Weather Mod

[Jazzmaster 716]

Just a question for you modders: is creating weater (snow, rain, cummulonimbus clouds, thunder, lightning,etc.) possible.  It would be a great addition to the game but if not I'll live and thanks for the great mods so far!

[flame1396 9]

I think It could possible done with effects extracted from the game (such as the rain, hidden btw, and the lightning) and then added to ploppable lots in the form of effect props. I dont think it could be really feasible any other way. Other than a random ticker message to show weather like the status bar in sc2k

[IDS2 3,429]

Ack...the daunting question...simple answer: no, there isn't. Unless you want to hack .fsh files, no, and they're still unhackable. Search for "snow mod" by jasoncw and you'll get what I mean.

[Jazzmaster 716]

You're right about the ploppable one; I found one like that on Gizmo28's sight on Lunar Pages just a few days ago. You plop a lot, and dark nimbus clouds and rain start to appear after about a year and a half (game time).

[SimFox 804]

to hack "unhackable" fsh files?? Aren't FSH files are just graphic files with alpha?

[Joe 90 358]

Pretty much. I've edited .fsh files for other games where they were used for uniforms.

[IDS2 3,429]

The thing is, there's few people on this site who are good with those things, and most are MIA.

[gizmo28 2]

Originally posted by: IDS2 The thing is, there's few people on this site who are good with those things, and most are MIA.quote>

 

A weather Mod is possible, because I have done it, it's not easy to to do either, I actually started a second version which I gave up on, because it was just to time consuming to keep testing, as I have to create the thing in hex code.

IDS2  is almost correct about the few people comment. The truth is I think I'm the only one proficient enough to create a new effect ( by this I mean  I can make anything as I a have understanding of the whole effects dir and all its sections, I actually became more proficient than RedLotus who decoded it), which is what is needed to make it work right, just adding effect to a lot is not enough, you HAVE to create a proper effect then attach it to a lot.

This can be seen with that lot from my site, which was just a test run, which sometime doesn't work  depending where the lot is placed on the map, that issue  comes from the fact  I'm making a screenwide effect starting from a lot which can be placed anywhere, and the effect is being drawn "out of bounds", this explains why people dont see rain/clouds, but hear the sound.

The second version I had started clouds, rain, hail/sleet, snow, and lightning, it was almost done when I gave up, but I got tired of testing my code and entering game, then editing , then repeating the above actions over and over. 

My game cd actully became unusable from being used so much since I loaded the game like 60-70x a day when testing my code.

That about sums up my comment on this.

Oh and yes I do still lurk around here.

[Crissa 1]

I love your mod, gizmo, it's a real hidden treat.

...Do we need to buy you new disks?

Honestly, my spouse is a developer on another game and she's opening and closing the client hundreds of times a day. It really must be excruciating on such a slow game as SC4. I've loaded it I don't know how many times trying to get it to load graphics files right...

-Crissa

(...Until I realized that the game wasn't actually reading the color palette and was assuming the file had the full 256 in a specific order. Gah, what a cheater way to import graphics files and not read the RGB codes.)

[jugioh1012 2]

I downloaded Gizmo's Weather effect file and I can't find the lot in the game.

[Jazzmaster 716]

It's in the water utilities menu as a "rain collection plant".

@gizmo28: It's too bad you gave up, I'm sure we all would have loved it!

[jugioh1012 2]

I found that and I waited a long time for rain but I didn't see it.

[gizmo28 2]

As i wrote a few posts up, thats due to a bug or something. Try moving the lot somewhere else on the map, not having it touch road tiles also helps sometimes. Do you hear the sound get played at all? If not I believe the lot needs power for the effect to work, been a long time since I looked at the mod. I'm installing all my stuff back on my old pc and may look into modding some more, there was alot of stuff I figured out before I lost everything.

[Sirithil 1]

I always heard the sound - pretty frequently, even - but never saw any actual rain. It did touch road tiles, I assumed it had to.

Is there any way to change the sound effect to something, well, more soothing?

[patriots_1228 51]

could someone link me to gizmo's mod?

[Jazzmaster 716]

Originally posted by: patriots_1228 could someone link me to gizmo's mod?quote>

 

It's avaliable at gizmo28's website on lunarpages (you have to be registered there to download).

Here's a taste of it at work (I used this mod in my CJ, found in my signature).

[Sim_Air 2]

Doesn't the game become slower by using weather modds? It looks hard to keep fast; as i can imagine looking at that pic

[Jazzmaster 716]

No, actually my game runs the same with the weather mod. The reason there's so many clouds is I'm using more than one rainwater collection plant. I've actually noticed you must wait a little over a year for the clouds to show up.

[gizmo28 2]

I was working on a new version that had rain, snow, lightning, thunderstorms and better sound, was almost done with it but my cd got destroyed. I just picked a new copy a few days ago and plan on going back to working on it, but it will be a while as I'm a lil rusty from not modding in a while. I also had some othe mods I was working like darker nights and such.

[Sim shady 12]

Glad to hear you will be giving the weather mod another try We all support you! lol sounds a little corny, but its true!

[ilikehotdogsalot 311]

Wow, Nice to see you around here again Gizmo! Welcome back Best of luck with the weather mod, I'll be looking forward to it!

[BurroDiablo 222]

Oh wow, indeed, Welcome Back!

I can only imagine that this will be highly antisipated, plus, I know what you mean about the Disks, my RH disk is at breaking point so i'm using an MDS file instead.

Wish you luck with this mod... i'm sure all the modding stuff will come back to you

[Jazzmaster 716]

That's simply amazing news!  As sim shady said, we all support you.  I'm anticiapating this as much (if not more than) the Network Widening Modd.

[ssc4k 1]

oh you might want to change the topic name you know

[DioAngel 1]

incredible work!! The lunar looks sooo real!!

[fern244 1]

nice work

[jacqulina 162]

wonderfull work