Hide weather effects while inside structures

[Substr 74]

The biggest immersion killer for me in Wurm has been riding my wagon home after a long trip in the rain, getting indoors to my fireplace, only to find that the rain is magical, and can pass through solid roofing.

 

Various people have suggested in the past that weather not fall inside structures, and it was said that it was a challenge to make the change due to various things about the way the code was written.

 

So, I thought of an alternative. Could it be possible so that the client simply stops rendering all weather particle effects (rain, snow) when inside a structure? I don't know about you, but I'd much rather have some falling rain missing while looking out a window, than have rain actually in my house. Then, when you walk outside of a structure, it simple starts to draw them again. Thoughts?

[Yaga 2,887]

+1

 

[Yiraia 427]

+1 Would it be too hard to animate windows to make it look like its raining outside while this happens?

[Gwyn 328]

+1

[Reylaark 1,100]

+1

though was thinking, if possible maybe make the check whether you have a roof or floor overhead?  That way, if you step out on the balcony or roof deck,

you still get hit by the weather.

You're still inside the structure, but have no cover.  Kind of like whether or not to render sky.

 

Good point on the windows, and I guess it might be a little weird to have the weather disappear when standing in an arched wall... but I'd agree that's better than rain inside the house (that buckets can't catch )

[Cecci 1,609]

+1 connected to roofs.

[Ayes 3,715]

I remember this suggestion was mentioned some time ago in reference to snow being on paved floors inside buildings. A Dev responded saying they had no way of knowing if a paved tile was inside a building or not. Translation: Too much additional work/coding to figure it out and eliminate this snow from tiles inside a building. As you can note nothing has been done about it, which doesn't encourage any optimism that it will be.

 

=Ayes=

[Substr 74]

2 hours ago, Ayes said:

I remember this suggestion was mentioned some time ago in reference to snow being on paved floors inside buildings. A Dev responded saying they had no way of knowing if a paved tile was inside a building or not. Translation: Too much additional work/coding to figure it out and eliminate this snow from tiles inside a building. As you can note nothing has been done about it, which doesn't encourage any optimism that it will be.

 

=Ayes=

 

That's a bit of a different suggestion though. This is only talking about the falling particle effects for weather, which only relies on knowing if the player is inside a structure or not (and optionally if there are roof tiles on the tile layers above them for a more advanced implementation as others mentioned). It wouldn't cover all aspects of "indoor weather" like the paved tiles true, and it's not a totally perfect solution, but I think the experience would be a lot better than now with the indoor rainfall.

[Steveleeb 1,067]

+1

[Ignacius 31]

The game can already tell when you're inside. If you try to pick up something that's outside, while you're inside a structure, it says the wall/door/whatever is in the way, or something like that but ultimately you have to exit the structure to pick it up.

This means the game must already has a system that can tell whether you're inside a structure.

Which means this would be super easy to implement.

 

+1

[Wort 67]

22 hours ago, Ignacius said:

The game can already tell when you're inside. If you try to pick up something that's outside, while you're inside a structure, it says the wall/door/whatever is in the way, or something like that but ultimately you have to exit the structure to pick it up.

This means the game must already has a system that can tell whether you're inside a structure.

Which means this would be super easy to implement.

 

+1

 

That system just detects a wall on the tile border between you and the object you are trying to interact with.

[Rathgar 959]

always +1 everytime this suggestion resurfaces.

[Pingpong 1,070]

+1 again

[Ascorbic 265]

Been trying to think how they can do this and keep it simple.  The major problem i keep coming up with is when the roof is destroyed or decays.  So for this to work, they would need triggers at the creation of the roof, and destruction of the roof, decay or bashing.  It needs to set a flag that the tile contains a roof and every time a player changes tiles it has to check that flag.  So now imagine every player moving and having to check for a roof.   UNLESS: if the client preloads the tiles in the area, and the flag is set per tile and then only the client has to check if there is a roof.  Then the client only gets the mapping for the tiles in the chunk its in.  So while its something doable, its a lot of work for something minor.  So what other benefits can we can from building a system that can handle this.

Edited September 26, 2017 by Ascorbic

[Rathgar 959]

Well, regarding HOW to do it, they could look for examples in every other game that already does it, namely, most games that have weather effects and structures.

[Ascorbic 265]

2 hours ago, Rathgar said:

Well, regarding HOW to do it, they could look for examples in every other game that already does it, namely, most games that have weather effects and structures.

 

Other games run on different engines that might have something built in to handle this type of system.  But wurm is old, and is really built from the ground up and doesn't really have something in it.  Its heavily based on a tile system and whats on that tile. 

 

And looking at examples of other games, is great if they will provide you with the code on how to do it.  

[Alyeska 2,621]

Examine a ground tile on the floor inside of a structure; the game does know whether or not you are inside a building.

 

[16:08:10] You see a part of the lands of Wurm.

[16:08:10] This is within the village of Niflheimr.

[16:08:10] This is within the structure of Xallo's mansion.

 

With that being in place, it shouldn't be impossible to set a flag for tiles that check for being inside to ignore weather effects, or for the client to not render the effects when you are on a tile inside a building. I wouldn't even care about the roof as that is more trickier; for a building to be considered complete all you need is the bottom walls.

 

Edited September 26, 2017 by Alyeska