke would indicate fair or stormy weather.

There are other interesting atmospheric effects that could be used as well. For example, fallstreak holes could be used to indicate that someone on the map has produced VTOLs.

I think weather, and even day-night cycles, has been frowned upon in the past for two key reasons:

* Weather adds unwanted random "skill removal" element to the game
* Night time makes it impossible to see units

I can get round both those problems:

* Readily observable indicators about upcoming weather conditions, 10-30 minutes before they happen
* Clever lighting effects during dark hours to ensure units are still visible

In terms of obscuring weather (mist, fog, blizzard, etc), lighting effects would make units visible at the expense of detail -- colours, even team colours, will be replaced with a bright hue (eg. bright red). You'd be able to see where units are, but identifying their turrets, propulsion and bodies will be difficult. The pro players would use other methods of identification - such as how the units move, their speed, sound of weapons (or lack of weapon sound), etc. It will make the game more challenging, and more rewarding for pros who learn how to take advantage of the weather.

[Giani]

* Night time makes it impossible to see units

It doesn't have to be that dark...

I like the idea of wheather conditions while there isn't stuff like earthquakes or anything wich can destroy your bases structures. For anticipating a storm or something, there could be a cheap base structure where you can see info about the weather if you click it.

[aubergine]

Well, for night time I was thinking of applying light effects so you'd get a sort of green night-vision effect sort of like this:

night.jpeg

Currently I can only change lighting effects for droids, buildings (but not their foundations) and features. If the JS API develops to a point where lighting effects can be applied to everything (but with a certain degree of selectivity) then I would be able to do all sorts of crazy stuff including night vision.

With regards to weather forecasting, in addition to visualisation of weather conditions (and tell-tale signs like clouds, red sky in morning, fallstreak holes, etc) I was pondering two additional mechanisms:

* wind sock -- very cheap structure, would indicate direction and speed of wind.
* Weather Forecasting research - relatively early tech (late T1 or early T2) which would send you weather updates via console messages (easy enough to implement).

[Merowingg]

Hooray I am so happy to see movement here. I though it was again - yea yea Mero, we will post you

[aubergine]

Yup, I'm doing a crazy amount of background research in to this weather / environment stuff. Currently taking a break from it as I was burning out, but will be back to it soon enough. Still have to finish my Warzone-ified Cloud Atlas (there's about 100 types of cloud!!!) and do some deeper digging in to how to automate weather effects based on geolocation, etc. Oh, and I still need a way to work out the moon phase, libration, azimuth and altitude for given geoloc and time. Out of everything I think the clouds are going to be the hardest thing to implement - it seems creating volumetric clouds is a decidedly non-trivial task!

BTW, for earthquakes, there's already the screen-shake code in WZ (a setting in options menu somewhere), so earthquakes would be relatively easy to do (assuming we can set structure health - can't remember if there's a function for that or not...)

[aubergine]

Hrm, if we do manage to implement this mod, we could have a HAARP structure for controlling weather

[Merowingg]

I am happy to hear aubergine

All of this sounds really interesting. I believe there is more types of clouds

This earthquake connection to shaking screen sounds very creative and idea seem to be so simple.