Weather control

I reloaded SH3 to review the good old days but something strange has taken place - in every career mission the weather starts out typical harbor - wind 5 knots, clear skies - and then moves to a wind of 8 knots or so with cloudy skies but no rain - and then the sea becomes like glass with wind 0 knots and clear skies FOR THE REST OF THE GAME. Is my DVD screwed up or what? Has there been a reality shift? I have reloaded it twice and still the same results.

So where exactly is the weather data and how can I change it?

[kenijaru]

i have sort of the same problem... but the other way around, lets say i couldn't man the deck gun for 35 days straight...

[Subtype Zero]

There are currently two ways to make changes to the weather, manually or with Skweetis' SH3 Weather program. You can use Skweetis' program in port, just before starting a mission; you can set your own weather settings, or allow the program to make random changes. However, this only works at the beginning of your mission and is set until you start a new patrol. Most likely, your weather will change, but you will not have any control over it.

Personally, I like to change the weather myself. To make changes manually, and in the middle of a patrol, you need to edit a few text-files (easy to do). Open your Ubisoft/SilentHunterIII/data/Campaigns/Campaign folder and change the highlighted text in each of these files: Campaign_LND.mis, Campaign_RND.mis, and Campaign_SCR.mis :

[Mission]
Title=GWXR1.02FULL
MissionType=0
MissionDataType=1
Year=1939
Month=1
Day=1
Hour=12
Minute=0
Fog=1
FogRand=0
Clouds=1
CloudsRand=1
Precip=0
PrecipRand=1
WindHeading=192
WindSpeed=7
WindRand=1
WeatherRndInterval=2
SeaType=0
Briefing=

where Fog can be set to 0-3 (none, light, medium, heavy), Clouds 0-2 (none, medium, heavy), and Precip 0-2 (none, medium, heavy). The "xxxRand=" settings control the degree of change and can be set to 0-2 (none, minor, extreme). Finally, WeatherRndInterval (maybe the most important variable) controls how rapidly the program will check to "change" the weather. This value can range from 2 to 96, but I never set it above 7 or 8 because values higher than that makes the weather change too slowly for my tastes.

Finally, note that the frequency that you save seems to effect weather changes. When you save, the game resets its timer for weather changes to zero, with the result that the more saves you make, the more likely you are to have unchanging weather.

[Subtype Zero]

Forgot to mention: to open the .mis files, click on the file, pick the "Select the program from a list" button, and then select Notepad or any other textfile program to edit the file. Be sure to uncheck the button which says "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file." (Stupid Microsloth)

I will try it. I did finally get my career weather to rain and how I did it was to build a simple mission called: rainlikehell - and in it made the wind 15 and rain total. I sailed around in that mission for about 30 minutes and then returned to my career. Understand that I had played all through 1939 and 40 with no rain at all. But in the next mission after playing the rain mission, I ran into a heck of a storm on the second day. For me it was great - if I could have been there in person I'd have been running around trying to catch the rain in my cap. I think somehow my rain mission kicked what ever it was blocking up my weather in my careers.

But I will try your fix too.

That could be my problem – I was playing my mod called Victory-Mod ( http://www.angelfire.com/crazy/redbr...mod_theory.htm ) in which I built a totally new Campaign_LND.mis, Campaign_RND.mis, and Campaign_SCR.mis. It always worked in the past – I built it back in early 2006. But I did alter many things in it last month and maybe I inadvertently screwed up the weather settings in one of those files. I’ll have to check. I used to be on here as Redbrow in 2005 but switched to Wave Skipper later. Glad to see so much stuff still being done to SH3.

[Quagmire1975]

Originally Posted by Wave Skipper

I reloaded SH3 to review the good old days but something strange has taken place - in every career mission the weather starts out typical harbor - wind 5 knots, clear skies - and then moves to a wind of 8 knots or so with cloudy skies but no rain - and then the sea becomes like glass with wind 0 knots and clear skies FOR THE REST OF THE GAME. Is my DVD screwed up or what? Has there been a reality shift? I have reloaded it twice and still the same results.

So where exactly is the weather data and how can I change it?

I have the opposite problem.

In my game (stock + patch 1.4) the weather is fine when leaving harbour then turns crap further out and stays crap for most of the mission. I've been in storms that have lasted WEEKS!

Also, the later in the war, the worse the weather gets for some reason.

In 1939-40 the weather is superb most of the time, but from '43 onwards it turns really bad

[Subtype Zero]

Originally Posted by Quagmire1975

I have the opposite problem.

In my game (stock + patch 1.4) the weather is fine when leaving harbour then turns crap further out and stays crap for most of the mission. I've been in storms that have lasted WEEKS!

