Weather

[Peter]

Yo. We need weather!

• Weather ID 1: Normal good weather
  
  
• Weather ID 2: Kindof dull, normal non-clouded weather
  
  
• Weather ID 3: Bright on the horizon, good weather
  
  
• Weather ID 4: Dull, on the edge of becoming misty
  
  
• Weather ID 5: Blue dull colour, probably for usage at sea. Some clouds on the horizon
  
  
• Weather ID 6: Blue doll colours, also for usage at sea.
  
  
• Weather ID 7: Dutch kind of weather, clouded but not raining
  
  
• Weather ID 8: Rain, quite bad (messes up sound)
  
  
• Weather ID 9: Quite intense fog (fucks up on ATI cards)
  
  
• Weather ID 10: Good weather, default in SA-MP
  
  
• Weather ID 11: Good weather, on the edge of becoming dull
  
  
• Weather ID 12: Clouded but bright, just before clearing up?
  
  
• Weather ID 13: Clear weather
  
  
• Weather ID 14: Clear weather
  
  
• Weather ID 15: Bit.. "down" weather
  
  
• Weather ID 16: Storming, worse than ID 8
  
  
• Weather ID 17: Very hot
  
  
• Weather ID 18: Very hot (preferred over 17, minor differences)
  
  
• Weather ID 19: Sandstorm for in the deserts
  
  

Now, in order to control this it'd be cool to have an automated climate system. Using a yet-to-be-developed aglorithm we'll decide what kind of weather needs to take place at which position. Thunderstorms over Las Venturas and good weather in San Fierro at the same time, that's kindof cool. In order to achieve this, I think it's a good idea to devide the map of San Andreas in ~36 area's, each about 1000x1000 units in size.

I've requested an additional time parameter for MTA's setWeatherBlended, combined with this aglorithm it would create really cool results. On top of that, we could have weather reports on the website, possible even forecasts (cache 5 weather-states and update once every 3, 4 minutes, that would allow us to give 20 minute forecasts). The problem is, we need an aglorithm. I'll be playing with it myself, if anyone has any idea's or suggestions on how to create a system like this, please post.

Requirements:

• Relational weather times: If zone A is totally sunny, there cannot be thunderstorms in zone B.
  
• Climate definition: Hot weathers need to occur (way) more often than rain.
  
• Preferably using a matrix (WeatherTypes [zoneX][zoneY] ?)
  

[[Griffin]]

has there been any work on this? seems like this would be fun to make.

[Badeend]

We have been thinking of a very complicated weather system using different weather type areas moving over the map. We'll have to decide if we first want to build a standard, basic weather controller to first have the gamemode running (which i think is quite important at this point) or if we want to start building this complicated weather algorithm. I'd like to ask Peter to make a decision in this, he's the one eventually building this algorithm.

[Chillosophy]

I don't know if someone knows about Perlin noise, it's an algorithm to create fluent noise, excellent for a realistic weather system.


I don't know how you can create a "shifting" pattern which continues to generate schemes based on the previous pattern, but it might be interesting to look into. This page has some basic information

(slightly offtopic; it would be awesome, if the reports ever return, to include a "weather forecast" in it people will probably like that)
Peter already said that, I should learn to read

[Badeend]

Very nice, Chillosophy. I've been researching a bit and playing around a bit with an existing Perlin class and this is the result, which I think might be pretty useful for the weather system: http://badeend.sa-mp.nl/weather/

[Badeend]

A first version of this weather system is now running on the regulars server. SA-MP doesn't really support weather blending and although the weather changes are as smooth as possible, sometimes the changes are a bit 'hard'. I think this is the best we can get in SA-MP.

[Jay]

Pretty nice system. As you already stated it would be impossible to get it perfect in SA-MP, but that sequence you are using in the regular server is nice 

[Badeend]

Little note: The weather system is now also running on the main server.