Weather events?

[CallakDW]

I just thought of somthing. They allready have the weather change to a blight storm when sertain bosses approach, why couldn't they use invisible sprites that wander around the land slowly and carry weather with them, for simirealistic weather patterns?

[Shian]

I have always been interested in a game that would put in weather patterns.... just to show players that no matter how strong they are, the world is stronger.

Snowstorms would block out the map and obscure vision
Hurricanes would damage health and make it difficult to walk if caught

Still haven't found a game like that though.

[Hal`cyon Sskyler]

This was mentioned a few years back but was never implementable due to how monsters despawn when no players are around.

[CallakDW]

This was mentioned a few years back but was never implementable due to how monsters despawn when no players are around.

Sertainly acceptions can be made for sertain types of monsters?
(That spawn system really needs to be changed globaly anyway, a point that I cannot say enough times, and has been echoed by other time and time again.)

[Guaran]

This was previously suggested here: http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=12533

I do think this could be implemented. SoG for example spawns regardless of the presence of players, so I know the same could be done for a weather mob. Fafnir IS a weather mob and he spawns regardless..

My thoughts reposted:

I have a (likely) simple idea on how this could be implemented, based on observations of the varied blight weather pattern we already see follow certain mobs.

Create an invisible, non killable (docile) mob, that moves at speed 1, ocassionally comes to a stop for a few minutes, who roams the grassy areas of istaria. Associate a weather effect to the mob in a semi wide radius, which is just rainfall, maybe a little greyness in clouds andocassional thunder.

Create another mob for a sandstorm effect, roams tazoon desert. same slow speed, ocassionally comes to stop for a few minutes, then starts moving again in random directions.

Create one for heavy snowfall, roams the snow covered areas, same principals as the others. Probably no point in them moving into the blizzard areas.

Seems like would be simple to program, use the existing template that Tempest Ogres, Daknor, Blight Specters, etc. already use for the roaming blight weather pattern.


Come up with 2 or 3 rainfall patterns light average and a heavy. Same for snow and sandstorm patterns.

Might even think of something interesting to throw into the volcano-lava areas like Dralk. And maybe a heavy rain - hurricane pattern that roams the open sea (for dragons who might fly thru it).


Dev's? thoughts? possibility of this being do-able?

PS. Afterthought, perhaps make the "mob" killable only by a new spell that only shamans could cast, maybe druids. Some point blank aoe spell called "Prayer for sunshine" or something, and if they happened to be in the middle of the storm, and were within 10m of the invis mob that's creating the weather pattern, the mob dies (to respawn maybe an hour later) and the inclement weather fades.. 5 minute recycle if they should miss (the prayer wasn't answered).

It (the invisible mob) could be made friendly, that way it wouldn't target. And an unusual name (not something guessable), and no feedback if Shaman "Prayer for Sunshine" spell got it. Doing /select rain would be cheap way of getting it.


I also had an idea for another Shaman/Nature Disciple spell, something of the reverse of the "Sunshine" spell, a "Chant for Rain" to try and bring the rain. This would cause the rain npc to be either de-spawned (where ever else it already was) and respawned close by, or cause the mob to increase movement speed from 1 to 10 or 20, and move towards the player. This spell and the "Prayer for Sunshine" spell that could kill it, would share a timer (30 to 60 minutes) so that the weather isn't always going wonky thanks to an insane Shaman.

But it sounds really cool huh. Would be a totally for fun/flavor kind of thing.

[CallakDW]

I would really like to hear from a dev on this one, if they are watching.

[Kumu Honua]

I think I recall that the problem wasn't so much the despawning as there are certain creatures that are everpresent. All named creatures are spawned permanently.

The problem was that there was a global limit to the amount of creatures able to be spawned. Too many people hunting in too many different locations meant for a lack of monsters. Couple that with "Weather" mobs and you can guess what happens. Randomly shutting off weather fronts.

