Seasons & Weather in an RPG

[soggie]

Continuing my blizt on the codex workshop, here's another design decision.

Firstly, there are NO time-based quests in the game. The player can spend 1 game year on the main quest, or he can grind for 10 years in the main quest. That's just for the first game. The Combine won't retreat from Severim until the player triggers the retreat; the Saberion won't jump on the retreat and attempt a route until the player tells them to; the Pioneers won't cut down the petrified forest until the player stumbles there; etc.

So, since I can safely assume that the player will suspend his belief on that part, it'll be a great time to add in some seasonal touches.

It's set in a tropical climate, so it's hot and humid all year long with only two seasons - rainy season and dry season.

From Oct - Apr = dry season. 10% of rain everyday.

From May - Sep = wet season. 55% of rain everyday, with 40% of them occuring in the evening and 30% of them happening between 11pm and 3am.

So, here's the question: will playing in a post-apocalyptic world where it rains constantly for half a year (meaning the player will spend about 50% of his time drenched in rain, catching cold from exposure, and having to play in a depressing and dark atmosphere) make it less enjoyable? Or will it add to the PA atmosphere?

 

[JarlFrank]

Rain is good for a jungle atmosphere. Also, PA doesn't have to mean OMIGAWDZ THERES NO WATER AND FOOD AROUND. Actually, lots of rain and the resulting diseases and large amounts of breeding insects fits to a different PA approach.

 

[soggie]

Rain is good for a jungle atmosphere. Also, PA doesn't have to mean OMIGAWDZ THERES NO WATER AND FOOD AROUND. Actually, lots of rain and the resulting diseases and large amounts of breeding insects fits to a different PA approach.

Leeches, flies, festering wounds, food poisoning... etc.

Nice change from deserts?

 

[JarlFrank]

Swampy places with ground so sticky you can lose your boots in it, large rainforests with dangerous beasts (and also bandits because forests are great places to hide in)... of course.

And since there's mutations in our setting, mutated jungle beasts can be really awesome if pulled of right.

 

[soggie]

Swampy places with ground so sticky you can lose your boots in it, large rainforests with dangerous beasts (and also bandits because forests are great places to hide in)... of course.

And since there's mutations in our setting, mutated jungle beasts can be really awesome if pulled of right.

Cool. Now all i need is an idea of how to translate that into game mechanics.

 

[Zeus]

Rain is good. Very good. Whether or not it even has much of an affect on gameplay, it just adds a ton of atmosphere.

The miserable swamps of Seyda Neen, the thunderstorm at the beginning of A Link to the Past, Zozo, hell I think one of the first things that interested me in Eschalon II was the weather, and one of my first posts about Mount & Blade was asking if there was a mod that could make it rainy year round.

(There isn't.)

So yeah, I think it'd make it more enjoyable. Seyda Neen may have been miserable, but it's also one of my favorite RPG towns. It'd certainly make your post-apocalyptic setting stand out from all the Mad Maxes and Waterworlds out there. Hell, it splits the difference. :D

 

[laclongquan]

Make weather a condition of map sector? Each sector has a weather variable {sunny, rain, fog, snow}. The sectors in the south will have less snow in the north and more sunny.

Make the variable change according to time of the year: spring in the south got more sunny and less snow that the north...

Make the variable change each day.

Make variable change according to certain type of terrrain: rainforest got less sunny and more fog than normal terrain due to overhang (the upper section of tree form a ceiling block sunshine).

 

[soggie]

@Zeus

Swarmps that take double AP to move across (in combat), puddles that give a % chance of causing a "stumble" (loses AP for that movement, invites reaction fire), further morale loss when fighting in rainy weather, delicate firearms jamming more often, etc.

If only I knew how to simulate floods in the engine.

@laclongquan

I don't think it makes sense to have snow in a tropical climate. Fog would be included, mostly happening in the mornings.

Good ideas guys. Keep 'em coming!

 

[laclongquan]

Well, it's there if you do a really high mountain peak. Kilimanjaro anyone?

 

[Zed]

Since DA2 spans 10 years, I wonder if we will see seasonal change in it.


Probably not.

 

[soggie]

@laclongquan

There's a town located in a mountain whose peak is 2,187m tall.

It'll be a little cold (about 10-14 degrees CELCIUS), but being in a tropical climate there won't be any snow at all.

@Zed

Nope. Chapter 1 ends... 3 years later... Chapter 2 begins...

