Thick, slow falling snow

[velouriam]

Really looking hard to find a falling snow mod that takes the sideways blizzardy snow of skyrim and turns it into

. Thick, slow and straight down. I hate the sideways blowing snow of skyrim, with the strange "white dust fog" that appears too. If anyone knows of such a mod please let me know. Seems all the current snow mods just add more snow or retexture the snowflakes.

 

If this doesn't exist, I wouldn't mind getting my feet wet in modding if someone wants to take up the challenge. Am a senior majoring as a software engineer so hopefully the learning curve won't be too bad.

[acidzebra]

Not aware of such a mod exactly but we always welcome another modder to the crowd ;)

 

The snow itself is defined in skyrim's particle shader system which is pretty straightforward:

http://i45.tinypic.com/10fe2wg.jpg

 

Then that shader definition gets called upon from certain weather types (there are a lot of weather types). The weather types then get activated for certain regions but that's not really relevant for what you want right now. Obviously, you'll want to edit the weather systems with "snow" in the name.

http://i46.tinypic.com/2dir87p.jpg

 

The blowing fog (which is annoying as F*) like you get around winterhold is actually a triggerbox with a fxcameraattach effect - you'll either have to go through each triggerbox or just destroy the particular effect by setting the effect art to NONE (this will also effect other areas but hey)

http://i46.tinypic.com/5lzymd.jpg

 

Should be pretty easy to start off with. Bonne chance!

Edited November 26, 2012 by acidzebra

[velouriam]

Wow! Thanks so much for the time and effort you put into this reply. That really helps me out. I think I may do some tinkering now!

 

One question: you said destroying the particle effect for the blowing fog by setting the art to none will affect other areas. Just curious what those affects are.

[acidzebra]

Triggerboxes are invisible objects which you place in a scene to make stuff happens when something (the player, another actor) enters them. The cameraeffect ones apply different kinds of visual effects to the screen. If you set the blowingfog effect to "none", all places which use that effect will now go without it. Can't recall any such place aside from winterhold right now, but I'm sure there must be more. They seem to use it a lot in mountains/snowy/coastal areas.

 

Personally, I won't miss it.

Edited November 26, 2012 by acidzebra

[velouriam]

Any idea on what messing with these values will cause Climates of Tamriel to do? You mentioned having to edit the individual weather systems with snow, all the many many of them, but I was under the impression climates of tamriel adds more weather systems.

[velouriam]

Also, when testing, can I use the console to call a specific weather system by ID name to activate?

[acidzebra]

Any idea on what messing with these values will cause Climates of Tamriel to do

 

No idea. All skyrim weather systems are essentially alike in that there is a definition for it, it has an imagespace (sets up colors and other things), and possibly a shader particle system. They are defined for Dawn-Dawn-Dusk-Night and arranged by regions (those are the two-letter abbeviations added, MA for Marsh, TU for Tundra, FF for fall forest and so on) Then a region is set to have a X% chance for that type of weather. How CoT goes about defining those, I've never looked into it.

 

Here's a list of weather codes

http://www.skyrimsea...com/weather.php

You can call them from the console with

fw 0010E1F2

(which is SkyrimClear_A)

 

And with

set gamehour to X

where X is a numerical value from 0-23 you can set the time - fractions allowed, 23.5 would get you 23.30.

 

Final tip, if you're testing a mod disable all other mods first and don't load your active savegames, from the start screen (skyrim/beth logo and menu) open the console and type

coc riverwood to go straight to the gameworld so you can mess around.

Edited November 26, 2012 by acidzebra

[velouriam]

Thanks again. And thanks for the testing tip. I didn't know that I should disable all my other mods, but it makes sense. Unfortunately disabling 20 mods can be a pain, especially when I have to reactivate them when i'm done and in the right order. Oh well, minor detail. Thanks for the heads up. Edited November 26, 2012 by velouriam

[acidzebra]

Wrye bash can help you with that but it has a bit of a learning curve. But it does allow for multiple profiles with different active mods.

 

Disabling your other mods isn't strictly necessary, but if your mod is going to mess with the weather system and others do too, it'll be hard to tell what is actually happening. You could just disable CoT for starters.

[LargeStyle]

@ acidzebra

They are defined for Dawn-Dawn-Dusk-Night and arranged by regions (those are the two-letter abbeviations added, MA for Marsh, TU for Tundra, FF for fall forest and so on)

If you don't mind me butting in this thread for a brief moment - I seemingly wrongly assumed these 2-lettered codes by the weather types were seasonal codes, not regional ones. Don''t suppose you know of a full list of definitions for all these regions (CO, FF, MA, RE, SN, TU, VT) please? Also, where in Creation Kit can I find the section which tells each region to call for a specific weather type / imagespace? Lastly, do you happen to know what the "_A" stands for under Sunny and Cloudy categories? I assumed this was an "alternative" type, but again it's just another guess.