[RELz] Dynamic Weather : Fallout 3

» Tue May 17, 2011 5:56 am

Thank you again for the update! Well, you know when a modder is a perfectionist with their own work when they find issues before anyone else does :rofl:

Indeedy!

Or should that be OCD? :wacko:

» Tue May 17, 2011 8:45 am

Problems:

http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo54/psymon11b/ScreenShot13-1.jpg - you can't see what is happening by the screenshot very well - what it looks like in game is megaton textures falling like squares. You see corregated metal and all that. But then in the screenshot I'm seeing what I have set as the wallpaper of my pipboy. Very strange

and

http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo54/psymon11b/ScreenShot12-1.jpg - at different angles the graphics goes away.

I'm using heavy NMC texture replacer - I wonder if this is directory thrashing? Will try ghosting the esp with Gary Bash and see if that helps. Otherwise do you know a console command that I can use to get the weather type? Looked like snow to me with the whitish background. Not sure if snow is in this mod.

» Tue May 17, 2011 2:57 am

Woah! That's awesome!

How did you do that?

Honestly, I've never seen anything like that before. But it looks like the rain.dds (from Enhanced Weather - Rain) has got messed up somehow.

These are the files you need from http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6170

Data\Meshes\Mieimod\Different Weathers\sky\Rain.nif
---( Data\Meshes\Mieimod\Different Weathers\sky\RainUP.nif (only if using EW 2.0) )---

Data\Sound\fx\mieimod\Different Weathers\ambient\thunder\amb_thunder_01.wav
Data\Sound\fx\mieimod\Different Weathers\ambient\thunder\amb_thunder_01m.wav
Data\Sound\fx\mieimod\Different Weathers\ambient\thunder\amb_thunder_02.wav
Data\Sound\fx\mieimod\Different Weathers\ambient\thunder\amb_thunder_02m.wav
Data\Sound\fx\mieimod\Different Weathers\ambient\thunder\amb_thunder_03.wav
Data\Sound\fx\mieimod\Different Weathers\ambient\thunder\amb_thunder_03m.wav

Data\Textures\Mieimod\Different Weather\Rain.dds
---( Data\Textures\Mieimod\Different Weather\Rain2.dds (only if using EW 2.0) )---

I would go back and re-extract them.

As for changing weather, supposedly " forceweather " or " fw " plus a FormID in the console changes the weather, but I never got it to work the last time I tried. :shrug: You'll need a FormID from FO3Edit > Xepha's Dynamic Weather.esm > Weather. eg. 01034427 = 0WastelandClear, 010CAD09 = 0DWLightRain (which I believe is the weather type in the screenshots).

Very, very strange !

» Tue May 17, 2011 8:49 am

Yeah I think when I repackaged the mod as BAIN I forgot some textures. DUH :facepalm:

Thanks though for the info.

It was all very matrix

» Tue May 17, 2011 5:01 am

Yeah I think when I repackaged the mod as BAIN I forgot some textures. DUH :facepalm:

Thanks though for the info.

It was all very matrix

Cool, glad you got it sorted !

» Tue May 17, 2011 11:52 am

Just uploaded Dynamic Weather - Darker Water WIP, a Work In Progress that reduces the glowing, too bright, effect of water at night in line with the Darker Nights of Dynamic Weather. I'll eventually merge it with the main esm, but thought I'd share what I had now since I'd been promising to work on it for so long!

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=10607

~Xeph'

» Tue May 17, 2011 8:01 am

Thanks for this!

I appreciate the Climate Overrider greatly because I wanted to tune down the "cheeriness" of the default weather spread a bit. I do want to confirm something though, about the Chances for weather types. I assume that, given five weathers (for this example) that the game will take [60, 60, 30, 15, 0] and solve an equation where 60x + 60x + 30x + 15x + 0x = 1, correct? So two of the weathers have ~36% chance of happening, the next an ~18% chance and the fourth a ~9% chance.