 

[Zed]

@Zed

Nope. Chapter 1 ends... 3 years later... Chapter 2 begins...

Probably. You don't think one chapter could be in Summer, and another one Winter?

 

[soggie]

@Zed

Nope. Chapter 1 ends... 3 years later... Chapter 2 begins...

Probably. You don't think one chapter could be in Summer, and another one Winter?

As if anybody will notice. More like, will I get to bang generic-cool-chic in chapter 1? And will I get to bang her again in chapter 2? Or, will there be gay sex?

 

[laclongquan]

@laclongquan

There's a town located in a mountain whose peak is 2,187m tall.

It'll be a little cold (about 10-14 degrees CELCIUS), but being in a tropical climate there won't be any snow at all.

Vietnam got 1 town in the mountain, Sa Pa. in winter, wh en the cold fronts from the north move in, it can have snow.

 

[soggie]

@laclongquan

There's a town located in a mountain whose peak is 2,187m tall.

It'll be a little cold (about 10-14 degrees CELCIUS), but being in a tropical climate there won't be any snow at all.

Vietnam got 1 town in the mountain, Sa Pa. in winter, wh en the cold fronts from the north move in, it can have snow.

That's in Vietnam (if I remember correctly, it's founded by communist fighters right?), which is not in the scope of the first game (its part of the 3rd game though).

 

[laclongquan]

That is to say, there can be snow in tropical countries if you pay attention to altitude, and time of the year.

 

[shihonage]

Just don't fall into the trap of intricately planning a subsystem, unless it makes the core of gameplay.

Otherwise, there will be no end in sight.

 

[soggie]

Just don't fall into the trap of intricately planning a subsystem, unless it makes the core of gameplay.

Otherwise, there will be no end in sight.

You mean adding in weather systems just for the heck of it without weighting the cost of the implementation complexity over actual gameplay benefits?

Yes, in my extremely optimistic and ambitious design document (that will see many cuts before we even get to a working game stage), weather is supposed to act as both an atmospheric device and a game mechanic as well, lowering character perception range, causing flash floods and so forth. On the flip side, dry spells will cause droughts, increasing the price of fruits and water.

 

[Jaesun]

Yes, in my extremely optimistic and ambitious design document (that will see many cuts before we even get to a working game stage), weather is supposed to act as both an atmospheric device and a game mechanic as well, lowering character perception range, causing flash floods and so forth. On the flip side, dry spells will cause droughts, increasing the price of fruits and water.

Sounds good so far.

 

[shihonage]

On the flip side, dry spells will cause droughts, increasing the price of fruits and water.

It's an interesting idea to have weather affect certain prices. However those should be prices of items that matter to player.

If you plan to have player consume food to eat, that would be accomplished, but personally I hate games that submerge you into mundanity that resembles real life too much.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Personally I think that weather should be based on game design decisions. You can change the weather at different points in a game based on main quest progress or other benchmarks.

If you know what the weather will be based on what progress the char has made you can design the situations much more intricately.

 

[soggie]

@shihonage

It's not finalized yet. I have a counter called "Provisions" where 1 unit = 1 day of food. When the player goes into the world map, he cannot travel through the entire world but instead a circle will show how far the character can travel instead.

Provisions are refilled automatically when a player enters town, at the cost of credits.

However, I couldn't really decide if such a mechanism is necessary or not.

@oldmanpaco

Weather effects are tied to NPC schedules as well. In rainy seasons, most people will prefer to stay indoors. So if you wish to sneak through a military town, instead of doing it in the dry season you can wait until the wet season and sneak through, with thunderstorms aiding your progress.

 

[laclongquan]

You can play Unreal World a few times to get a feel of how weather can affect gameplay.

 

[Unradscorpion]

Maybe you could have terribly crafted guns that malfunction in rain? Or if you have motor-vehicles they could get stuck in the mud.

 

[soggie]

@laclongquan

Noted. Downloaded and will play it when I get enough free time to figure it out.

@Unradscorpion

Guns will have a condition that will degrade over time. Bad quality guns (or some complex guns) will have a chance to jam or malfunction in the rain, increasing the appeal of going a full primitive weapons build.

Also, a massive rain in the night will lead to heavy fog in the next morning, impeding perception checks. At the same time, heavy rain will increase the odds of a character sneaking, and in certain portions of the game it is possible to time character actions to thunderstrikes if the character has enough outdoorsman skill.

Things like that are the kind of weather impact I'd like to implement eventually.

Tad bit ambitious though, now I realized.