[CallakDW]

Randomly quitting weatherfronts is acceptable in my opinion. Such things do happen.

[Hal`cyon Sskyler]

@Guaran:

That's exactly what the intension was. It's a really neat idea, but just isn't something that would behave as you'd think. Not to mention invisible weather monsters would chew memory on the client and server and would limit the current spawning system even further.

The idea was simple, bind a weather region to a monster, give it a patrol path, and that's it. The problem as I understand it was the server always tries to conserve memory and will remove biota instances when no players are around. At the same time a monster will not spawn unless a player is within range of the spawn region. There's also the issue with monsters only loading within 90 meters of your position. If you wanted any sense of scope you'd need an army of these monsters. The overhead required for a non-essential system is just too much in my opinion. Also there is no good way to get them to move as a coherent group and not move right next to one another.

The idea is a hack and not much else. It wouldn't as much "rain" as the sky would get dark for a second as the weather region applied itself, then quickly went away as you or the monster moved out of range. Think about it, if you see Son of Gigaroth when moving through the eastern deadlands, how long does he stay within range if you don't follow him?

Sertainly acceptions can be made for sertain types of monsters?
(That spawn system really needs to be changed globaly anyway, a point that I cannot say enough times, and has been echoed by other time and time again.)

There's a big, big difference between "would be nice" and "is remotely feasible." Monsters spawning selectively is essential to conserving memory ever since the number of monsters increased dramatically after the shard merge. It's not a matter of just flicking a switch and being able to manage tens of thousands of monsters that currently have zero players hanging around them.


Bottom line: This isn't that great of an idea as it first sounds. The big reason there is so much that doesn't work quite right in Horizons is because it's hacked in like this. If the game was to have dynamic weather, there would be much better ways of doing it if the resources existed for what is essentially a "fluff" feature.

[Shian]

*nods* Thank you for your input. It is still one of those "would be nice to have" issues. However with the current problem of Horizons memory leakage and poor resource management (does not play well with others) I can see why it would not work out well...

[Guaran]

@Halcyon. I disagree. I believe it could be fully implementable. Stably.

There only needs to be one of any of the weather mobs spawned at any one time. There doesn't ALWAYS need to be weather in every zone. ONE npc, randomly chosen, that produces moderately wide pattern of weather in one zone. The Zone/sector itself could turn off/on weather based on the mob being present. That way the client isn't watching for the invis mob to be within 90m then all the sudden weather activates. That way the weather itself covers a larger area. Of course doing it like this, the mob isnt even needed unless they choose to make him killable with a spell so that the weather can be dispersed.

Whether the current Developers have the time to program it, is another story.

[tramsan]

I think what he's saying is that this requires revisioning of the mob handling systems, that simply aren't justified by a hack like this.

[Hal`cyon Sskyler]

@Halcyon. I disagree. I believe it could be fully implementable. Stably.

There only needs to be one of any of the weather mobs spawned at any one time. There doesn't ALWAYS need to be weather in every zone. ONE npc, randomly chosen, that produces moderately wide pattern of weather in one zone. The Zone/sector itself could turn off/on weather based on the mob being present. That way the client isn't watching for the invis mob to be within 90m then all the sudden weather activates. That way the weather itself covers a larger area. Of course doing it like this, the mob isnt even needed unless they choose to make him killable with a spell so that the weather can be dispersed.

Whether the current Developers have the time to program it, is another story.

It's not a matter of being possible, it's a matter of being possible as something quick and easy. It's not. There is no such thing as a sector or zone in Horizons. The whole idea centered around essentially hacking the feature in with no new programming by using invisible monsters with weather regions kind of like Lightning Ogres or the blight anchors.

What you are suggesting here is a completely new system that is no longer a simple hack that could be up and running in a day. It would be completely possible to rewrite the server and introduce a daemon to handle weather, but I'd rather see time spent on a better spawn system or anything that actually improves gameplay before simply introducing more overhead to a game that badly needs some performance improvements.