On that note, about the "Cheery" weather spread... I was comparing the default weathers with the new ones in FO3Edit, and it seems that "WastelandUltraClear" is new? Given the above about calculating chances, aren't you essentially doubling the amount of clear weather that occurs in the game? Of course, I don't know how often the weather is "Clear" in a vanilla game so maybe it ends up being about the same. I just know I want to represent a much harsher environment by boosting all the harsher weathers (like the awesome sandstorm!)... It is post-apocalyptic after all, haha.

OK, so to my next point:

I was wanting to tweak the night darkness for all of the weathers myself, because I find "Night Eye Edition" too bright, and the standard too dark... But I wanted to know the easiest way to do so. I see in FO3Edit that for each Weather there is a NAM0 > Type # > Time # ... But do all of the "Time #3 (Night)" have to be tweaked or just a few? I assume that Type #3 "Ambient" has a lot to do with perceived brightness, but I fear if I turn that up without adjusting the others I'll have very odd-looking weather. Should I just fire up GECK and edit each weather there? Or I thought maybe just going through each "Time #3 (Night)" value and boosting it by 1.25x (with a max of 255) for an overall 25% increase in brightness might be sufficient?

I admit that I haven't actually played enough with DW on to appreciate the darker nights or not, but my initial impression was "way too dark". I have used the same types of mods for Oblivion and enjoyed the effect, but it seems that in that game the towns have many more actual light sources (maybe it's from all my mods)... For example I feel that Megaton should be well lit considering there are lights hanging everywhere, but pretty much the only thing I could see at a good distance was the radioactive water, and that was about it. People were sitting/standing/whatever in complete darkness and it didn't feel too realistic, considering the amount of light that Megaton gives off.

So, ideas:

1. Can boosting the Ambient Light be scripted depending on location/town, or maybe there is some way to assess the number of nearby light sources?

2. Alternatively I thought a way to deal with pitch blackness could be to extend the range of the Pip-Boy light? Have it as an optional ESP?

3. Or, of course, come out with multiple "Night Eye Editions" that range between Vanilla brightness and DW brightness? [33, 66, 99] or [25, 50, 75, 100]? I would definitely use a 25 or 33, as that's what I'm aiming to change manually anyway.

I do know that this mod should optimally be used with night vision mods, and what with all the Realism/Overhaul mods I'm currently running... The darker nights DO go more in line with the feel of the game and that I will eventually come across the ability to use night vision, but who knows when that'll be. Of course I guess I should be sleeping when it's darkest anyway, considering I'm using Primary Needs as part of FWE anyway.

P.S. - I guess my point about Megaton may be negated by http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=7875, and I already have both Street Lights mods but I still feel I may run into areas where it is unrealistically dark...

» Tue May 17, 2011 1:45 pm

Phew! So many questions! I will read and answer.. o_O

Thanks for this!

I appreciate the Climate Overrider greatly because I wanted to tune down the "cheeriness" of the default weather spread a bit. I do want to confirm something though, about the Chances for weather types. I assume that, given five weathers (for this example) that the game will take [60, 60, 30, 15, 0] and solve an equation where 60x + 60x + 30x + 15x + 0x = 1, correct? So two of the weathers have ~36% chance of happening, the next an ~18% chance and the fourth a ~9% chance.

Well, maths was never my forté... But the way I see it (according to what is said about it in the http://geck.gamesas.com/index.php/Climate#Weather_Types) is that, given a list of weather types, Fallout 3 starts at the top, looks at the weather chance and rolls some dice. If the results of this calculation means that weather isn't displayed it moves on to the next one and rolls the dice again until a weather type is chosen. I know that sounds a little abstract - but I don't really know how it works. I haven't tested it, but I imagine that if you were to set all the Chance values to 100, it would go through each weather type, one by one, as they are presented in the Climate list.

On that note, about the "Cheery" weather spread... I was comparing the default weathers with the new ones in FO3Edit, and it seems that "WastelandUltraClear" is new? Given the above about calculating chances, aren't you essentially doubling the amount of clear weather that occurs in the game? Of course, I don't know how often the weather is "Clear" in a vanilla game so maybe it ends up being about the same. I just know I want to represent a much harsher environment by boosting all the harsher weathers (like the awesome sandstorm!)... It is post-apocalyptic after all, haha.