He, he. Yes, that is the usual complaint about SH weather. As I understand it, the game is set up so that the weather around your port is ALWAYS relatively calm. Some kind of design decision, perhaps to avoid excessive crashing and swamping of harbor ships, I believe. The weather usually changes to crap and stays that way after you have been to sea for 2 or 3 days.

Are you up for an experiment? If so, go out on a patrol. Just after leaving port, save your game and check one of the Campaign.mis files. Look for the WeatherRndInterval value. Write down or remember the number. Reload the game and continue your patrol. When the weather changes to stormy, save and exit again and recheck one of the Campaign.mis files. Has the WeatherRndInterval number changed or is it the same? If the number has changed, what number did it change to? If it is a low number (2 or 3), your weather will probably change relatively quickly. If it is a high number (anything over 7 or 8), I bet your bad weather will last a very long time. I'm curious to know what happens, so post your results if you are able.

The reason I am curious is because I'm not sure if the game changes the weather dynamically or if all weather changes are decided by the game engine and set at the beginning of each patrol. If it is the latter, then I don't know if there is much we can do to change the weather behavior of the game, even with programs like SH3Weather or user edits like mine and others. I'm not a modder, so I don't know the answer to this question.

Are there any modders out there who are willing to look at the game files to see if they can figure out how weather changes are implemented by the game? I would really appreciate any insight I can get into this, ahem, interesting problem.

[Subtype Zero]

I just thought of another possible experiment. After you dock in base, but before you go out on a new patrol, change the WeatherRndInterval value in the three Campaign.mis files to a very high number, preferably between 72 and 96. Reload the game and note how long it takes for your weather to change from nice to crappy. If player editing makes any difference, it should take at least 3-4 days before your weather changes (and maybe even longer than that). On the other hand, if your weather changes in less than 3 days, then we are probably safe to assume that the WeatherRndInterval number is set in the executable and that user input is irrelevant.

I think I will create a new career myself and check this out. Anyone else who wishes to test my theory are more than welcome to do so! Post your results (and any results from the experiment mentioned in my previous post) to this thread. Thanks!

[Subtype Zero]

Mumble, mumble...hello? I think I must be having a conversation with myself! ....

If anyone is interested, I am still in the middle of several experiments, but I have a few early observations: 1) modifying the .mis files does have some effect. For instance, it will take your initial settings for cloud cover, precip, fog, and wind. 2) Not sure if changes to the xxxRand= do anything, still checking.

3) Changes to the WeatherRndInterval= setting seems to have little effect on the rate of change for the clouds, rain, and fog settings. Has its biggest effect on the wind direction but not the wind speed. Even with WeatherRndInterval=2, one of my patrols had almost 4 1/2 consecutive days of 15m/sec wind. However, the wind direction changed constantly! 4) Trying to conduct weather experiments in 1942 is a bad idea! Constantly diving to avoid air attacks. My next experiments will be in 1939 only!

My next step is to set WindRand=0 and see what effect that has...

[Stiebler]

This has all been discussed before:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...hlight=weather

May I draw specifically to your attention my discovery given on page 4 of the above thread?

[Rubini]

Originally Posted by Stiebler

This has all been discussed before:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...hlight=weather

May I draw specifically to your attention my discovery given on page 4 of the above thread?

Hi Stiebler,

I already read all that hread a lot of times...but we yet don´t have any good solution. Do you made any recent progress on the weather stuff?

[Stiebler]

Hi Rubini, nice to see you on this forum again. How is the medical course going?

As described in the original 'weather' thread, I completed a full campaign with settings that still can be seen in the NYGM campaign files (now commented out, but similar to those in the original 'weather' thread). Let us call these temporary settings 'test weather' (details below). It was during the campaign that it became apparent that these test weather settings were causing an aggregate increase in extreme weather (heavy fog and/or 15 m/s winds) over the stock model.

Afterwards, I restored the stock settings to remind me of what it had been like before. Fewer extreme weather conditions certainly, but also something else. I noticed with stock settings that high winds and thick fog often 'wrapped around' so that weather might jump from 15 m/s to 0 m/s, and thick fog to no fog. I had never noticed this with the test weather settings, high winds kept falling slowly to less strong winds, then rising again. The same with the fog - always from heavy fog down to medium fog and then down again to light fog or up again to heavy fog. I must emphasise: 'I had not noticed this'; I can't be sure whether a 'wrap around' occurred sometimes.

This seemed to explain why stock weather gave fewer extreme conditions than test weather, and might explain why the Romanian devs used the stock weather. It would have been just as easy for them to use the test weather, if these changes actually worked properly.

