Longer seasons and darkness

[Busted 289]

Hello world,

 

A long, long time ago when I first started playing Wurm on Wild the seasons were long and the nights dark and imposing.

 

As a new player who barley knew how to rub two sticks together to make a campfire, I was living in a near constant state of fear of the night time hours and the long, dreary winters. It was, without doubt, the most fun I have ever had in a game purely because of the utter bleakness and isolation of winter and inability to see more than a few feet ahead of you when darkness fell.

 

By contrast today night time is perma dusk and not one bit intimidating compared to how it used to be back in the good old days.

 

I would very much like to see a server mod to introduce real darkness into Wurm Unlimited so I can revisit the terrors of my younger days as well as extend the seasons (especially the weekend long winters) and play the game as it was originally intended.

 

Clearly, most people prefer the seasons and light level the way they are now in WO but I bet there's a sizeable survivalist player element that would embrace darker nights and longer seasons if such a thing were created for WU.

 

Please help this masochist out.

[yarnevk 257]

Only if it respects the phases of the moon, it was absolutely silly that the sky was lit up with moons and you could not see your hands.  Don't be inspired by Skryim mods that made the same mistake of 'really hardcore' that did not respect the skies and made it so you could never see inside houses even with a torch and fire and candles going by nefing light radius.  If you have ever lived in the country on a clear moonlit night you can see just as well as you can with streetlights in town, and you can see just fine in the house when the power is out with just one candle.

 

Light sources in the game should include the moons and point lights should realistically be wider spread than real life because the game does not properly model ambient light reflection that makes a candle or moonlit window able to light up the walls of a room enough that you can see.  They recently nerfed cave lighting to be darker, and that made sense as the walls are dark and rough.

 

I would use a mod like this if done properly respecting night skies and point source game limitations.   But I also need to change Wurm/Earth time ratio to be uneven because no matter how hardcore it is, Wurm is not fun if it is always dark because you only have an hour after dinner to play.  They probably would have got less complaints about darkness if the day clock was not three hours long, even shaving 15 minutes off would have least made it so you could play at the same time every day and not have to wait for sunrise every day.  Also in single player you should be able to use your bed to sleep and advance time if hardcore darkness is something you do not want to do right now at this moment.  

 

As far as seasons go that depends where you live if you want to model reality.   The game was depressingly modeled on northern europe which is 9 months of winter and 3 months of rain.  I live in an area that is 9 months of sun and 3 mo of maybe rain.  If the mod is realistic it will ask what latitiude your island is on to calc the seasons and day length rather than imposing northern europe on me.

Edited October 24, 2015 by yarnevk

[Sarcaticous 338]

The lack of moon light was one of my complaints also. Three moons, whether full or quarter, would most certainly give light. Three full moons up at the same time would provide as much light as a cloudy day.

[yarnevk 257]

It should be easy though, just assign the directional light currently assigned to the sun to the moons as well.  Maybe even color them and adjust the amount of light with their phase so you can have colored shadows going in different directions.  Can always turn down shadows if it causes a performance issue.  But maybe there is a game restriction of only one global directional light - in that case would have to find the average position and average light of the moons. 

Edited October 24, 2015 by yarnevk