Vanilla Minecraft now supports something like sixty biomes, each with their own "base temperature", which is used among other things to determine what kind of precipitation if any falls on that location. Cold places get snow, hot places get nothing, everywhere else gets rain. The temperature decreases with altitude, so there is a rain-to-snow transition as the mountain rises. This works, but it's just too simple, even for Minecraft. Deserts get no rain, which makes sense -- but neither do jungles, which doesn't.
I propose that biomes on Bravo be implemented with two values: temperature and probability of precipitation (PP). The range of values for PP should be 0.0 to 1.0. Bravo should use a random walk style algorithm to change the current PP up or down in small increments. If the server's PP value is less than the biome's PP, precipitation falls on that biome. "/toggledownfall" (or its equivalent) should be modified to accept a floating-point value as an argument.
The existing seasons framework could be leveraged to change PP as well as temperature, of course, making for a much more interesting world.
Vanilla Minecraft now supports something like sixty biomes, each with their own "base temperature", which is used among other things to determine what kind of precipitation if any falls on that location. Cold places get snow, hot places get nothing, everywhere else gets rain. The temperature decreases with altitude, so there is a rain-to-snow transition as the mountain rises. This works, but it's just too simple, even for Minecraft. Deserts get no rain, which makes sense -- but neither do jungles, which doesn't.
I propose that biomes on Bravo be implemented with two values: temperature and probability of precipitation (PP). The range of values for PP should be 0.0 to 1.0. Bravo should use a random walk style algorithm to change the current PP up or down in small increments. If the server's PP value is less than the biome's PP, precipitation falls on that biome. "/toggledownfall" (or its equivalent) should be modified to accept a floating-point value as an argument.
The existing seasons framework could be leveraged to change PP as well as temperature, of course, making for a much more interesting world.