You wanted more snow, you've got more! Enjoy :)

[Rekkie]

This is something people have been suggesting for a while, so I figured I'd make some special magic happen.

 

 

[Damien Darkside]

Stardew Valley Winter music?

Love.

[Rekkie]

Indeed Damien and the amazing part is, that song came on at the right time. I was listening to it on YT, while hacking away at the code and decided to record a video once I had something to show, the winter song in the Stardew Valley OST happened to be playing.

[Svarog]

Falling snow would be a really cool feature! It would be ice if it was added to the base game.

[Necromatic_Corgi]

Awesome stuff.

[Guest]

Replaced the rain texture?

 

Looks very nice.

[Rekkie]

@Svarog This is true. I've not finished with what I want to do with this, but if the devs want to add it in, I'd be happy to share the code. It's a modification to the engine itself, so this would need to be made official for others to enjoy it. In the video, I was just testing to see if it was networking properly. It functions much like rain, but I'll be making alterations to differentiate them.

[Rekkie]

@EnigmaGrey It looks a bit that way doesn't it. No, it's an engine modification. I borrowed from RainManager to form a SnowManager class. I'd like to extend this further and add in more changes to the weather system. The details are not yet layed out, but I'd like to make the snow fall have an impact on existing green tiles, possible have snow fall before the snow tiles kick in. The idea of having a snow blizzard would be nice, this would introduce wind effects among other things. More end-game things

 

The following classes have been altered in the engine (with 3 new classes added)

C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\AmbientSoundManager.class
C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\AmbientStreamManager.class
C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\BaseAmbientStreamManager.class
C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\DummyAmbientStreamManager.class
C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\GameTime.class
C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\LoadGridsquarePerformanceWorkaround.class
C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\SandboxOptions.class

C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\ai\states\ZombieStandState.class

C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\characters\IsoGameCharacter.class
C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\characters\BodyDamage\BodyDamage.class

C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\erosion\ErosionMain.class
C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\erosion\season\ErosionSeason.class

C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\gameStates\DebugChunkState.class
C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\gameStates\IngameState.class

C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\inventory\types\DrainableComboItem.class

C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\iso\IsoCell.class
C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\iso\IsoChunk.class
C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\iso\IsoGridSquare.class
C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\iso\IsoWorld.class

C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\iso\objects\IsoFire.class
C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\iso\objects\IsoSnowdrop.class
C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\iso\objects\IsoSnowSplash.class
C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\iso\objects\SnowManager.class
C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\iso\objects\IsoWorldInventoryObject.class

C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\iso\SpriteDetails\IsoFlagType.class

C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\Lua\LuaEventManager.class
C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\Lua\LuaManager.class

C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\network\GameClient.class
C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\network\GameServer.class
C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\network\PacketTypes.class
C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\network\ServerOptions.class

C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\radio\ZomboidRadio.class

C:\Users\KITT\Eclipse_Workspace\Zomboid\bin\zombie\scripting\objects\Item.class

 

P.S. I feel bad for poking around the engine code, but I have a lot of love for this game. Only want to make it the best it can be =)

[Lumbo]

I'm sure you don't need to feel bad for modding the game - it is explicitely desired I think. Do you think thick fog would be within your capabilities in modding the engine? The kind that doesn't let one see 5 tiles far? It probably would be harder than a simple overlay because the area around the player would have to be cut out in order to let one see something. But it would have a nice effect on gameplay I'm sure.

[Rekkie]

I only feel bad because I have respect for the developers and their product. I know they've given a lot of freedom to the community to modify their game and I love them for this. They understand the concept that a product will be enhanced by external creativity. I just don't want to cross any barriers I shouldn't.

 

Fog is something I definitely would love to see in the game; Especially surrounding cold snow, forestry and swamps. Regarding thick fog and limited vision, I'd simply make any fog within say a 5x5 square, fade away. Fog would be dynamic in the sense that it could linger around designated areas and fade. It's definitely all possible, the real question is about the impact on performance.

[Batsphinx]

30 minutes ago, Rekkie said:

I only feel bad because I have respect for the developers and their product. I know they've given a lot of freedom to the community to modify their game and I love them for this. They understand the concept that a product will be enhanced by external creativity. I just don't want to cross any barriers I shouldn't.

