Weather Effects

[aaront222]

Weather triggered by spells and maybe later on randomly should affect gameplay. For example maybe when it it heavyrain you will use more ap when moving, maybe during sunny you get increased regen from regen timer, maybe during stormy you'll spend lots of ap when moving or not at all (a universal movelock 0.0). It not only has a potential to enhance game-play but would make things more dynamic and very interesting. Vote in the poll ind discuss related ideas here.

(don't rate negative because I added a null option, it helps figure out how many people voted and encourages voting)

[Grido]

wrong area, moved to New Ideas.

You should know that by now aaront.

[Prince Marvolo]

I also think weather should be able to influence actual gameplay, otherwise, it's just a picture in the trigger box, and mostly ignored.
Which makes it rather, dull.

As I said in the topic about 'season signatures' (or something like that) it would be nice too to have 'constant weather',
With month X more sunny, and month Y more rainy
I have no idea if that is code-able though.

[Xcercses]

a great idea arront, the most people dont even recognize the "weather changes" in MD like me for example

so have you also thought that the weather could have influence on some creatures too?

[aaront222]

What's this? 17 people vote yes and tho vote no and nobody bothers posting a "good idea" or a "that's terrible". At least explain your thoughts on why this is good/bad.

[Shemhazaj]

[font="Book Antiqua"][color="#696969"]I wouldn't go as far as the universal movelock, but some effect on the gameplay could be interesting.
Atm it's mostly when someone says *hides under the tree* I notice that it's "mild rain"...[/color][/font]

[Yoshi]

It would be awesome if, when rain gets activated, something like this gets initiated: http://www.rainymood.com/

Out of nowhere, if you hear this, right away you know to go indoors... to get your raincoat of course

[Kafuuka]

Perhaps this has been addressed somewhere before but: isn't the water gathering stuff supposed to rely on rain?

@Marv: yes seasonal patterns should be easy to code. Probably a lot more easy than to determine what exactly a season is in MD, with the irregular day/night thing, parallels to earth seasons seem a bit far fetched.

[Kamisha]

It could be interesting but having negatives to everybody during the bad weather just causes frustration. If there are weather effects they should effect people differently as if everybody is effected equally then there is not much point of implementation.

[aaront222]

If it affected different people different ways then we'd have to make a different code for EVERY ACCOUNT. Or we could just make a weird algorithm involving player DNA. STILL! It would affect wars and maybe even the HC because it would hurt/help EVERYONE!

[Laphers]

It could affect the people based on land affiliations. I can sort of see the technologists and technomages of GG going out in a storm to fly kites and the people of LR enjoying a light rain.

[Xcercses]

if every citizen or alliance member has its own effection that fits to their homeland.....how would weather changes have effect on those that have no homeland?

[Grido]

Not that it'd be particularly difficult to add, but you'd also need to add the tag of "Indoors" to certain locations, as it'd be a bit silly if you're inside say MDA building, and you can't move as fast because of the heavy snow...

As for lots voting and few responses, I think it's at least partly because the idea is so unformed, the theory is nice, I like it, but there's no depth to it, give various ideas on how weather could affect the game play and maybe you'll get better responses.

[aaront222]

How about this-
You have a "Wetness Factor". It goes up if you are in the rain outside, it goes down if you are inside a structure. The more "wet" you are then the slower you move. Maybe the wetness thing could be connected to the heat variable.

[Prince Marvolo]

-Every weather pattern has it's 'good' an 'bad' points
Rain can slow you down (a bit, don't go in extremes like movelock etc :/) but it might refresh water beeings, while lessen the power of a fire elemental.
Storm could cause arrows of LR archers to be less affective, and birds would be less effective, but it won't affect the heavy grassan in a wayn which would make it more effective compared to other creatures, for example.

-Ofcourse, it just won't affect indoors.


-The "wetness" factor, is not something I like. Just don't make it all too complicated.


