Weather control

[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.