Add Zone-wide Weather Effects

[Timeshadow]

Just what the title says.

 

CoH already does a good job of making most zones feel alive. You've got zone events, the day/night cycle, and a ton of NPCs whose sole purpose is to do random things and shout lines of dialogue as the player passes by. Adding some simple weather effects would just be a way of expanding on that. 

 

Nothing crazy, of course. The engine is old so resource management is a priority. Maybe just a simple change to the sky box along with some particle effects for rain or snow. Ideally, these would apply to zones individually and on random timers. You could also throw in some different NPC dialogue lines so they appear to be reacting to the change in weather conditions. 

 

I'm no design expert so I could be proposing something that's completely outside the realm of what's possible here. Just a fun little idea I wanted to share. 

[srmalloy]

We've got the example of the 'snow' in AP during part of the winter event, and the Instant Snowstorm power; it should be possible to create a similar 'rain' effect; even if it doesn't actually make things wet, it would still add a little life to the zones. Before playing with NPC dialog, though, you would want to fix things like the NPC talking on their cell phone and saying (working from memory) "Umbrella? No, there's not a cloud in the sky" with a mostly-overcast sky in the zone.

[Glacier Peak]

1 minute ago, srmalloy said:

We've got the example of the 'snow' in AP during part of the winter event, and the Instant Snowstorm power; it should be possible to create a similar 'rain' effect; even if it doesn't actually make things wet, it would still add a little life to the zones. Before playing with NPC dialog, though, you would want to fix things like the NPC talking on their cell phone and saying (working from memory) "Umbrella? No, there's not a cloud in the sky" with a mostly-overcast sky in the zone.

There is rain in a mission setting at the end of the Who Will Die story line. 

[Luminara]

With an option to turn it off.  The first time I step outside of a mission door and experience Jaegerlag, someone's getting a boot in the caboose.

[TalynDerre]

I think, unfortunately, trying to implement this would be pretty difficult - if for no other reason than you would have to determine what counts as 'inside' for the purposes of NOT having the particle effects.  Nothing ruins my immersion more than watching rain clip through the roof because the game doesn't realize it's not supposed to be there.  (Looking at you, Fallout 4!)

 

I'm picturing having to manually find every umbrella and overhang in every zone and manually carve out exceptions to where the weather happens... even if you ignore the 20 year old spaghetti code, that sounds extremely manpower-intensive.

 

Which is a shame, because I would absolutely LOVE to see weather effects in CoX.

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, TalynDerre said:

I think, unfortunately, trying to implement this would be pretty difficult - if for no other reason than you would have to determine what counts as 'inside' for the purposes of NOT having the particle effects.

For a first implementation, just use the same determination as the snowstorm effect. It's not perfect, but it's there already.

[Oubliette_Red]

4 hours ago, srmalloy said:

We've got the example of the 'snow' in AP during part of the winter event, and the Instant Snowstorm power; it should be possible to create a similar 'rain' effect; even if it doesn't actually make things wet, it would still add a little life to the zones. Before playing with NPC dialog, though, you would want to fix things like the NPC talking on their cell phone and saying (working from memory) "Umbrella? No, there's not a cloud in the sky" with a mostly-overcast sky in the zone.

 

Yeah, no.

 

Having a snowy haze overlay on my screen ≠ weather and I find it rather annoying. There would need to be an option to turn it of as @Luminara suggested.