-Every land another weather pattern seems ok to me, but maybe it's a little bit too much. you can go from LR to MB in 10 seconds, and having another weather pattern there just makes things weird.
When you walk out of your town, the weather is not going to change either, does it?


-As for 'seasons': they can't be RL based, it's too stretched. (and remember the Earth has 2 sides, so with which one would it be corresponding?). Maybe each month, I think that'd be a good timelength.

[aaront222]

i like the idea of months but here's a problem, the game doesn't have months

[Maebius]

[quote name='aaront222' timestamp='1299619113' post='80398']
i like the idea of months but here's a problem, the game doesn't have months
[/quote]

The game doesn't (currently) have night either, which might explain why there are no months.
But who is to say that if the weather changes every 30 days or so, the new cosmology would define a month as a season of weather?

[Kyphis the Bard]

Actually, there is nightime in MD. Its just rare.

[Luke27]

I like the idea but no.

Why?
Because spells can be abused and what if 2 people want different weather? One snowing the other raining?
Which one would be applied?
I'd suggest it would be controlled by kings/RPC/[color="#ff0000"]Mur[/color] because it would turn to chaos if more than 1 person want to change the weather.

[Windy]

I think that is a very good idea, aaront. I have the ability to make both rain and bring out the sun. Phantasm needs to hide in the shadows when the sun is out or he screams in agony.

This, I am sure will be a lot of work to implement, should Mur and his people decide to create such a feat. I really think you need to put more thought into your idea, and put all the details in writing, especially the result of the poll and everyone's input, before presenting it to Mur.

[xrieg]

Hmmm weather... Correct me if I'm wrong - but if MD is a dreamworld weather may be considered almost like a day-night cycle - element of RL... Maybe every location should have a weather counter of itself calculated based on visiting player's weather factor (new feature to set: sunny-cloudy dry-wet); some simple time averaging scheme would be in order (->default state; visiting players influence would vanish with time and pile up with time spent in location)

[Prince Lewas]

I have some little ideas in connection with this weather-effect thing...

[quote name='Prince Marvolo' timestamp='1291740756' post='74761']
I also think weather should be able to influence actual gameplay, otherwise, it's just a picture in the trigger box, and mostly ignored.
Which makes it rather, dull.

As I said in the topic about 'season signatures' (or something like that) it would be nice too to have 'constant weather',
With month X more sunny, and month Y more rainy
I have no idea if that is code-able though.
[/quote]


[quote name='Prince Marvolo' timestamp='1291813753' post='74853']
-Every weather pattern has it's 'good' an 'bad' points
Rain can slow you down (a bit, don't go in extremes like movelock etc :/) but it might refresh water beeings, while lessen the power of a fire elemental.
Storm could cause arrows of LR archers to be less affective, and birds would be less effective, but it won't affect the heavy grassan in a wayn which would make it more effective compared to other creatures, for example.

-Ofcourse, it just won't affect indoors.


-The "wetness" factor, is not something I like. Just don't make it all too complicated.


-Every land another weather pattern seems ok to me, but maybe it's a little bit too much. you can go from LR to MB in 10 seconds, and having another weather pattern there just makes things weird.
When you walk out of your town, the weather is not going to change either, does it?


-As for 'seasons': they can't be RL based, it's too stretched. (and remember the Earth has 2 sides, so with which one would it be corresponding?). Maybe each month, I think that'd be a good timelength.
[/quote]


[quote name='Luke27' timestamp='1299673332' post='80434']
I like the idea but no.

Why?
Because spells can be abused and what if 2 people want different weather? One snowing the other raining?
Which one would be applied?
I'd suggest it would be controlled by kings/RPC/[color="#ff0000"]Mur[/color] because it would turn to chaos if more than 1 person want to change the weather.
[/quote]

So, to start with, I would prefer this whole weather system to run automatically and randomly - but also allowing people to change it in some cases. If someone can change weather by spell, he/she could do it. But his/her spell would be active for only a limited period of time or in a limited times, so others could have the same chances to change weather as well. (Sorry, I don't know much about spells, so please let me know if there's already any kind of limitation to those spells - e.g. active for an hour or can be used once a day, etc...)

