Modify weather in MTW?

[Axalon]

Hi all,

I am just wondering here. Is it at all possible to modify the weather in MTW? If so, how? I downloaded the old weather editor from 2004-ish but it does not seem to work at all. Or am I doing something horridly wrong here or is this just hardcoded? Is it only possible to alter the weather in VI (if possible at all)? So far, no matter what changes I made in the weather-file (it is located in the battle folder), regardless how extreme my values were it was not detected in the game. I even went so far to write-protect the file just to make sure that my values would stay put in there but nothing happened. And if I did not write-protect the file the values would just go back to default values again. Oh and for the record I have only tried this on MTW V.1.1.

Anybody out there that knows these things better than I do in this little issue?

- Cheers

[gollum]

I remember that certain mods have altered the weather in the custom battles. In those mods weather would be very changeable throughout a single battle.

It could be possible that the custom battles are affected and not the campaign weather, since the year turns are sometimes winter and sometimes summer, you can tell by the music it plays during that turn in the strategy portion and the weather is then affected by that.

Never tried before to meddle with that one though. If i were you id try to meddle with the weather parameters given in VI 2.01, it has much more chances succeding.

Good luck.

[Axalon]

Thanks for trying man, you just got work for St.Lassie (woff & praise her holyness)!

Anyway, you are the third person on the planet that have provided any kind of response on this this little issue. Thus I would say that we can all safely assume that weather in MTW is hardcoded as far as campaigns go. VI or MTW - it does not matter. Because, there is nothing that I am aware of that suggests anything otherwise so far. A shame really because I am fairly cretain that you could creat some really cool fog or possibly storms like in STW and things like that. It is probably very possible within the framework of the game - its just hardcoded not to be possible that's all...

[gollum]

The mod i am talking about is Samurai Warlords - weather was changing a lot in that mods custom battles IIRC. Perhaps its worth posting a thread about it in their subforum.

[gollum]

Ok, i think its time to reopen this topic, because it appears that the weather in MTW is NOT hardcoded at all, in fact. While making the Caravel mod, i came across a txt file called (unspurprisingly) WEATHER in the BATTLE folder in the main game folder, with the following contents:

type wind precip fog temp sand
terr season min max min max min max min max
lush winter 0.000000 1.000000 -2.000000 1.500000 0.100000 0.500000 -10.000000 5.000000 0.000500 0
lush summer 0.000000 0.900000 -1.750000 0.750000 -1.000000 0.200000 5.000000 25.000000 0.000500 0
arid winter 0.000000 1.000000 -3.000000 1.000000 -1.000000 0.300000 -2.000000 18.000000 0.000500 0
arid summer 0.000000 0.750000 -8.000000 0.500000 -1.000000 0.200000 10.000000 30.000000 0.000500 0
rock winter 0.000000 1.000000 -1.500000 1.250000 -1.000000 0.400000 -10.000000 10.000000 0.000500 1
rock summer 0.250000 1.000000 -2.500000 1.000000 -1.000000 0.200000 20.000000 40.000000 0.000500 1
sand winter 0.000000 1.000000 -1.500000 1.250000 -1.000000 0.300000 -10.000000 10.000000 0.000500 1
sand summer 0.250000 1.000000 -2.500000 1.000000 -1.000000 0.200000 20.000000 40.000000 0.000500 1
temp winter 0.000000 1.000000 -1.000000 2.000000 0.100000 0.500000 -20.000000 1.000000 0.000500 0
temp summer 0.000000 1.000000 -2.000000 1.000000 -1.000000 0.300000 5.000000 25.000000 0.000500 0
lush winter 0.000000 1.000000 -2.000000 1.500000 0.100000 0.500000 -10.000000 5.000000 0.000500 0
lush summer 0.000000 0.900000 -1.750000 0.750000 -1.000000 0.200000 5.000000 25.000000 0.000500 0

The fact that it has only winter and summer cycles, as the campaign game does, indicates that, in all probability, the weather is in fact quite moddifiable. The parameters that can be modified (judging from the file) are: wind (units: speed presumably ), precipitation(rain, units: mm?? %chance??), fog(units: density?? visibility in length??), temperature (units: most likely degrees C, i would say) and sand, which probably means whether sand is transported in the wind, hence the only terrain that has them is the desert one.

[Stazi]

I've found this a while ago. It doesn't give much of info but better than nothing (keep it in the same folder as weather file).

[gollum]

Nice find Stazi, thank you for that. I'll download and give it a go, as time allows. Thanks.

[Axalon]

Thanks for keeping me advised on this gollum…

Umm, so? Did you successfully make any changes on that file that
would stay put while using VI? For context, see post 1…

- Cheers

[Stazi]

There is something about it here but I'm sure gollum can give you much more details.

