Re: Weather

From: Tel Janin Aellinsar (icarus@Loomis.Berkshire.NET)
Date: 04/17/96


On Wed, 17 Apr 1996, Chris Dodd wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> Has anyone out there succeeded in overhauling the weather on
> the mud?  I have so far just put in temperature, seasons,moons
> and a few more affects, but now I have messed up the generator
> used to determine what the weather is.

I did, but then I deleted the whole thing because I was over-quota.  It's 
simpler to rewrite weather.c and change the structure for weather info 
(though it forces a recompile of just about everything).

> Basically, anyone have any ideas on how to integrate temp and
> barometric pressure affectively(possibly also putting in wind),
> to make weather a heck of a lot better?

Well, the problem is that CircleMUD in its current implementation doesn't 
support each sector being in a potentially different locale.  For 
example, if you've got a desert scene, you don't want it to rain.  This 
will add a lot of complexity to the code, but it should make it a lot 
more fun, especially if you can get it to the point where you can make 
the weather of varying degrees - for example, it snows all the time in 
some sectors, while it always rains in others, and it's always windy on 
the oceans.  Or whatever.

The problem I ran into after a while is that I'm no meteorologist.  I 
could cough up some barometric pressures for hurricanes, snow, that sort 
of thing, but I couldn't take it much further.

My suggestions are that first, you have two different temperature zones: 
ground-level and cloud-level.  This will give you a fairly impressive 
variation in weather.  (Well, you have to write it, of course.)  For 
example, if it's 0F up at cloud-level but 45F at ground-level, you could 
easily get snow.  If the situation is reversed, freezing rain.  I think 
that if there's enough of a difference between the two but no humidity, 
then you can have winds.  (I cheated and just made it windy when the 
pressure was right for a weather shift, but nothing else was.)

Second, make a struct that gives three things for each season: low, high, 
and changeability (mutability?).  The first two are obvious, for the 
temperatures, and the last describes how readily the temperature will 
change.  I usually described it as a percent (double) that would be 
multiplied by the normal temperature change.

Third, I'd really love to see someone do an accumulation-type thing.  
Like have snow gather on the ground if it's been going for a while.  You 
can have it adversely affect movement the deeper the snow gets and so 
on.  The rain can churn up mud, which will show up as actual items or 
something in the area, so you can eat the snow if you're thirsty or throw 
mud in someone's eye in a tough fight.  I haven't even the slightest idea 
how to get the snow-as-an-item part in there, but then, I haven't been 
thinking about it much, either.  Maybe it's easier than it seems.

This should at least give you something to start with.

> Chris
> 
> 

________________________________________________________________________
Tel Janin Aellinsar                       http://www.crocker.com/~icarus
McCoy Enterprises Corporation          Shayol Ghul Resort and Health Spa
Berserker Dragon, Knights of the Cosmos             icarus@BERKSHIRE.NET



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