A year could be the basic period, and X percent of days would be sunny, Y would be cloudy or rainy. There could be a chance for some transitions like partly cloudy/sunny with some clouds. In a period around MD Christmas would be cool days when snow falls. In the summer period there would be less number of rainy days, but a lot of very hot days. Most importantly, only extreme conditions (with similar chances like transitions) like heavy rain, heavy snow, strong winds, temperature too low or high should have the certain effects. These effects can be various, anyway, involving VE, AP, (EP) or even VP stats somehow... e.g under snow rarely will you find coins by luck, I suppose. As it was said by many: effects should be inactive at indoor scenes. I agree with this.

Besides being community places, pubs/inns could gain more and more popularity or rather importance by having positive effects on people giving compensation to those negative effects caused by weather conditions mentioned above. e.g. by visiting them, we should get a - maybe, about 5 mins - protection against "weather penalties". Or a bit faster regen time or bigger values of regen would be good, too. As a mulled wine or brandy in cold winter, and a cold beer or spritzer in hot summer... just like a godsend

And finally, that small pic of actual MD weather should appear on the welcome scene - I mean, that window which appears right after login and shows you calendar events and daily stat gifts.

---
I think, it's a problem that everyone sees (almost?) the opposite of what the others see by looking out a window. "Someone sees the sun up high while someone else sees nothing, but dark clouds." It happened to me recently, so that's real. It leads to misunderstandings... anyway, I simply said my eyes played some tricks on me

Edited May 29, 2011 by Prince Lewas

[Kyphis the Bard]

This would probably put a lot more strain on the servers, but I would suggest giving each location weather values (hidden of course) with a base for what that location contains (water, high mountains, etc. Inside a Building should have values that are very hard to change, ie very very low).
Then I would decide a starting weather pattern for when this feature launched, based purely on those values.
The base values would not change, however weather effects in place in an area would apply temporary modifiers/multipliers to the location. These temporary modifiers would have a lifespan, however this would be different for each weather effect (for example, strong winds would not die down as fast as rain, because rain is expending itself, and rain would last longer than storms, etc). Certain locations would also have multipliers to the length of certain weather effects, but that is not something for every location (ie the cliffs would have high winds more often, Golemus would have more storms, Necrovion would have far shorter rain etc). Weather that is already present in a location would also have a chance of raising the weather stats in other areas, which would be based both on the weather already present and the stats for that location.
Lastly, I would determine an influence value for spells, and they would affect the immediate area with 100% influence, the surrounding (by map, not necessarily by ease of reach, although that may require each location have it set what its near locations are in the weather database) area by 65% influence, and the close areas (next ring out) by 20% influence. For example, lets say that the threshold for rain is 50 points. A spell might apply 60 points of influence, so the immediate location will begin to rain, but the surrounding area won't begin to rain unless they already have similar weather conditions there, and there is a low chance that further locations would also start raining.
Changes to the weather values should be applied on the hour, with the exception of magically influenced weather.

This would allow the weather to be logical, affect itself (high wind influence plus high rain influence is how you get a storm, etc), and still be able to be influenced by spells (opposite spells cancel each other, like spells increase the duration and chance to spread), as well as incorporating the later option to have different spell strengths (some with higher/lower influence than others, etc)

The main problem with something like this is that it would take an insane amount of coding (even if it would be epic)

But whatever, that's my idea.

[Fyrd Argentus]

So let's go whole hog.....

Each player has a declared affinity for a certain kind of weather, giving them advantages in some types, disadvantages in others....

[Rophs]

Necropost, now that rain has an effect Sunny needs one to balanced it out.

 

Sun could:

• Drain water via evaporation
• Reduce regen timer
• Increase heat gained
• Cancel night mode
• All/some of the abov