 

Truth be told this sort of effect is the sort of thing that I was thinking about giving our new dev Chris (@TanglewoodActual) once he's finished his current tasks - but that won't be super-soon, so please, please, if you want to blaze a trail with this sort of coolness then do so

[Lumbo]

Hm, yea, I guess if you want fog to behave dynamically (which sounds superb), a simple overlay wouldn't do. You'd need fog cloud objects or something. If you can't pull off something like that, I for my part would totally be happy with an overlay alternative.

[Rekkie]

@Batsphinx cool beans. It would be a real pleasure working on this, and I'm liking the work Chris is doing to the renderer (I'm sure there's an Unreal pun to be made in there somewhere). Spelunking into the engine was really a result of my work building the mapping tool MoreCellz and working with lot generation code.

 

@Lumbo Oh no, don't worry it will be dynamic. An overlay wouldn't give the desired effect I'd be happy with, however objects are a good middle ground, and the framework is already there to support this.

[Rocco36]

OMG, beautiful... And that discussion about the fog, like it's gonna happen.. Please make it happen

[Rekkie]

@Rocco36 It's been about a week since I posted the experiment of snow. Fog will come as a result of my work with snow. Please have some patience, I'm a one man army and without the full resources the developers have access to; Second that with getting acquainted with the engine and how it functions and upper-most important is making sure performance goals are met (even more so because of Java). I was hoping to have something to show yesterday, but ran into some hitches. Soon as I have them sorted, I'll post a new video.

[Rocco36]

I like this game, I like this company... Patience is like, my strongest virtue!

Joke aside, no worries man (or pressure?) - I just wanted to sound like a hyped child to voice my appreciation for your present and future contribution to the game. Looking forward to it, cheers!

[Rekkie]

32 minutes ago, Rocco36 said:

I like this game, I like this company... Patience is like, my strongest virtue!

Joke aside, no worries man (or pressure?) - I just wanted to sound like a hyped child to voice my appreciation for your present and future contribution to the game. Looking forward to it, cheers!

 

Ha! You're a funny person Rocco, that's why I'm going to kill you last... err sorry, movie references! No worries at all =)

 

A bit of good news (for me at least), is that I'm now able to properly debug the code I write for the engine. This also means I can hot swap (within limits) the code during runtime. This is going to be really helpful because I felt naked without this

 

 

Importantly: I'll most likely require an artist to help with the art side of the weather. The snow art I put together is just a temporary placeholder.

[makkenhoff]

Definitely looks like it belongs. 

[junglistjim]

nice one - looks v ncie.

oh the weather outside is frightfull....  let it snow let it snow let it snoooooow

[Rekkie]

This video shows off the idea of making the environment more lively.  (I've sped up some of the effects in this video to give a clearer demonstration)

 

 

 

[vanorfeadiel]

Looks nice.  Keep up the good work, looking forward the complete effects you intend to implement.

[Necromatic_Corgi]

Amazing work dude, I would love to see some animated water effects if you are planning on doing that.

[xXxFANCYCAPYBARA36xXx]

this reminds me of the alternative e3 gameplay of days gone im loving it

[Rekkie]

@M'aiq The Liar (awesome name). Water is something I was thinking about, and I'd like to do something with it, but I don't want to make any promises. No doubts I will be looking at the water code at some point and see what I can do with it. It's fair to say that if it's environmental, then I'm interested to see what can be done. I know that the topic of 'tree scratches' is something people might like, and while I'm still working on trees, it could be something to add.

 

What started off as an idea of 'oh hey let's add in snow fall' has taken me down a path of 'oh, I can also do this and that' while on the journey. I feel very privileged to be working on this, and some of my progress might be a little slow because some of the tasks I want to do involve some learning aspects, for example OpenGL, of which my skills in that area are a little dated (think back to Quake2 OpenGL days) so I'm actively learning and updating my skills on the go. I work on this every day where I can, and if I can bring a few smiles to people by bringing you something you like, then I'm happy

 

I do appreciate any and all feedback, so a big thanks from me to everyone

 

 

[Rekkie]

A new video is up. I decided to talk in this video, because I wanted to explain what was being shown. Thanks for watching, and constructive feedback is always welcome