I'm not sure what you mean by "default" weathers? If you mean vanilla weather types, then that has no bearing at all, because the weather only changes depending on where you are in the Wasteland.

If you're using all my DW esp's there are 4 Clear weather types. Given there are considerably more cloudy weather types it makes sense to me that those 4 Clear weather types be given a greater chance of appearing, since in Vanilla FO3 a clear weather type covers a large percentage of the Wasteland and is something I wanted to try and capture in my DW Climate. Whether or not I achieved that is open to debate, but that was the thinking behind my choice of weather Chance values.

OK, so to my next point:

I was wanting to tweak the night darkness for all of the weathers myself, because I find "Night Eye Edition" too bright, and the standard too dark... But I wanted to know the easiest way to do so. I see in FO3Edit that for each Weather there is a NAM0 > Type # > Time # ... But do all of the "Time #3 (Night)" have to be tweaked or just a few? I assume that Type #3 "Ambient" has a lot to do with perceived brightness, but I fear if I turn that up without adjusting the others I'll have very odd-looking weather. Should I just fire up GECK and edit each weather there? Or I thought maybe just going through each "Time #3 (Night)" value and boosting it by 1.25x (with a max of 255) for an overall 25% increase in brightness might be sufficient?

Well that's funny, because only a few posts up someone was saying they found standard DW too bright. o_O

But, if you want to get your hands dirty, probably the best way to go about it would be to grab hold of the relevant Night Eye Edition (ie, with or without Op. Anchorage) and edit that in the Geck. Otherwise you'd have to open the ESM in FO3Edit, strip off the ESM flag and rename the file to *.esp before editing it in the Geck (which is what I do when I'm updating the ESM). Heck, I suppose you could just even create your own plugin off of the esm if you want. Whichever way you decide to do it, I would recommend doing it in the Geck, so you can see the effect your changes are making.

And which changes to make? After selecting the appropriate time of day (ie Night, from a selection of Day, Night, Sunrise, Sunset), you'll want to pay close attention to Ambient and Sunlight. Ambient is a soft overall lighting, wheras Sunlight is a much harsher/brighter light which moves depending on the time. I wouldn't bother with any other settings and, infact, these are about the only values I change in my Night Eye Edition (another being Fog distance at night).

There's an awesome little tutorial on the http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6550 page if you really want to get stuck in (and is where I learnt how to edit weather in the first place).

I admit that I haven't actually played enough with DW on to appreciate the darker nights or not, but my initial impression was "way too dark". I have used the same types of mods for Oblivion and enjoyed the effect, but it seems that in that game the towns have many more actual light sources (maybe it's from all my mods)... For example I feel that Megaton should be well lit considering there are lights hanging everywhere, but pretty much the only thing I could see at a good distance was the radioactive water, and that was about it. People were sitting/standing/whatever in complete darkness and it didn't feel too realistic, considering the amount of light that Megaton gives off.

I haven't played Oblivion so I can't really comment on that, but since Megaton is the only town in the game with any significant light sources, I don't see that DW should pay any special attention to it. (But I think you found a solution below

).

So, ideas:

1. Can boosting the Ambient Light be scripted depending on location/town, or maybe there is some way to assess the number of nearby light sources?

While I don't think it's possible to adjust Ambient lighting (ie, the setting I was describing above) on the fly, I think it's feasible that an ImageSpace Modifier could be triggered via script depending on location. You'll have seen ImageSpace Modifiers without knowing - they're the blur or white/black out effects you see when you get hit or blown up. So something like that, might be possible.

2. Alternatively I thought a way to deal with pitch blackness could be to extend the range of the Pip-Boy light? Have it as an optional ESP?

In all honesty, people messing with Pip-Boy values is one of my pet peaves. I even have an esp titled "Pip-Boy Overrider" - that reverts the values back to vanilla - sat at the bottom of my Load Order in case I install a mod that wants to change it. But I'm sure there are stand-alone mods that would help in this regard if anyone wanted to do that. :shrug:

3. Or, of course, come out with multiple "Night Eye Editions" that range between Vanilla brightness and DW brightness? [33, 66, 99] or [25, 50, 75, 100]? I would definitely use a 25 or 33, as that's what I'm aiming to change manually anyway.

