Give Feedback
What I worked on over the weekend:
- The new method of taking shelter from the rain is in, and seems to work really well. You will be able to step under any stoop, outcropping, ledge, porch, or anything else that covers your head to get in out of the rain, including large tents. This will allow you to reduce your Wetness level, and not increase it as long as you're underneath the shelter. This will not stop the visual effect of rain coming through whatever object is above you; I've looked into it, and because of how Bethesda's particle volumes work, this will be either impossible or require a very clever trick to make it look correct. This issue dates back to Morrowind. A feature for blocking rain was added to the Morrowind Code Patch, which required an executable-level edit to pull off. The same would probably be required for Skyrim. Edit: See my comment below.
- Added new options to the Survivor's Guide for Compatibility, Visual Effects, and Tutorials. You will be able to toggle new preferences in these sections.
- Add a new status screen that can be invoked using a new power. It provides the following data:
EXPOSURE STATUS
----------------------------------------
Current Exposure: ##/100.....Current Wetness: #/3
Exposure Protection: ##/250
Frost Resistance: ##%.....Exposure Resistance: ##%
Survival Rating: Mudcrab
Buttons: Rating Info, Help, Exit
----------------------------------------
Current Exposure: ##/100.....Current Wetness: #/3
Exposure Protection: ##/250
Frost Resistance: ##%.....Exposure Resistance: ##%
Survival Rating: Mudcrab
Buttons: Rating Info, Help, Exit
The Help button will display the terms used on this screen, such as what Exposure Protection is and where it comes from.
The Survival Rating is part of a new initiative to try to educate the player contextually in-game instead of relying on my front page or my readme. The Rating will have 6 levels, ranging from Mudcrab to Snow Wolf, and clicking Rating Info will display some information about what you could do to improve your rating. I played some Metal Gear Solid over the weekend and liked the rank given at the end of the game in terms of an animal, and decided to try something similar.
- Added additional tutorial messages to display contextually based on your situation or activities.
- Worked on the Wetness shader a bit more. I fell in love with Dragon's Dogma's wet effect, wherein only cloth bits got this dark and shiny look to them. I think that the same effect is impossible using Skyrim's membrane shader, but I'm experimenting with ways of making it look more subtle. I'm very close to ditching the "ripple" skin effect in favor of something else, or getting rid of the membrane shader entirely and just utilize the water droplet effect, just at a more sparse rate for lower wetness ratings. I'm also playing with the idea of the steam effect only showing when the player is actually in the process of drying off.
- Made a change so that regular rain showers will only get you Wet, but not Drenched. This occurred to me some time last week when I was walking to my car from work; a mild rain shower was going on outside. Not a drizzle, but not a downpour either. So I just stood there for a few minutes and observed (I'm sure some concerned citizens were thinking, "Why doesn't he just get in his car?"). I noticed that the wettest I ever got was just slightly "dripping" wet; it was definitely not a case of water pouring off of me in a large number of droplets. And now, looking on it, the "Drenched" effect in-game is visually appropriate for getting out of a body of water, or from being in a major rainstorm, but in a regular shower, water is pouring off of you faster than you're actually being rained on. So I think this change makes sense.
- Still working on campfires on paper. I haven't felt strongly enough about the changes I'm working on yet to commit to a change in the Creation Kit.
12 comments
At that point you (Chesko) turn around, face that citizen and politely say: FUS RO DAH!
Btw, when do you plan on releasing Last Seed - Primary Needs and Primitive Cooking? Are you working on that mod or it's just an idea which hasn't even began? I'm not in any kind of rush or anything, just wondering.
My method shoots an invisible projectile out of the top of the player's head and attempts to hit an invisible collision box also above the player's head, some distance away. If the projectile hits, I'm obviously out in the open. If enough time passes that the "detector" never registers a hit from the invisible projectile, that means the projectile is colliding with something else; something the player is underneath. This method I think is more generic and universal and doesn't require a lot of ongoing support (not to mention minimizing cell edits).
The author actually contacted me and I offered to provide assistance if he would like to switch to this method.
In terms of doing what he does: his method (which, to his credit, is really the only feasible option I've seen) is to switch to an identical weather object, just with no precipitation. It was expressed early on that many wouldn't like it if the rain sort of "stopped", even beyond the porch or whatever you're standing under, and I tend to agree. I think having the rain clip through but still be able to see it outside is the lesser of two evils. It's a tough problem to solve because rain is just this big particle volume, a big cube, that doesn't care what's around it, it's just going to play those particles no matter what. A method would be needed to "carve" or occlude out a certain amount of that volume near the center, or to play separate volumes around the center, neither of which are really supported under the current system.
Edit: I stand corrected, he actually plays some animations beyond the threshold of the shelter. I have more to learn yet. Maybe there is an elegant solution in here somewhere. Either way, if I did something like this, I would wrap the feature up into Frostfall and not require an external mod.
Cheers.