Weather = Seriously Bugged?

[Spunky48]

Ok, so how is it that this weather report can possibly remain exactly the same throughout almost my entire patrol:

Clouds Overcast, Precipitations Medium, Fog Heavy, Wind Speed 15 meters, Direction 221.

I ignored it for a while because I figured it would go away by the time I had to sink a ship. But no, 15 minutes later when I've found a ship to sink, I'm all lined up, ready to fire my torp as soon as I can get a nice lock in the periscope, the ship sails right in front of me. Because there was so much fog, I couldn't see a giant C2 cargo vessel right in front of me. Is there some patch or mod that fixes the ****ty weather? I'd rather not turn it off altogether if I don't have to, but that's an option as well if there's no other way to fix this.

[Blacklight]

The weather model for SHIII is broken. The weather tends to get "stuck", usually with high wind, storm, rain, etc..
This is in the stock program and is un-moddable. I believe the latest version of GWX makes the weather a little more random, but nothing is going to be able to TOTALLY fix the problem.

We HAVE discovered a bit of a workaround. We noticed that the weather tends to change roughly every three days of game time. Saving the game, and then reloading it, resets this "timer". So, if say, you're sailing and the weather is perfect with no wind, you save the game when you're out there for two days, and then you exit, and reload your saved game, the timer will reset, giving you another three days of game time of the same weather you had when you saved. This is by no means a 100% as the weather timer DOES vary some for when it changes the weather. Especially the closer you are toward the equator where it changes the weather more frequently.

Hope this helps. Maybe some others have some other suggestions as well.

Also, if you don't know about it, ALWAYS save while surfaced. There is a major bug that will cause you to plunge to the bottom of the ocean when you restart if you save while under water. Also, if you're using the GWX mod, don't save anywhere near a base as it will cause all the ships in the base to crash and burn when you restart.

[Spunky48]

Also, if you're using the GWX mod, don't save anywhere near a base as it will cause all the ships in the base to crash and burn when you restart.

This is a bad thing how? :P

I'm not using any mods though.

Edit: Is it also bugged in Silent Hunter 4?

[Dissaray]

One thing I have read here on these forums and seen in game is that the weather tends to get stuck less often when when you keep the time compresion no higher than 128. This will also make encounters with the enemy more frequent it seems.

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Also, if you're using the GWX mod, don't save anywhere near a base as it will cause all the ships in the base to crash and burn when you restart.

You are incorrect, matey. What you have described in the quote above is a stock SH3 problem and has nothing to do with GWX. The above quoted problem is common regardless of the mod used.

Saving near any campaign scripted or random layer AI unit in SH3 will cause it to lose its waypoints and travel in a straight line.

[Blacklight]

One thing I have read here on these forums and seen in game is that the weather tends to get stuck less often when when you keep the time compresion no higher than 128. This will also make encounters with the enemy more frequent it seems.This is true. You definitely do get more contacts that way.

[Steel_Tomb]

Que the obligatory "It's been stormin' for three months!!!!" lol.

Weather is a bit strange in SHIII, but there is nothing we can do about it really :sunny:.

[Red Heat]

My aproach to the game i consider heavy heather a true ally...except the the heavy fog in some aproaches like in the earlier of the war...because with out radar its very dificult to follow a contact at the surface!

[RConch]

Weather in the North Atlantic really did suck most of the time.
All commanders should take the time to enjoy "Bloody Winter" by John M. Waters to get a real taste of what the boats, escorts and merchants had to deal with.:yeah:

[Hitman]

So far the best solution I have found is to have different scene.dat files that I enable/disable depending on where I'm going to patrol. If I'm going to patrol in the North Atlantic, I use one that allows random weather (which will tend to go to 15 m/s) but with the waves size smaller than standard and fog disabled. That gives me consistent rough weather, but not unplayable at all. For tropical patrol areas I use one with fixed wind speed. Clouds change, rain comes and goes, but you never get a storm.

NYGM also comes with modifications incorporated to the campaign files that increase the chances and periods of good weather.

[Sailor Steve]

And where do we get these other scene.dat files? I jus' gots to know!:D

Honestly, this sounds like a cool thing.

[Jimbuna]

And where do we get these other scene.dat files? I jus' gots to know!:D

Honestly, this sounds like a cool thing.

I'd be interested too because all I do is change the values to suit from the campaign files to determine the weather conditions I prefer eg: basic GWX3.0

Fog=1
FogRand=0
Clouds=1
CloudsRand=0
Precip=0
PrecipRand=0
WindHeading=0
WindSpeed=4.000000
WindRand=0
WeatherRndInterval=5
SeaType=0

[Hitman]

And where do we get these other scene.dat files? I jus' gots to know!:D

Honestly, this sounds like a cool thing.

