Seasons (new mod)

[originalfoo]

I've seen some stuff recently that makes me think a seasons mod might actually be a viable project now.

For clarification, I'm referring to summer, autumn, winter, spring type seasons.

We know the current month in game, and we know lat and long from the map.

The things that would be affected by seasons (other than RT itself):

• Sun position, intensity (see #205, also Ultimate Eye Candy's Ambient tab), analemma, etc.
• Wind intensity (see Improved Wind Simulation as proof of concept), direction (see Climate control for proof of concept), and chance
  • Note the issue with camp fires lolol
• Rain and fog intensity (see Ultimate Eye Candy's Weather tab as proof of concept) and chance
  • See also the awesome Rainfall mod
• Moon phase and position (see Moon phases mod as proof of concept)
• Tides based on moon/sun position? (see Tides mod as proof of concept)
  • Rare extra-high tide could cause flooding of coastal areas
• Frost & snow... might now be possible to an acceptable degree:
  • Apparently, if temp goes below zero, snow tire track effects appear on roads (can't remember where I saw this)
  • As long as a snowplow is active, the game will treat rain as snow - see this
  • There are now high-performance ways to alter road texture color, eg. make white to look like snow or frost (specifically: Network Skins 2)
  • It's possible to dynamically texture buildings (see this video, also painter mod)
  • It's possible to change theme textures in-game (see Theme Mixer mod)
    • Grindingly slow, but users would put up with it to get a winter season
  • Using an approach like Network Skins 2 to change color of textures, it might be possible to do same to terrain textures?
  • Sun can be tinted, LUTs can be changed - there's several ways that additional 'frosting' could be applied
• Trees can be 'drowned' to change their colour / remove leaves (also, see Dynamic Foliage mod)
• Disasters (obviously Ragnarok is proof of concept for some of this stuff):
  • Drought could cause water sources above sea-level to diminish
  • Fire should be more likely after drought or very high temps
  • Rate of fire spread also affected by rain/drought/temp
  • Rain should put fires out (Rain firefighting mod)
  • No forest fires in winter
  • Storms more common in winter, but maybe a few big ones in summer too
  • Wind patterns are somewhat seasonal, thus tornados should be too
  • Flooding should occur after heavy rain (Rainfall mod, but also Immersive Water)

There's a bunch of mods in various states of disrepair that do bits of all these things, but nothing ties them together. Even if just a few of these things could be properly orchestrated based on seasons it would give the game a much more realistic feel.

TM:PE will likely take environmental and other conditions in to account at some point (we now have infrastructure for road and cim driving modifiers, adding global modifiers would be relatively easy).

Anyway, just another crazy idea for a mod :)

[dymanoid]

@aubergine10, I created a new repository for the "mods wish list". There are a couple of ideas in the meanwhile, so it's better to keep them all together and don't clutter the Real Time issues tracker.

[originalfoo]

Theme Mixer 2 mod might pose some interesting possibilities for seasons: https://github.com/TPBCS/ThemeMixer/issues/10

[originalfoo]

Now that some time has passed, and we have things like Theme Mixer 2 and Network Skins 2, I think there is a very real opportunity to make a robust seasons mod: Real Seasons

The contentious issue here is that several smaller mods ideally need rolling in to one bigger mod to facilitate a proper "schedule" of the environment over, say, a 2-4 week period:

• Moon phases
• Cubemap Replacer / Skyscape
• Improved Wind Simulation
• Climate Control
• Tides
• Persistent Fog Adjuster, maybe some stuff from Ultimate Eye candy
• Rainfall, Immersive Water, Natural Disasters Overhaul
• Rain Fire Fighting
• Dynamic Foliage

Being able to manage all that stuff as part of a "seasons biorhythm" would be genuinely spectacular.

Also, the schedule would need to feed in to RT, eg. so cims schedules include "fleeing from rain", and also feed in to the disaster warning system (if user has ND DLC) for advance warnings of certain weather events.

It would benefit from integration with, if subbed and active, the following mods:

• Theme Mixer 2 - change map theme, eg. to apply snow theme in winter months
• Network Skins 2 - eg. to change road surface? (Maybe there is better way that can be taken from Snowfall DLC if subscribed?)

Also, I hear Elektrix has a part-baked mod for changing light colours/auras (sort of "network skins, but for lights"). So, imagine if it's foggy, the aura around lights could grow, but if it's clear there would be very little aura.

So there's all sorts of little - and big - tweaks that can happen; if they are orchestrated based on the weather / season / etc, it would be spectacular. We could also add in new "disasters" such as drought during prolonged hot periods; warmer sun colour, vegetation wilts, more fires, water levels drop...

As you may suspect, I have "several" other ideas (example from some years ago) should you be crazy enough to embark on this seasons mod :)

[originalfoo]

Setting grass texture white = makes map look like winter (depends on other terrain textures).

NetManager.m_treatWetAsSnow could be set when below 4 deg C.