The following header is used in all three NYGM campaign files (_LND, _SCR, _RND):

[Mission]
Title=
MissionType=0
MissionDataType=1
Year=1938
Month=1
Day=1
Hour=12
Minute=0
;; There follows stock weather.
Fog=0
FogRand=0
Clouds=0
CloudsRand=0
Precip=0
PrecipRand=0
WindHeading=0
WindSpeed=5.000000
WindRand=0
WeatherRndInterval=5
;; There follows the NYGM preferred variable 'test' weather system, now abandoned.
;Fog=1
;FogRand=1
;Clouds=1
;CloudsRand=1
;Precip=1
;PrecipRand=1
;WindHeading=0
;WindSpeed=5.000000
;WindRand=1
;WeatherRndInterval=7
SeaType=0
Briefing=

To summarise, then, the 'test' weather produces faster changes of types of weather, compared with stock weather.
However, there is a tendency for the wind speed and fog to keep becoming worse, and the more the weather changes, the greater this tendency becomes. Modifications to the stock weather system seem to result in SH3 providing many storms of short duration, rather than the stock weather of few storms of long duration. In aggregate, stormy days at sea are fewer from the stock system than from the modified systems.

As a result, NYGM campaign files have reverted to the stock system.

I hope that helps.

Stiebler.

[Rubini]

Thanks for the reply Stiebler!
Hopes that all goes well with you too!
(excuse me my poor english )

Thanks to share your experience on this matter with all us. When you say that the stock settings are in the end, after more long observation, the best ones due Sh3 engine, I just recall that when we mod a lot of things, sometimes we probably could be making some things just worse than stock. Frequently, after long mod sections I just go back to stock settings to compare them. And this "anti-modder rule" sometimes is really present ...LOL

I will try these stock weather settings on my self modded GWX and will post my impressions here after that (Probably will delong some time because I just can finish one patrol each 4-5days).

Just to speak a bit more about mod passion...I should like to say that I like very much yours mods also because you have the same style than I (and a lot of others great modders here): we are always messing with something here and there trying to make SH3 yet more enjoyable. After these almost three years I know Sh3 file structure so well that I can see it even with my eyes closed. And my wife can´t see me anymore with that "submarine always in the same place mid somewhere in the ocean" without ask if I´m crazy or something like that...

See you!

[Subtype Zero]

Stiebler--
Sorry if I stepped on the other thread concerning this topic. I was just about to post in that thread, but since you are "here" and that thread looks to be dead, I will continue here.

What you said about the weather algorithm causing the wind to quickly max out seems to make sense. I have thought the same thing myself, that the program first decides if the wind either increases or decreases before deciding how much the wind increases, with the result that if the wind is already at max and the program says the wind should increase, the result is it stays at max. However, if this is true, why doesn't the wind stay at speed "0" for long periods of time as well?

Regarding the difference between "stock" and "test" settings, again I think we are in substantial agreement. Overall, the way SH3 handles weather is like a pretty blunt instrument--not a lot of room for fine tuning. OTOH, I think there is also more going on beneath the surface than we really know about the weather handling in SH3. For example, see my next post for some interesting discoveries I have made concerning the scene.dat file (with thanks to Sober for bringing this up in the "other" thread).

[Subtype Zero]

Ooooh, this is not going to work as I hoped, because I can't copy hex directly into a post. (As you might guess, I'm not a coder/hexer). Oh well, I'll try my best to make a little sense.

The file scene.dat can be found in the data folder of SH3. Viewed with a hex editor or the minitweaker, you can find some interesting variable names having to do with weather floating around there. Unfortunately, as I said, I am not a modder and do not have the foggiest idea how to hexedit, so I will have to leave it to others to figure out what the heck is going on in these files. Anyhoo, look at the following variable names I found: "WindSpeedChangeSpeed," "RandomWind," "ChangeTimeMin," "ChangeTimeMax," "RandomWindSpeedMax," "RandomWindSpeedVariationSpeed," among others. There are similar variables dealing with clouds, rain, and fog. It also appears that random wind changes interacts with rain somehow, for instance, all the "randomwind" variables are found under the section of the file dealing with rain. Maybe wind speed cannot change above or below a certain value when it is raining? I'm especially intrigued by the variable "RandomWindSpeedVariationSpeed," perhaps there lies the key for solving the "eternal sunshine (or storms :p) of the spotless SH3 patrol."

So, it appears that in addition to the limted user control one can exert over the weather in the Campaign_XXX.mis files, there seems to be some random weather variation built into the scene.dat file as well. Therefore, I am very interested to hear some modders thoughts on this file.