Visible lightning during storms

Post » Thu Jun 17, 2010 9:28 am

I'm hoping to see real environmental hazards for once. Making it look nice is one thing, making it scary is a whole other.

Right now, you can trek ahead in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm - who cares, right? Wrong - going out in a thunderstorm, while wielding a huge metal sword should practically guarantee you are a lightning rod. Bad weather should force all but the most fool harder into the nearest tavern or cave.

I want to see lightning strikes, hypothermia, fall damage, etc. I want to cringe in terror on a narrow trail curving up the side of a high cliff. I want to get that nervous feeling on the back of my neck when I see dark clouds rolling in. I want to panic when light snow turns into a freaking blizzard, and I not only can't see more than a few feet, but my health bar starts dropping because I'm freezing to death. Swimming in anything but a temperate forest should be suicide - look for rocks, trees, etc. to get over water.

However, I'm betting against any of this actually being in the vanilla game.


This.

Imagine getting caught in a blizzard on your way to a small village up in the mountains. You haven't eaten in a while so you're not on your best, the cold weather is making you numb. You put on every piece of clothing you carry but still your steps are heavy, so you use your staff as a walking stick. If only you had learned that Warm Aura spell...You hear a not so distant thunder strike and as you look back you barely see a minor avalanche falling on the road behind you. You look around in agony to find anything that resembles a shelter but it's nowhere to be found. You start thinking about casting that primitive flare spell you learned a while back on yourself, hoping it'll warm you up a bit. Just at the point when you are weighting the pros and cons of a frostbite vs a burn in your mind, you hear something like a muffled scream up ahead. The visibility is near zero so you can't see a thing. These areas are known to be dangerous (although no one explained the kind of danger you should expect). That avalanche has blocked your easy way back so you have to keep going. You draw your sword and say a prayer while you steady your pace and move forward... :woot: :woot:
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Emily Jeffs
 
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Post » Wed Jun 16, 2010 9:23 pm

If only you had learned that Warm Aura spell...


I just hope hypothermia effects, if included, have more depth to it than that. If all it takes is throw a spell, and there is no real cost to it, then there isn't much point to it. Maybe freezing would prevent you from casting, or at least reduce the effects significantly, and increase mana cost (with no regen)? Maybe such a heating spell worked like I suggested with alcohol, being a temporary effects that when over makes you freeze even more? Currently, as far as convenience goes, the magic users doesn't have to think at all. Magic for everything isn't a good solution, imho.
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Evaa
 
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Post » Thu Jun 17, 2010 9:37 am

Yes thats will be awesome
Storms and Sound v3 lightning for all weathers
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=8711
Was one of best mods what I add to Oblivion, sure they will add now great storms and beautiful weather.
Skyrim will have dynamic snow, how about dynamic rain is water become also dynamic?
Rain in Oblivion go trough solid objects.
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Trevi
 
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Post » Thu Jun 17, 2010 10:14 am

I just hope hypothermia effects, if included, have more depth to it than that. If all it takes is throw a spell, and there is no real cost to it, then there isn't much point to it. Maybe freezing would prevent you from casting, or at least reduce the effects significantly, and increase mana cost (with no regen)? Maybe such a heating spell worked like I suggested with alcohol, being a temporary effects that when over makes you freeze even more? Currently, as far as convenience goes, the magic users doesn't have to think at all. Magic for everything isn't a good solution, imho.

i agree, haven't really thought how that spell should work. Maybe a constant reasonable (more that your regen rate) magicka drain rate plus an Alteration 50+ requirement would take care of the cons? It guarantees that you are left drained after a while and that relatively weak characters don't get to use it. Also it could give you a partial protection: Suppose it gives 50 anti frost "protection". If you find yourself in a blizzard with 51+ frost "power", it could only slow down the inevitable freezing to death, not prevent it entirely. Anyways that's off topic. Everything towards a "harsher" more realistic and roleplaying experience is fine by me.
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Andrew Tarango
 
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Post » Thu Jun 17, 2010 4:58 am

I would like to see the snow really dynamic:
When you hit or walk upon a tree the snow on it falls all over the place :biggrin:
Like this:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_r1yuVzbeYKM/TRGCHyOSIII/AAAAAAAAAzk/UBiNzkPuOhs/s1600/074b+Neufeld+De21+2010+Xmas+tree+hunt+%252818e%2529.jpg
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x_JeNnY_x
 
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Post » Thu Jun 17, 2010 7:51 am

With a delayed thunderclap.



That's something that's always bothered me about thunderstorms in Morrowind and Oblivion. The thunderclap comes at the same time as the flash of lighting, even though the fact that you can't see the bolt would seem to indicate it was too distant for that. If Bethesda wants to make it really realistic, lightning should be able to strike near or far, with the delay betweebn the flash of lightning and the thunder depending on how far away the strike is, much like in real life.

I definately hope to see actual lightning bolts, though, they don't need to be able to strike the player, as long as it looks like they exist, I'm fine with it. Oblivion's weather system is starting to look rather dated compared to other, newer games that have included dynamic weather, like Red Dead Redemption already mentioned. And while I'm not sure if Skyrim will match that or not, I'm going to be quite dissappointed if I don't see a clear improvement over Oblivion. Granted, at least the snow should be better, but I hope Bethesda hasn't spent so much time programming their snow accumulation mechanic that they neglected other aspects of the weather. Aside from the lightning strikes, rain needs to stop falling through buildings. If I stand under an overhang to keep dry in the rain, I don't want to have the raindrops fall right through it. And since we've already brought up the weather system in Red Dead Redemption, one thing that really impressed me about that game's weather was that when it rained, the game actually simulated the ground getting wet, I'm not sure exactly how it was done, but I'd think that the programming for snow accumulation could also be modified for this as well, though of course I could be mistaken as I'm no expert on these things.

I also wonder if it would be feasible to allow the player to see realistic transitions between different weather in different places. By which I mean to say, for example, that you could actually see clouds gathering off in the distance if you looked in the direction of a place where there was a storm, rather than having it like in Morrowind and Oblivion where the weather would be the same as far as you could see, than when you walked into an area where the weather was different, it would just suddenly change. This seemed particularly odd with Oblivion gates in Oblivion or ash storms in Morrowind, where you could be walking through the ash lands having an ash storm going on, then as soon as you enter a different region, the ash storm suddenly fades into rain both before and behind you, it just seemed strange.
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Tasha Clifford
 
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