I just did it for private use. It's actually a very easy setting in the scene.dat, takes only 5 minutes to do with Silent Editor, and doing it for every environment mod out there would be a nightmare.

Simply open scene.dat in Silent Editor and go to:

6:Node Sky-->13 EnvSim-->14EnvSim--->Wind--->WindspeedChangeSpeed.

Setting the wind change speed to zero will ensure you have a constant wind during all the time, which will be the one in your campaign layers (GWX by default 4m/s). You can also set the fogchange speed to zero and thus see no fog at all during your patrol.

If you want to have smaller waves in 15m/s wind, then simply go in the same path:

6:Node Sky-->13 EnvSim-->14EnvSim--->Wind-

To wave properties and copy the values for scale from node 2 (8 to 14 m/s waves) to node 3 (15 m/s waves) and you will have at most waves of that size.

You can actually customize a lot the weather playing with those combinations, deciding if you want fog & rain to appear or not, the maximum size of the waves etc. Add to this the ability to change the clouds for any others you want (By changing the TGA file in the Misc folder), and you can have custom weather that goes from mild to rough, or from rough to hurricane-like.

Or simply fully fixed weather, by selecting

6:Node Sky-->13 EnvSim-->14EnvSim--->UseCotrollersWeatherData to TRUE

you override any setting in the campaign files and can put a fixed weather pattern directly in the scene.dat. This works very well if you want to have a fixed good weather with, say, 4-7 m/s wind, no rain, no fog. Ideal for patrolling in the Caribbean.:up:

I also discovered that you can swap scene.dat files during saved games. So you can have one scene.dat with variable weather when you depart base and cross the atlantic, save when you arrive at your patrol area in the Caribbean and load the fixed good weather file, then save before returning home and reloading the original random weather file.

Combinations are endless ... that's why offering it as a mod is not probably wirth it.

BTW Manos EnvPro3 already has the smaller waves for 15m/s wind, so you can still patrol and hunt even if the weather is stuck at rough.

[Hitman]

Oh I forgot: Theoretically (Jaesen Jones will know better) you could place those customized scene.dat files in SH3 Commander and have it put automatically the correct weather for you depending on your flotilla (F.e. Mediterranean). I'm not sure if it can be coarsed to do it according to the assigned patrol area and time of year :hmmm:

[Jimbuna]

That's intersesting Hitman, Personally speaking I've never had to adjust the scene.dat but I must admit my results are not always as far reaching as you are describing...cheers http://www.psionguild.org/forums/images/smilies/wolfsmilies/thumbsup.gif

[Tweety]

Thanks Hitman,:up:

That is very good information that I will have try it myself.

Tweety

[Magic1111]

Ok, so how is it that this weather report can possibly remain exactly the same throughout almost my entire patrol:

Clouds Overcast, Precipitations Medium, Fog Heavy, Wind Speed 15 meters, Direction 221.

I ignored it for a while because I figured it would go away by the time I had to sink a ship. But no, 15 minutes later when I've found a ship to sink, I'm all lined up, ready to fire my torp as soon as I can get a nice lock in the periscope, the ship sails right in front of me. Because there was so much fog, I couldn't see a giant C2 cargo vessel right in front of me. Is there some patch or mod that fixes the ****ty weather? I'd rather not turn it off altogether if I don't have to, but that's an option as well if there's no other way to fix this.

Hello !

You can use the "RealWeatherFix", look here:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=132868&highlight=weather:up:

Best regards,
Magic

[urfisch]

the realweather-fix just fixes the bad weather problem,but not the problem itself. i also had good weather for weeks...so the former posters are right: the weather often gets stuck. only if you change your location over far distances, e.g. from the northern sea bay into the northern parts around england, or even higher into the north, the weather changes.

seems, as if weather acts for different zones, instead of different seasons, etc...

[PappyCain]

Call me daft. Call me wingy. Call me whatever! But I love the weather. I never had it "stucK' in an endless loop. Dunno why. Maybe lucky, although I have logged a billion hours at sea. Maybe I just like whatever conditions are thrown at me when on a patrol. Fog is a great challenge as is a heavy sea when one has to manage the boat well. With good boat management and changing the course to ride out a sea is fun. Immersive. But honestly mates I have never seen an inordinate amount of heavy weather that did not eventually abate. Sort of like RL in the North Atlantic. Hmmmm.