Funny you should mention "multiple" Night Eye Editions because I am actually working on another version of that. But it's a rather specific case, in that it was requested that, as well as a night that was inbetween DW regular and NEE there was a need that the fog/view distance be reduced a-lá http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1293.

In any case, the more NEE versions I take on the more work it would take when it comes to updating any of them, and as we've already seen, my perfectionist/OCD tendancies won't allow for any inconsistancies across versions... I'd love to appease everyone, I really do, but with every variation of Night brightness would come another set of (what are we on for now? about a dozen + ?) weather types that need adjusting.

I'm just looking at my load order in fomm (where all my DW weather esp's live) and there's about 20, which I think is enough for anyone. Good grief ! O_O

Erm... So that's a no!

I do know that this mod should optimally be used with night vision mods, and what with all the Realism/Overhaul mods I'm currently running... The darker nights DO go more in line with the feel of the game and that I will eventually come across the ability to use night vision, but who knows when that'll be. Of course I guess I should be sleeping when it's darkest anyway, considering I'm using Primary Needs as part of FWE anyway.

Well that's what it's all about really - if we're talking realism - then yes it should be dark at night and it shouldn't be easy for the player to get around (apart from sleeping through it). If you can't afford NV Goggles, then there's still options: you can use your Pip-Boy light (with the disadvantage of attracting unwanted attention); if you're using MMM you can grab some Night Ghoul Eyes (that's if you survive the large groups that have a tendancy to appear...

). Even you can afford NV Goggles you have to make sure you have a good stock of energy cells, since they have a tendancy of running out at the most inappropriate moments (in the http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2725 i use anyway).

P.S. - I guess my point about Megaton may be negated by http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=7875, and I already have both Street Lights mods but I still feel I may run into areas where it is unrealistically dark...

Yeah, like I said earlier, I think Megaton is a unique case because in my view in a post apocalyptic world where civilisation has been thrown back (in some regards) to the stone age and doesn't have any distributed power system, then it's going to be dark at night with the only contributory light coming from the moon and the stars...

Balancing that level of darkness without inconveniencing the player (unless they want to be inconvenienced) is obviously something of a challenge since people will always have their own opinions as to how dark is dark...

Okay, I think I've run out of words now~!

~Xeph' ^_^

» Tue May 17, 2011 7:45 am

Xepha, is it Dynamic weather, or Enhanced weather that makes the clouds? The reason I ask, is cause I have had a seam in my sky for awhile now (even before the updates) and took picture tonight if you need to see it. The seam is in a cloud in the shots. For all I know, maybe it isn't even the cloud lol, I am really not sure how the weather texture thing works.

Well I will just post the pictures so you have a better idea on who I should ask about this

http://img62.imageshack.us/i/screenshot14sd.png/
http://img522.imageshack.us/i/screenshot15c.png/
http://img42.imageshack.us/i/screenshot16xk.png/ <-- may have to zoom in to see it on the left side of the moon.

» Tue May 17, 2011 10:18 am

Xepha, is it Dynamic weather, or Enhanced weather that makes the clouds? The reason I ask, is cause I have had a seam in my sky for awhile now (even before the updates) and took picture tonight if you need to see it. The seam is in a cloud in the shots. For all I know, maybe it isn't even the cloud lol, I am really not sure how the weather texture thing works.

Well I will just post the pictures so you have a better idea on who I should ask about this

http://img62.imageshack.us/i/screenshot14sd.png/
http://img522.imageshack.us/i/screenshot15c.png/
http://img42.imageshack.us/i/screenshot16xk.png/ <-- may have to zoom in to see it on the left side of the moon.

Yeah, they're my cloud textures. :facepalm:

And I know exactly what the problem is, but I can't reproduce it at this end. It's a side effect of tiling the image so that they appear (or should appear) seamless, lol ! :rofl:

I haven't touched them for a while, so it's possible you have a really old version of those clouds if you didn't extract and overwrite them with those in DW 1.3. So, if you want to test: extract the textures from 1.3 and then set up a climate that contains only 0WastelandLightCloud and see if the problem persists.

