[wip/recruitment] The Changing Seasons of Skyrim

[Soolie]

I Just made this in blender but the snow maybe a little high poly, What do you guys think?

(Just imagine this with a tree trunk XD) Also I was going to make the leaves sag under the weight of the snow, but I forgot :\ )

http://i.imgur.com/YbouAWx.png

Edited November 19, 2013 by Soolie

[snapmoderator]

Looks goods Soolie. Just need to give them a bit of alpha transparency around the edges and we have a winner. Probably the top one third will not have the overlays, that can be done in the branch texture itself.

 

Whats the poly count for a single one?

 

[EDIT]

Maybe we can have a generic overlay that can be used for things like pine cones and flowers as well as snow? They'd be flat looking, but might work. It would be better to have all trees have certain overlays, so that we don't have to switch models through the game. We are controlling what the texture is instead.

Edited November 19, 2013 by snapmoderator

[snapmoderator]

With those vertex colours controlling grass wave amplitude, does anybody know if trees also use this technique? I've always wondered why some meshes move and some didn't for some modder resources.

[vfxninjaeditor]

This thread stopped flowing...we should continue talking. :)

[DemongelRex]

Honestly, I thought you all moved to PMing each other or something.

It is imperative to keep communication amongst one another, otherwise it will hinder progress on this mod.

[snapmoderator]

Absolutely need to keep communication going, for general progression. We still need to do a few proof of concepts, but at the moment RL is preventing me from spending much time to look at the scripting side. Hopefully tinymight will get some time soon to look at possibilities with SKSE, etc.

 

But I'm 100% sure that we can do everything that we have already talked about.

 

Not important really, but does anybody know if you can change the times of sunsets, sunrise, etc? Would be good to be able to change them with the seasons.

 

[EDIT]

I found this mod on steam for longer days and another for longer nights

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=14458

Edited November 25, 2013 by snapmoderator

[AlbinoPolarBear]

Changing sunries/sunset times is possible, yes. Easy too. It's all handled by Climates, where you can set the time for sunrise begin/end and sunset begin/end. But that would mean you would have to figure out a way to change Climate every month or so.

[snapmoderator]

Checked out the Climates group. Anybody a Nirn astronomers? Lol, but in theory we can have the Moons phasing with the seasons and we can even change the Sun to be brighter/bigger for the summer months.

 

Another one I thought of potentially changing is the water types. Have them still and more transparent for summer and then more choppy for winter.

One thing that we will want to do is to place frozen blocks of ice on some of the water surfaces for winter. Same with icicle's on rock surfaces.

 

I'll just put a reminder that this is a project that require many tasks and hence as much help as possible.

 

The above is a classic example of how a pretty small task can be done by individuals. You can start out by making a climate mod. Developers should aim for what they feel will give a good experience. You might decide that changing climates once per month is good. So then you can set up 12 different climates to reflect the seasons. We don't have the scripts to change these at the moment, but as you can see this doesn't bottle-neck work that can be done. You may then find that 12 is not enough and go bi-monthly, or weekly, or even daily. As long as they have been set up that's the key.

[snapmoderator]

More slightly wacky ideas. Joshezzell and I were talking about leaves in full autumn being kicked up into the air similar to how the mod "Footprints" works, http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/22745/?

 

But I was also thinking that we should change the snow blowing effects, so that they are more seasonal. At the moment they are models that continuous have a windy snow blown effect. We could change the textures or look at the animations themselves. Obviously just changing the textures will be easiest but I have noticed with the NetImmersion functions in SKSE that we might be able to slow down or speed up the animations. It means that we can slow them down once out of winter and also even change them to a dirt blowing effect instead.

 

Also there is the possibility of adding a new type of model to a few extra areas, which are leaves blowing. Should make them subtle, but will really help bringing autumn to life. Again these can be transitioned to dirt and snow for the other months.

[snapmoderator]

On naming conventions and general approach to programming when transitions happen I think we should base it off the exact calendar for Skyrim. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Calendar

 

Our folder structure can be done in a format "meshes/css/category/month/day/" and "textures/css/category/month/day/"

 

So if you have something that you would like to transition on the Mid Year Celebration which is on the Mid Year 16th, then you'd put changes into:

 

"meshes/css/landscape/6/16/*.*" and "textures/css/landscape/6/16/*.*"

 

This goes against what I said in an early post as I thought it was important to try and make it flexible to have seasons transition faster as an option for users. As some people will want to see changes quickly for curiosity and testing. But for sanity and general easy its better that we have events hard coded. A person will have to change their calender (set date) if they want to view a particular time of the year.