Weather System

[Tiamat]

Attention: I am now testing phase 1 of implementing in weather via progs. You may notice that we are in the hottest months of the summer and you are receiving echoes accordingly when you move around outside in the heat. This is not an accident. Typing "weather" now should give you an accurate, if sparse summation of the current weather.

Phase 1 is simply testing temperature and implementing in echoes for the time of day/temperature.

Phase 2 will be actually implementing in varying levels of storms and their effects on the game-world. Think of drizzles, copious rain, downpours, leaving behind rain puddles, snowstorms that leave behind snow mounds, etc.

I appreciate any feedback about this system and your thoughts. This was done to make the world feel more alive and also to make players think about the best times to explore. Naturally, mid-day in summer is NOT the best time to walk a long distance quickly.

I do realize that the fatigue penalty is a bit heavy, and will be nerfing it a bit.

EDIT: Fatigue has been nerfed. The next reboot will also make it so that Utterby's rooms won't trigger temperature effects.

[Throttle]

I do realize that the fatigue penalty is a bit heavy

A bit?!

[Matt]

Hah I was wondering what happened to me and why I couldn't get around town. I'm a huge fan of coded weather effects!

[Jeshin]

Tiamat is taking revenge on all of Utterby for the weaponcraft update. Let it be written.

[Eru]

Keep up the good work, eager to see these changes and more as they get tweaked!

[Rivean]

Naturally, mid-day in summer is NOT the best time to walk a long distance quickly.

Considering the number of room descs which explicitly say how little sunlight manages to reach the forest floor, I'm not sure that peak heat ought to have that much of an influence where we are - and this not even accounting for how far north we are.

Also, google tells me that the difference between direct sunlight and shade in perceived temperatures tends to be 10 - 15 degrees Fahrenheit. That's pretty significant - and that's not accounting for the fact that a forest floor ought to be cooler than just your regular ordinary shade.

[Saellyn]

Real heat does not sap that kind of stamina, not even the hottest part of the summertime, not if you're adequately hydrated and fed. I think the current weather system needs a -serious- overhaul before it's workable. Travelling outside in the daytime is absolutely impossible unless you're trudging in the current state.

Also, given that even in the morning time the weather destroys your stamina (which is utterly garbage considering how dangerous certain areas are already), I think the fatigue penalty needs to be looked at.

[Eru]

EDIT: Fatigue has been nerfed. The next reboot will also make it so that Utterby's rooms won't trigger temperature effects.

It has already been stated that it was broken and has since been tweaked for the next reboot. Try to keep the feedback positive and constructive since Tiamat's put considerable effort into this to make things more immersive for the players. This is still Alpha!

[Icarus]

QFT.

Also, high humidity beneath the canopy would be the result, not a dry heat as you might imagine.

[Jeshin]

As someone who has spent time in Puerto Rico (tropical island) and lives in Arizona (desert hellhole) I can assure you that by 7am in the summer we're already looking at high 90s in heat. By like 10am we're in the 100s. We actually move our school start date because kids can get heat stroke waiting for the bus. I had lunch with my girlfriend and friend on a patio for 90 min in the shade in AZ. Afterwards I had to drink extra water, take a shower, and have a brief nap because of the heat.

In Puerto Rico which is a tropical heat, taking showers or sitting in front of a fan is common. By noon most people will take naps to avoid being awake for the humidity which indeed does sap your will to do just about anything. Even sitting can make you sleepy.

[Raukran]

I agree that the humidity would be one of the nastier, stifling elements of the heat. Jungles have extensive canopies that let little sun reach the ground, but they're still treacherous areas to traverse. I personally welcome the change, albeit with the slight nerfing Tiamat has already done. If people are out patrolling, I think they should be trudging under normal circumstances, especially if they're ICly marching in formation. If you nerf it too much, then the system is left rather pointless. I like the tactical aspect that seasonal weather is providing. Besides, we're in the hottest IG months. It won't last forever.

[EltanimRas]

tropical island

desert hellhole

Jungles

Between the room descriptions in-game and some Middle-earth maps, I was imagining something more ... Canadian.

[Rivean]

The mean day peak temperature for summer (June 15 - 30) for Missouri oak forests is 28.

http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr/8/c008p209.pdf

Also, yes, seconding Eltanimras (I married a smart lady ) - the forests surrounding Utterby are NOT tropical rainforest or jungle.

Also, since some of you are Americans and are therefore ignorant of modern scientific language and notation, 28C is 82.4F.

[Jeshin]

As I'm not a tolkien lore buff I didn't want to speculate about what the average tempatures of Utterby / Dale would be. I would point out they are next to large bodies of water so humidity would definitely be dangerous. Also! Girlfriend is from the eastern part of Canada, New Brunswick. They have humidity warnings because of how hot it can get and this is canada people.We're talking next to Maine.