Really, I was never happy with those clouds anyway, so I might have to break out the GIMP and see if I can't make them a little more... better !

~Xeph'

» Tue May 17, 2011 12:04 am

Yeah, they're my cloud textures. :facepalm:

And I know exactly what the problem is, but I can't reproduce it at this end. It's a side effect of tiling the image so that they appear (or should appear) seamless, lol ! :rofl:

I haven't touched them for a while, so it's possible you have a really old version of those clouds if you didn't extract and overwrite them with those in DW 1.3. So, if you want to test: extract the textures from 1.3 and then set up a climate that contains only 0WastelandLightCloud and see if the problem persists.

Really, I was never happy with those clouds anyway, so I might have to break out the GIMP and see if I can't make them a little more... better !

~Xeph'

I will extract 1.3 again, just to be on the safe side and test it out, then report back to you later. I have a bad habit of re-installing at least once a month, (I can't help to test out new interesting mods that I see) and I do delete old file packages once there is a new update. This set up is about 2 or 3 weeks old lol. If it helps, my laptop automatically detects low settings. I don't know if having low settings vs high settings would make a difference, but just in case.

Last night I got to see it get night while just about pitch black cause of the clouds covering the moon and watched as things got a little bit lighter slowly as there became less and less clouds in the sky. That was a beautiful thing, so realistic!

» Tue May 17, 2011 2:01 pm

Well, maths was never my forté... But the way I see it (according to what is said about it in the http://geck.gamesas.com/index.php/Climate#Weather_Types) is that, given a list of weather types, Fallout 3 starts at the top, looks at the weather chance and rolls some dice. If the results of this calculation means that weather isn't displayed it moves on to the next one and rolls the dice again until a weather type is chosen. I know that sounds a little abstract - but I don't really know how it works. I haven't tested it, but I imagine that if you were to set all the Chance values to 100, it would go through each weather type, one by one, as they are presented in the Climate list.

Well I think that link explains it well enough. The Chances *should* add up to 100 but if they don't it calculates odds based on the total points. I do NOT think it drills from top-down, because of compounding probabilities for a method like that. Basically the first few in the list are 60 - 10 - 60 - 60, so the chance of it ever picking a weather below that is not very high, so if it DID drill top-down for a dice roll you'd barely ever see the weathers at the bottom of the list. But I have managed to see storming by just waiting in 3 hour intervals and seeing the weather change, so I feel they must readjust all the values to add up to 100%, and it seems like what the GECK link is saying, so thanks.

... (But if it really does go top-down, you should order the weathers from lowest probability to highest, but again I think it's highly unlikely it does this.)

Well that's funny, because only a few posts up someone was saying they found standard DW too bright. o_O

But, if you want to get your hands dirty, probably the best way to go about it would be to grab hold of the relevant Night Eye Edition (ie, with or without Op. Anchorage) and edit that in the Geck. Otherwise you'd have to open the ESM in FO3Edit, strip off the ESM flag and rename the file to *.esp before editing it in the Geck (which is what I do when I'm updating the ESM). Heck, I suppose you could just even create your own plugin off of the esm if you want. Whichever way you decide to do it, I would recommend doing it in the Geck, so you can see the effect your changes are making.

And which changes to make? After selecting the appropriate time of day (ie Night, from a selection of Day, Night, Sunrise, Sunset), you'll want to pay close attention to Ambient and Sunlight. Ambient is a soft overall lighting, wheras Sunlight is a much harsher/brighter light which moves depending on the time. I wouldn't bother with any other settings and, infact, these are about the only values I change in my Night Eye Edition (another being Fog distance at night).

Ah, OK. I wouldn't have guessed that 'Sunlight' would have any effect at night, though I guess it means 'Moonlight' at night, then. I was going to take a look at your NEE next to see what exactly you changed, but I guess now I know I only need to bother with the two. And I may as well as start with the NEE as my base anyway.