:up:

S'
PC

[GlassTrain]

Hitman, the suggestion on using Silent editor is awesome! I don't mind the stock campaign weather, but having the flexibility to 'set' the weather is nice!

Couple of questions....

1. How do I set the clouds to something other than 'partial' in the file? With the controller set to true, all I get are partial clouds.

2. Does the scene.dat file control the hours of day/night in the game? I had a weird problem when I completely reinstalled the game. I never initialized the simulation itself, modified the scene.dat file first and then started a campaign. The sun was high noon at 0500 and the sun came up at 21:30 around St. Nazaire! :rotfl2:

It went back to normal when I reset the controller to false (had set it to 'true') and started a new campaign.

Thank you!

[Hitman]

1. How do I set the clouds to something other than 'partial' in the file? With the controller set to true, all I get are partial clouds.

Yes, the controller set to true is good only for a constant good weather and you can't change anything except the wind speed. That's the file you would enable to patrol in the tropics or in the mediterranean in summer.

2. Does the scene.dat file control the hours of day/night in the game?

Not AFAIK :hmmm:

[OuNiS]

It went back to normal when I reset the controller to false (had set it to 'true') and started a new campaign.


It happend to me couple of times.
I think that if you set controller to "TRUE" engine set default values of wheater from begining (initialization) of campaign. Probably time is set the same which was at the start of campaign but it is not coherent with time in saved game.
When you start new campaign engine resets all values to default.

[bigboywooly]

Oh I forgot: Theoretically (Jaesen Jones will know better) you could place those customized scene.dat files in SH3 Commander and have it put automatically the correct weather for you depending on your flotilla (F.e. Mediterranean). I'm not sure if it can be coarsed to do it according to the assigned patrol area and time of year :hmmm:

SH3commander already adds a scene dat in when you are in any of the med flotillas - not sure if he did if for the black sea too,dont think he did but it was discussed
AFAIK only changes the blue of the sea tho
Nothing else
Its perfectly feasable to change out a dat using the date function - just as you would a ship skin

[bigboywooly]

It happend to me couple of times.
I think that if you set controller to "TRUE" engine set default values of wheater from begining (initialization) of campaign. Probably time is set the same which was at the start of campaign but it is not coherent with time in saved game.
When you start new campaign engine resets all values to default.


Could be worth a try using SH3commander to add in a dat set to true with auto rollbacks enambled
When you go to exit SH3commander will pull that dat out of the game so there is a possibilty it will still be set to true

For summer periods and extended patrols in the med/carribbean or indian ocean

[Hitman]

SH3commander already adds a scene dat in when you are in any of the med flotilla

IIRC it only will add one Env file, not the scene.dat itself. In the Env files is the colour of the sea and sky :up:

The game has different possible colours for Atlantic, Mediterranean and Arctic, but they are only used in the single missions (Code bug), not in the campaign. SHCommander takes one old mod -I think from Markhimov- and replaces the Atlantic colours with Mediterranean colours when you play 23rd or 29th Flotilla careers. Of course it will work the same with any other environment file you give it, SH3 commander is flexible enough, but so far I don't know that anybody has done more similar tweaks for it.

As much as we love SH3 Commander, I feel it is still largely underused in its potential... probably our fault to concentrate in modding the game itself, instead of paying attention to things that are much better under our control, as the SH3C features :hmmm:

[comet61]

If you want to have smaller waves in 15m/s wind, then simply go in the same path:

6:Node Sky-->13 EnvSim-->14EnvSim--->Wind-

To wave properties and copy the values for scale from node 2 (8 to 14 m/s waves) to node 3 (15 m/s waves) and you will have at most waves of that size.

Nice little fix. Did the editing to those lines and it works just fine. Doesn't corrupt saved games. But I have a question:

On the line: WindSpeedChangeSpeed= 0.01 can it be increased? If so, what are the results of increasing the varibles by .10±. As it stands now there's usually a change in weather every 2-4 game days (without gross time compression, I rarely go over 128). Trying to get a grip on what the variables mean on these lines and what the increments mean when changing them. Thanks!!

[tomfon]

You can also set the fogchange speed to zero and thus see no fog at all during your patrol.

Does this mean that weather status will be stuck at ''visibility 15km'' thus no change of visibility throughout the patrol?

[schlechter pfennig]

I used to have the 'stuck weather' too. But since I've started playing no faster than TC256, and frequently at TC128, I see the weather changing quite a bit.

In fact, the wind direction at times changes around once an hour, with wind speed changing every couple of hours before it settles down and goes stable. But the longest (so far, anyway) I've been stuck without anything changing is two days.

