Weather mod?

[Wolf52]

Hi guys, running GWX 3.0 but am still having issues with the never ending storms, is there a mod out there for more realistic weather or did I just have bad luck?

[rudewarrior]

I would suggest either h.sie's hardcode fix and/or Stiebler's add on for the same mod. H.sie's mod runs a whole new weather mod, Stiebler's add on just fixes the stock SH3 weather, which, as you have experienced, is broken.

I would suggest that you use more than the weather fix in those mods, as there are tons of other goodies floating around in there that make it a "must have" for me.

Good luck!

[Wolf52]

Where can I find the add on by Stiebler? I haven't been able to locate it.

[Johnfb]

Originally Posted by Wolf52

Where can I find the add on by Stiebler? I haven't been able to locate it.

14 posts below this one


Here:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...74225&page=249

[Wolf52]

Wow, I misunderstood rudewarrior and though they were not related to each other, thanks!

[GreyBeard]

There's also an external weather program available that helps randomize the weather: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...o=file&id=1880

[Johnfb]

Originally Posted by Wolf52

Wow, I misunderstood rudewarrior and though they were not related to each other, thanks!

All here to help each other

[u crank]

Originally Posted by GreyBeard

There's also an external weather program available that helps randomize the weather: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...o=file&id=1880

This is an excellent mod and I use it but..... it only works at the start of a patrol. You can choose weather conditions or let it work randomly rather than get that perfect weather at the start of each patrol.

[HW3]

This is the weather mod I use EnvSimAct_Stiebler
I uploaded it here https://mega.co.nz/#!vwh1SDLZ!DZCBhg...ZrLeNRyK-PGT7Q
It is the best weather mod I have found, is a stand alone mod, and should work with all major mods. It has no readme but, just pop it in your main SH3 folder and let it overwrite the EnvSimAct already there or, for JSGME, make a folder labeled EnvSimAct, put the file inside, put it in the MODS folder and enable.

[u crank]

Originally Posted by HW3

This is the weather mod I use EnvSimAct_Stiebler

I use this mod as well. For the most part it changes the weather much more regularly than GWX does. I say for the most part because occasionally I'll get a long stretch of the same weather, but I think that happens in real life as well. Easy to install, which is vital for a computer illiterate old guy like me.

[HW3]

I get occasional stretches of bad weather but, I know it is working because the wind direction will be changing with each 12 hour report.

[u crank]

Originally Posted by HW3

I get occasional stretches of bad weather but, I know it is working because the wind direction will be changing with each 12 hour report.

Yep. I have noticed that. Once the direction changes, different weather is coming. Great mod for sure.

[rudewarrior]

Originally Posted by Wolf52

Wow, I misunderstood rudewarrior and though they were not related to each other, thanks!

Actually, this is probably my fault. I shouldn't have said "or." Stiebler's add-on must work in conjunction with h.sie's hardcode fix. Probably could have communicated it a little better.

Originally Posted by GreyBeard

There's also an external weather program available that helps randomize the weather: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...o=file&id=1880

I wouldn't recommend this mod. It is generally thought to be buggy, and I have had some very unfortunate experiences with it. While cruising through a patrol at x256 TC, my sub has crash dived to extreme depths for no reason.

Good luck!

[u crank]

Originally Posted by rudewarrior

I wouldn't recommend this mod. It is generally thought to be buggy, and I have had some very unfortunate experiences with it. While cruising through a patrol at x256 TC, my sub has crash dived to extreme depths for no reason.

Hmmm .... Maybe you are thinking of another mod? I've used this mod for a long time without any problems. It's an external tool that only affects the weather at the start of your patrol. Once the weather changes it has no effect. How do you know that this mod was the cause? I'm not saying it wasn't, but I play at x256 TC a lot with no issues. Anybody else?

[rudewarrior]

Originally Posted by u crank

Hmmm .... Maybe you are thinking of another mod? I've used this mod for a long time without any problems. It's an external tool that only affects the weather at the start of your patrol. Once the weather changes it has no effect. How do you know that this mod was the cause? I'm not saying it wasn't, but I play at x256 TC a lot with no issues. Anybody else?

So here is the original thread on the mod. You can see some of the history of its buggy nature through the various posts. A brief summary of the relevant history:

1. Mod was working, but there were weird effects, including sometimes loading with an immediate crash dive to ~500m depth.
2. Skweetis (and others) managed to pin it down to the mod writing bad code into the save game. Curiously, it would only write this unusual code if the mission started in October or November.
3. Skweetis corrected the mod and released it as v1.5 as you can see in the first post.

If you look in the later posts of the thread you can see that people were still experiencing some of the above effects even though Skweetis claimed to have corrected it. You can also see that people tried to reach Skweetis about the issue, but he appeared to have left the forum by this point.

There are also threads at least suggesting, if not outright claiming, that SH3 Weather is the culprit with game crashes and involuntary uboat crash dives to self destruction. Here, here, and here are examples. It was suggested that the poorly written code line was randomly generated, so you could (theoretically) rerun SH3 Weather before reloading the save, and if you had good luck, you were able to recover the save game.

Personally, this seemed to work, but there was another weird problem for me. As long as I can remember, when going out on a mission and sailing past Scandinavia in that deep trench just to the west, there were two points where the game would hang momentarily. It was just an unusually long pause, but, once the pause was complete, the game would continue. However, when I was using SH3 Weather, immediately after the pause, my uboat would do the crash dive thing. Once I removed SH3 Weather, the problem went away. This may not constitute proof, but there was no change to my mod set up for a pretty long period in there. I seem to remember reproducing it, but it was ~5 years ago.

That was my experience and because of its buggy nature, I always pipe up to "anti-recommend" it. If the choice is perfect weather at mission start versus random crash dives and save game corruption, I'll take the former.