There's an awesome little tutorial on the http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6550 page if you really want to get stuck in (and is where I learnt how to edit weather in the first place).

Thanks for the link. I will take a look at this.

While I don't think it's possible to adjust Ambient lighting (ie, the setting I was describing above) on the fly, I think it's feasible that an ImageSpace Modifier could be triggered via script depending on location. You'll have seen ImageSpace Modifiers without knowing - they're the blur or white/black out effects you see when you get hit or blown up. So something like that, might be possible.

Yeah... Hmm... Does Dynamic Weather do anything to make a full moon + clear weather brighter (than a new moon + clear weather for instance)? A brightness boost from an ImageSpace modifier might not have too realistic an effect though, I guess. Probably not as good as just boosting the ambient and direct light. Or could you somehow trigger different "Clear" and "UltraClear" weathers based on moon phase? That only touch the Night values? So "FullMoonClear" "FullMoonUltraClear" etc.

Actually what I find funny, at that GECK link they seem to have part of the Oblivion wiki copy/pasted. It mentions two moons, Masser and Secunda, which is quite funny since the textures and such are still named "masser" in FO3. Does FO3 possibly use the second "Secunda" moon to boost the light during full moon phases?

Funny you should mention "multiple" Night Eye Editions because I am actually working on another version of that. But it's a rather specific case, in that it was requested that, as well as a night that was inbetween DW regular and NEE there was a need that the fog/view distance be reduced a-lá http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1293.

In any case, the more NEE versions I take on the more work it would take when it comes to updating any of them, and as we've already seen, my perfectionist/OCD tendancies won't allow for any inconsistancies across versions... I'd love to appease everyone, I really do, but with every variation of Night brightness would come another set of (what are we on for now? about a dozen + ?) weather types that need adjusting.

I'm just looking at my load order in fomm (where all my DW weather esp's live) and there's about 20, which I think is enough for anyone. Good grief ! O_O

Erm... So that's a no!

I see... Well, it doesn't affect me because I'm rolling my own "NEE" but I just figured having a few intermediate plugins would keep all the requests at bay. If you have one that is halfway between maybe that will be sufficient for most people.

Well that's what it's all about really - if we're talking realism - then yes it should be dark at night and it shouldn't be easy for the player to get around (apart from sleeping through it). If you can't afford NV Goggles, then there's still options: you can use your Pip-Boy light (with the disadvantage of attracting unwanted attention); if you're using MMM you can grab some Night Ghoul Eyes (that's if you survive the large groups that have a tendancy to appear...

). Even you can afford NV Goggles you have to make sure you have a good stock of energy cells, since they have a tendancy of running out at the most inappropriate moments (in the http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2725 i use anyway).

Yeah, like I said earlier, I think Megaton is a unique case because in my view in a post apocalyptic world where civilisation has been thrown back (in some regards) to the stone age and doesn't have any distributed power system, then it's going to be dark at night with the only contributory light coming from the moon and the stars...

Balancing that level of darkness without inconveniencing the player (unless they want to be inconvenienced) is obviously something of a challenge since people will always have their own opinions as to how dark is dark...

Well, you're right about night being really dark.. It's just that opinions vary I guess. I grew up in the country and you could see for (what seemed like) miles under a full moon, and at least your immediate surroundings felt "bright as day". Or stargazing in Arizona (near the observatories) during a new moon was quite a bright experience for me. Especially after your eyes have adjusted for a half hour or so. And "inconveniencing the player" relies on basically one thing: monitor type. I have a high-end IPS LCD screen, but it's still an LCD. "Pitch Black" is going to look the same as "Charcoal" because LCDs compress that range because of backlighting issues. It's just not possible to see the difference between several shades of black. So unless you have a CRT or have jumped ahead in time to get a sizable OLED screen, you should make game nights as realistic as possible while still making "darkness" relative to the "black" of an LCD screen (which is quite far from black). Otherwise you get that compression of dark shades (it's called black crush). And of course vanilla nights in both FO3/Oblivion were too bright even to be compensating for the sad state of computer monitors.