Weather control

[Stiebler]

@Rubini:
Thanks for your kind thoughts, and I shall be interested to read of your results with the weather when available.

@SubType Zero:
Thanks also for your input. The variables that you mentioned have cropped up before, but no one seems to have done anything with them - until recently (see below). If you search for 'Randomwindspeed*' (don't forget the asterisk) in SubSim, you get just four hits, not counting this thread. Of these four hits, two are recent ones for SH4.

This is what Ref said in January 2007 (concerning file scene.dat):

RandomWind (Random wind parameters)
--ChangeTimeMin (The minimum time after which the random wind changes)
--ChangeTimeMax (The maximum time after which the random wind changes)
--RandomWindSpeedMax (The maximum intensity of the random wind)
--RandomWindSpeedVariationSpeed (The speed of intensity change for random wind)
--RandomWindHeadingVariationSpeed (The speed of heading change for random wind)
DropsNumber (Total number of rain drops)
FallSpeed (Rain drop fall speed)
RainIntensityChangeSpeed (The speed of change for rain intensity)
MinSize (Rain drop minimum size)
MaxSize (Rain drop maximum size)
HeadColor (The color of the start of the drop)
HeadAlpha (The alpha of the start of the drop)
TailColor (The color of the end of the drop)
TailAlpha (The alpha of the end of the drop)

The only use that seems to have been made of these parameters was in November 2007 for SH4, by LeoVampire, and he emphasised that he had tested them only briefly:

There are several node's that control the weather but the higher the time compression used the less the game read's and uses the base setting's.

Wind:

windheadingchangespeed= 0.01 0.03
windspeedchangespeed= 0.01 0.03

Random Wind and rain:

Changetimemin= 3 2 this is the key to weather changes
Changetimemax= 5 5 this is the key to weather changes
Randomwindspeedmax= 0.01 0.05
Randomwindspeedvariationspeed= 0.005 0.009
randomwindheadingspeedvariation= 0.005 0.009
rainintensitychangespeed= 0.01 0.009 I did this because the rain was changing too often.

Original value's are in white and my changes are in Green [Stiebler: second values are green, 1st values are white in original.]

As you can see I changed everything but the max main time. When I did the weather started to change every few hour's not day's so I left that alone.

If you feel like having a go changing these variables, then these two pieces of wisdom will help a lot.

It is easy for anyone to change parameters in scene.dat with TimeTraveler's Mini Tweaker or his SH3FileAnalyzer. I recommend the latter, because it is not sensitive to file size (someone else might have changed the file size). By coincidence, I posted a copy of TimeTraveler's SH3FileAnalyzer in connection with another thread, at this address:

http://files.filefront.com/SH3FileAn.../fileinfo.html

But don't forget, because of the random nature of weather changes, you've got to do a lot of repeat testing of each changed setting to smooth out random fluctuations. And don't forget to make back-ups of original files *before* you change them!

Stiebler.