[PoC] Dynamic Weather

[ket]

Ah ok, thanks but that won't quite work for me then, TK has had a sleep ability for some time, complete with dreaming! Oh, and I ate your doughnuts

[nandersen]

You bastard!

Kanyhalos did a great job with blowouts in OL2.2 - and it works great with both sleep and many other things.
As for sleep in PsyZones mod - are you saying that it's NOT causing problems in TK?

[ket]

Nope no problems at all.

[nandersen]

Then you shouldn't have any problems with the weather addon - at least in theory...

[ket]

Well, there is one. Whenever a blowout is triggered causes the game to lock up entirely Has to be something to do with the sudden weather change being too fast or something. Deffinately a bit of a mystery, I wasn't expecting any problems when I merged your mod.

[nandersen]

You're saying that the "compatibility" pack is not working? I played through quite a few blowouts testing it without any crash or lockup. Strange.
Maybe the problem is caused by something else interfering - I only had vanilla 1.0005, the blowout mod and the compatibility version of dyn. weather installed.

[ket]

No I meant your updated version wouldn't work with TK because of the sleep mode TK has, or maybe I'm misunderstanding your post? You said something about your mod not working alongside blowouts and sleep.

[nandersen]

Indeed you are misunderstanding my previous post - I wrote about the PsyZones mod and not the combination with the dyn. weather. A quote from the PsyZones mod readme:

Some bugs:

- with sleep mod, you will see funny things...(not complete blowouts and errors) so pls do not use sleep mods with this mod
- some npc-s can die, but im not sure if its a bug... the main npc-s will never die...

I just assumed that you knew this already

My feeling is that PsyZones is one of the earliest blowout implementations and that many mods, incl. OL2.2 initially adopted this implementation and developed it further. From my experience with Kanyhalos' mod I'd say that he pretty much fixed every problem. If you drop me an e-mail we can discuss the details and try and find the best solution.

[ket]

I've never had problems with the blowout mod and sleep ability. The only thing I have got in TK is from time to time the console will be flooded with "unknown command" entries. I'm not sure what causes this, it happens at random even when a blowout isn't happening and when sleeping isn't being used.. I guess with the way X-Ray is and everything my mod is doing just causes X-Ray to "rattle around" louder than usual, the "unknown command" stuff doesn't affect anything, its just there.

I'll give your updated dynamic weather mod a whirl later today

[nandersen]

OK, just remember: you should not merge any of the files - you must overwrite existing files with the ones in my pack. This also includes environment.ltx etc. Also, if your mod is using custom sky textures that have the same names as vanilla sky textures, you'll have to rename/delete them. My minimod relies entirely on the vanilla sky textures and all kinds of lighting parameters are tuned (at build time) to their colors and brightness.

If you drop a download link I could check your mod for files that I know could cause problems.

[ket]

Here you go, its a hefty DL @ 406MB, 710MB once unpacked.. and to think since this build the unpacked size has grown another 38MB...
TK 1.1 pre-release build 2000

[nandersen]

What the...? 700 megs? Are you using your mod folder as the Recycle Bin?

EDIT: shame on you Ket, I can see that you included all vanilla textures simply unpacked from the database - this is a total waste of space and it serves no purpose ...oh well, at least it explains the download size

OK, back on topic: I can't see any reason why it shouldn't work with the dynamic weather if you use the version that I made yesterday. If it doesn't then there must be something else causing the lockup and the fact that a set_weather() call triggers it may be unrelated to the root of the problem. Off course, there is also the possibility that I'm incredibly stupid and have missed something totally obvious in my implementation

[ket]

lol the textures are not vanilla, they have all had changes made to them, suttle they may be on some, but adds to realism Theres also enhanced bump maps, their the vanilla textures - but again edited, giving things a much more realistic look. Heres a few examples;

TA-DA! Remember those god aweful low-res textures of paper in the bar? I replaced them for the final release version of TK 1.1! What to? Well what better than of a map, with photos placed on various parts highlighting "hotspots"!



Also, you ever noticed how the wood cabinets, wardrobes, chairs etc in stalker all look very old and worn but are oddly smooth and flat like plastic? Not anymore

[nandersen]

Ket, I used a duplicate file finder and found over 1600 vanilla files (incl. sounds, textures, models etc.) in your mod Yes, I know that you have a lot of edited stuff as well. The vanilla files only accounted for ~150 MB (unpacked size) and would not shave that much off of the download size if removed (maybe 50-60 MB).

These edits look really good by the way

I wasn't aware (or forgot) that TK is for 1.0004 patch. This definitely complicates things... I haven't tested this weather thing with 1.0004 at all

[ket]

Same applies for stuff like sounds, a lot of file checkers don't look at the dates of files - just the filenames themselves. If you tell me the name of the app your using I'll check the files over, and indeed if the files are duplicates with no changes, then I'll remove em

[nandersen]

I'm using this free program: http://www.tucows.com/preview/373411
If you tick off "filename and content" in the search options it will help a lot.
This utility ignores the dates - it compares the contents of the files, so it can take a minute or two to run it but the result is dead accurate.

Ultimately it could be cool to make a utility to do such "stripping" of unedited files from the release automatically at "build" time. Maybe I should suggest to Don Reba to make such utility - he's got the technology

[nandersen]

Added two more weathers and fixed a couple of visual annoyances like white treetops showing in the distance in some places.

My web page was down since saturday - apparently my web host went broke and ran away without warning/motifying existing customers... now I moved to a different and hopefully more trustworthy and stable one. Link in signature.

[nandersen]

Many improvements to existing weather cycles, e.g. flares and sky/light brightness, night weather, indoor weather.

Additions feature new weather cycle with some sun and light/medium rain during the day and rainy night.
There are three new very simple "skyboxes" used to fix some things like night sky, indoor weather and intermediate weather phases between two different vanilla skies.

Despite the new content the download size is still modest: less than 200 kB

[Grump642]

I am using this in my SoC, as well as your nightvision mini-mods. Did you know they port to CS and work just as well? I moved them over, just to try it, and they worked just as in SoC.