[flakmonkey]

Ok, so how is it that this weather report can possibly remain exactly the same throughout almost my entire patrol:

Clouds Overcast, Precipitations Medium, Fog Heavy, Wind Speed 15 meters, Direction 221.

I ignored it for a while because I figured it would go away by the time I had to sink a ship. But no, 15 minutes later when I've found a ship to sink, I'm all lined up, ready to fire my torp as soon as I can get a nice lock in the periscope, the ship sails right in front of me. Because there was so much fog, I couldn't see a giant C2 cargo vessel right in front of me. Is there some patch or mod that fixes the ****ty weather? I'd rather not turn it off altogether if I don't have to, but that's an option as well if there's no other way to fix this.

Ignoring the issue of glitchy weather which has already been answered, bad weather need not stop you sinking ships!

For sinking ships in heavy fog, its quite possible to go by sound only, if you can get to within 500m or so of the target`s projected course you should be able to estimate speed and sink the ship using just the hydrophone plot. At such close range any errors in range speed estimations are usually not enough to cause the torpedo to miss.

The only problem is identifying the nationality but its usually a matter of location, if youre just off the english coast its pretty much 100% that it`ll be an enemy ship.

[Hitman]

On the line: WindSpeedChangeSpeed= 0.01 can it be increased? If so, what are the results of increasing the varibles by .10±. As it stands now there's usually a change in weather every 2-4 game days (without gross time compression, I rarely go over 128). Trying to get a grip on what the variables mean on these lines and what the increments mean when changing them. Thanks!!

Yes it can be increased and decreased, but after much experimenting modders considered that this was the best parameter. But you can of course test a lot and see if you get something different; actually we use to take many things for granted while the developing status of knowledge and technic could in fact make another try worth it :up:

Does this mean that weather status will be stuck at ''visibility 15km'' thus no change of visibility throughout the patrol?

No, you will still getbad weather, with overcast skyes and rain, but fog will never appear even in the worst weather possible. :)

I used to have the 'stuck weather' too. But since I've started playing no faster than TC256, and frequently at TC128, I see the weather changing quite a bit.

One has to think about the origins of SH3 to understand why many things happen in the game. In the development stages, Sh3 had no dynamic campaign at all, instead it was a series of missions (updated dynamically depending on the outcome of the previous one) where you would actually travel at high speed on a map screen with progress bar from your base to the assigned patrol area. Then you would cruise along there at lower TC, probably no more than 256x if no enemy nearby. Then the plans were changed due to the pressure from the community, and the dynamic campaign was thrown in. Result: The need to increase TC brutally for players who had no patience or time to play the game that long caused lots of problems in an engine initially not designed for that, and the result is the current broken air attacks and weather at high TC. So far I have experienced pretty stable weather with reasonable changes if not going past 256x or 512x at most, but higher TC in SH3 is guarantee for trouble :dead:

[tomfon]

Thanks for your answer Hitman.:salute:

During my last two patrols i noticed that whenever i entered the vicinity of grid DH33 the weather changed to windspeed 15km/s, visibility 1km and remained as such for a period of 7 days, more or less (game time of course!). Totally weird this may be, it didn't surprise me. At all.:)

[Redbear]

A simple work around I've found to be a great improvement is to open each of the files (.LND, .SCR and .RND) in the Campaigns folder and change the line WeatherRndInterval=5 to WeatherRndInterval=0.5 (or any other small number, I guess - I use 0.5). This can be done using notepad. It's simple and it does make the weather change often, much better than stock. The only quirk I've found is that if you open any of the three files in the mission editor, it defaults back to '5' and you have to do it again. I guess the game doesn't actually 'recognize' the small number, but it seems to work without any problems. I want to note that this is not my idea, but I'm afraid I can't remember where I found it originally, so appologies to whoever deserves the credit! I also would only do this 'in port', but I don't have any data one way or the other on this.

[Rubini]

Do you already tried this one?:hmmm:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=132868&highlight=stop+the+rain

"Stop the rain" is a mod to make an "on the fly" correction on YOUR sh3 weather´s campaign game exactly to solve the unfixable weather problem.

Always use the above suggested WeatherRndInterval=2 (or minor) on your LND/RND/SCR and this "Stop the rain" mod for "emergences": the weather will be never more a problem to you.

[Redbear]

Hi GalaKev,

I don't think that's where I got the changes I described - seems to me it was on some other site and only suggested what changes to make, without the great background information in this thread. That's a great link! Thanks for pointing it out. Anyway, seems the bottom line is similar - more frequent changes can be obtained simply by changing the WeatherRndInterval number.