My main point is that given the right circumstances heat an indeed be crippling when you wouldn't expect it to be.

[Raukran]

I live in West Virginia, which is rather mountainous and wooded. Saturday, I went out to a job where I was working outside in the heat. I was able to work from 7am-11am, before I nearly came down with heatstroke. Bear in mind, I wasn't wearing 60-90 lbs of gear like our average character. I was in a t-shirt, jeans, and wearing some protective damp cloth around my neck and face. The high for the day was 95°F, but I didn't make it that long. After being rushed off the mountain I was working on, I went home and proceeded to throw up for roughly eight hours before becoming too exhausted to do so.

I don't have a citation or table to show you, just first hand experience. Heat is no joke, especially in a humid area, which a woodland area next to two major waterways would definitely be.

ETA: Didn't convert the temperature, because I'm an ignorant American.

[Letters]

I imagine our spot of Middle-earth as being similar to either Norwegian or Finnish forests.

From a gameplay perspective: being made to go slow is no fun. Walking around is not inherently enjoyable. There was already a requirement to keep an eye on stamina. A higher stamina drain pretty much means more resting, because you need to be able to flee from mobs which don't suffer from stamina drain themselves.

SoI's stamina system is bad at representing long-distance endurance - something like Armageddon's might be more fitting (though it has its own failings). SoI's has always, to me, represented the ability to run short distances at high speed, or perhaps carry or drag something really heavy, and little more than that - definitely not representing long-term drain from poor weather.

Edit: in fact, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarmatic_mixed_forests is pretty much what I think of.

[Rivean]

I was able to work from 7am-11am, before I nearly came down with heatstroke. Bear in mind, I wasn't wearing 60-90 lbs of gear like our average character. I was in a t-shirt, jeans, and wearing some protective damp cloth around my neck and face. The high for the day was 95°F, but I didn't make it that long. After being rushed off the mountain I was working on, I went home and proceeded to throw up for roughly eight hours before becoming too exhausted to do so.

[Edited to fix quote. Also, there is a world of a difference between 95F and 82.4F]

That sounds like an awful experience, and I'm really sorry you had to go through that. Nevertheless, outliers aside, most healthy young adults should have no problem walking for an indefinite period of time at 28C in the shade.

Add to this, you are a first world citizen living in the year 2014. Your primary mode of transportation is probably some sort of automotive vehicle. You are not used to having to carry things for long distances. Your lifestyle, if it follows the average, is far more sedentary than anything humanity might have been able to managed a few centuries ago. I could go on for a while.

In middle-earth people either walk where they need to go, or they ride - and most of them walk. Their lives likely have a great deal less leisure, a great deal less sitting around in general, and they're far more used to having to travel long distances on foot.

If you want a real world comparison - those National Geographic shots of women who live in desert tribal areas who walk miles everyday with stupid amounts of water in clay vessels on their heads are not a work of fiction.

I really cannot imagine 28C or thereabout being any sort of hindrance to the average citizen of Middle-earth.

[Jeshin]

To be fair to Rivean. According to all LOTR movies there is a lot of walking in middle-earth.

[EltanimRas]

If our world is built to a roughly constant scale, than one outdoor room represents a distance more or less equal to the circumference of Utterby, doesn't it? How far is that?

For that matter, how long is the distance between human-town and orc-town meant to be? How long should it ICly take to cover, supposing, say, a 20- or 30-minute mile?

[krelm]

I want to point out that there is a swamp in the southern portion of the gameworld map, and a mountain to the west.

With that in mind, I always imagined the forest around Utterby to be like Louisiana and Mississippi (my native lands), with a bit of Georgia and the Virginias thrown in. It'd be a hot, sticky, stinking, exhausting kind of heat, that no kind of shade can really protect you from because it's something like 90% humidity during 6 days of the week, and on the rare occasion it isn't 90% humidity it's 100%.

[Letters]

From that article I linked earlier. I was actually looking for something to give a good example of Norwegian and Finnish forests, and it happened to have a Swedish swamp as the very first picture. That's near Stockholm.

[Icarus]

Imagine the flies...

[LuckyV]

Don't implement this system until you don't update aggro mob AI that whenever they want to chase a prey they would have to make a roll vs con and then depending on the result roll vs wil easy/medium/hard

[someguy]

As a side note, heatstroke has nothing to do with how tough you are or how 'used' you are to being outside. It has everything to do with staying hydrated and not over working yourself.

[LuckyV]

As a side note, heatstroke has nothing to do with how tough you are or how 'used' you are to being outside. It has everything to do with staying hydrated and not over working yourself.

So your body has nothing to do with that? Bullshit.