[Axalon]

Hi and thanks for trying to help out…

Well… In that post he recites what is in the file and how it is likely to function but little else as I understand it, and at least I knew that stuff before I made the first post here. So, the question stands; has the values stayed put in the file or what in VI? That is; once the game starts. If succesful, the new values will be intact, as entered before the game started – even after we have also quit the game and we had at least one battle in game.

If so, then it will work in VI at least, as I understand it, because in V.1.1 – it is a confirmed no-go. It all comes down to that in the end – the rest is, like it or not, academical if it can not actually be applied with effect in the game. As I said before, I have already tried this – unsuccesfully - in V.1.1. Again, see post: 1.

No offence, but there it is.

- Cheers

[Stazi]

Unfortunately, you are right. I've tried some extreme values in different configurations but it doesn't seem to work. "Read Only" prevents file overwritten but engine still doesn't use new settings. I'd like to hear gollum's opinion too. I hope he knows the trick.

[gollum]

Hello,
i already have made a modified version of the file for the Caravel mod since mid/late January manually without using the editor the existence of which i had completely missed until Stazi told me about it a few weeks back.

The file is from v2.1 MTW/VI and i played several campaign battles with it alrady by now. It is in txt format and at no point did i got a "read only" indication as far as i remember, at least for the v2.1 MTW/VI that i play on, and works as intended as far as i can tell - i got more rain, less visibility and more snow where i was hoping to have more with the tweaks, and the effect was permanent - the modded weather effects did not change in the course of a long campaign with closing and reopening the pc several times.

I mention all this and the changes made in the Caravel mod discussion thread and the modified file is publicly available for download to try for anyone interested.

I did not do that for v1.1 at all. The caravel mod is for v2.1 MTW/VI.

[Stazi]

Did you noticed that game changes the file to the default values each time you start a game and each time you start a new battle (at least it does it for me)? I'm talking about MTW/VI 2.01 version. As I said before I can prevent this by changing file attributes to "read only" but it really doesn't matter. I've tried several quick battles, custom battles and campaign battles and weather looks pretty random ("fine through the day" mostly).
Gollum, which version of the MTW do you have? Original, gold, eras?

[gollum]

Used Gold for Caravel mod, and yes talking about v2.01.

Did you tried in custom or in campaign? if you tried in custom was it in the same season? You can change the season in custom and if so, the changes i made were for winter - the default one for custom is Spring and you won't see it there.

[Stazi]

Hmm... I don't want argue with you but please take a closer look. I've just checked the WEATHER file you provided with your mod. It's exactly the same as the original file. I think It proves my observations. We're unable to make any changes because game overwrites the settings to default values right before any battle. It's really strange - the game doesn't read the file at all. You can even delete it. The game will create new before the first battle.

[Durango]

Hmm... I don't want argue with you but please take a closer look. I've just checked the WEATHER file you provided with your mod. It's exactly the same as the original file.

What Stazi is saying is true. I checked it out a week ago and noticed that it was the same, although I dismissed it as
just some peculiar error. Now I know it was not, so it's confirmed.

[gollum]

Thank you all for this information - i have not the game currently installed, but i will check and report back.

[Axalon]

It certainly looks like we are back to square one on this…

[gollum]

Indeed it does for the time being, but i am pursuing this a little further, might take a while though. Will report back in due time.

[R'as al Ghul]

The mod i am talking about is Samurai Warlords - weather was changing a lot in that mods custom battles IIRC. Perhaps its worth posting a thread about it in their subforum.

Hello guys,

it's been a while since I've been here.
Tosa told me some time ago (omg already 4 weeks) that there's an open question regarding the modding of weather in MTW.
Gollum's observation is correct. Weather changes in our mod if the new (imported from Shogun) terrain tiles are used.
When we implemented the new tile set, we had to decide which tile set we want to replace (arid, temperate, lush or desert).
Rain is/can be an important tactical factor. It affects the teppo units. Some people argued that there should always be a chance of rain, so that the teppos are not overpowered. For that reason we chose to replace the lush tile set.
All maps that are done using that tile set will have lush weather, meaning it will most probably rain (randomly) when you play the map long enough. The rain can come in several showers or keep on pouring a long time.

So, I'm sorry, we didn't actually mod the weather, just replaced the lush set and took advantage of the weather that's coded for that set. Afaik there's no possibility to mod the weather in another way. I tried to modify the weather.txt and the climate info in the map files. It didn't seem to do anything.



R'as

[gollum]

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply Ra's :)

So basically it seems that Axalon was right all along and the weather is in fact hardcoded. I think that the case is now indeed closed. Apologies for my mistake, all. I will correct it in time in my mod's files and give credit to people in this thread for making me aware of it.