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Current Weather System Discussion


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2 hours ago, Nervous said:

I pinged the continuity team.

 

However, development side speaking, we took Los Angeles' past years values and use them for our temperatures. It allows us to have a proper forecast and change values if necessary.

 

Real time APIs do not allow us such freedom, and we can't really follow IRL weather values for rain / cloud / sun as it's always somewhat cloudy most of the year in LA. We used to do it in 2017 and it was really bad.

 

I like our current system, if rain needs to be decreased it can definitely be decreased manually a bit, but the discussion here seems to be more about continuity. 

I want to echo what Alyssa said here briefly. As someone who lived in LA, it was really, really, really rare to see the temperature ever drop into the 40F range. That's something I'd occasionally see on my car's temperature reader when I'd get in at like 4 AM on a winter morning, and which would make me go "daaaamn."  You said you snagged this data from IRL weather, so it's possible these readings might actually be coming from closer to Big Bear mountain.

 

Checking the IRL forecast (gosh it's been so long since I looked at LA weather) it seems that the data agrees. Temperature highs of 69-78 during the day even during December--that LA sun is warm--and then it dips as low as 45 in the very very coldest part of night time. Precipitation chances are 0-1% for every day. How warm Los Angeles (and so much of California) is is a major part of why people live there. It's so warm in LA year-round that people spend most of the year in a t-shirt, and then only switch to hoodies in like October through January--for night time, mainly. Of course, one thing we don't portray on this server is that people in places like LA are so spoiled by good weather that the second it drops below 60 you see everyone starting to dress up like it's freezing out, which always makes visitors from other countries or states laugh.

 

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On the subject of rain, I really want to say this: although rain is super, super rare in real life Los Angeles (drought is a really, really big deal in California, it's why the state has horrifying wildfires every single summer, and the real life farmers of 'Grapeseed' and other such towns post billboards on the highways begging people to vote and allow them to use more water for farming) it's really fun when it rains in game. Sure, not every day, and not a sudden 15-minute downpour. The problem is that the way it rains in game is that it'll be raining for like 30 minutes multiple times a day with no real rhyme or reason. It might be more fun to work on a weather system which includes forecasts (so you know that a rainy day is coming up) and for weather to be more "baked in" for a day. So players will know "tomorrow will be pretty rainy" and then it'll drizzle in the early morning for an hour, very light rain. And then it'll be cloudy for a few hours. And then it'll rain again lightly, then it's pouring for 2 hours, then it'll be cloudy. Then it storms again and the night finishes off cloudy. Having days like this once or twice a week will create RP opportunities, and will also avoid situations where RP events get screwed over by sudden random rainfall (such as when it rained during the ACOSA races).

 

If we as players had a way to know rain was coming, and rain was a little more persistent when it came, it'd create more RP opportunities. It shouldn't rain every day, but rain should be something we can RP off of. When it just suddenly goes into a rain cycle without any warning, and then it's over again within 30 minutes, all it succeeds in doing is kinda irritating everyone ICly and OOCly. Without fail, whenever it starts raining, there's always this funny moment in roleplay where literally every single character says something like "god dammit." I've seen the sudden rain ruin a lot of RP, and while it's a lot of fun to RP that your plans might be ruined sometimes and it can create some great emergent RP with people, it'd be more fun in conjunction with a basic forecast system and if things had a little more persistence.

 

tl;dr: Rain less often, but when it rains can it be more something which happens off and on for the whole day? And can we have some way to see weather forecast for the next few days? 

 

I'll make a more complete weather forecast suggestion if people are interested in the idea, including ways we can have future integrations for media-style factions to weave it into their content.

Edited by Ink
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5 minutes ago, Ink said:

On the subject of rain, I really want to say this: although rare is super, super rare in real life Los Angeles (drought is a really, really big deal in California, it's why the state has horrifying wildfires every single summer, and the real life farmers of 'Grapeseed' and other such towns post billboards on the highways begging people to vote and allow them to use more water for farming) it's really fun when it rains in game. The problem is that the way it rains in game is that it'll be raining for like 30 minutes 5 different times a day. It might be more fun to work on a weather system which includes forecasts (so you know that a rainy day is coming up) and for weather to be more "baked in" for a day. So players will know "tomorrow will be pretty rainy" and then it'll drizzle in the early morning for an hour, very light rain. And then it'll be cloudy for a few hours. And then it'll rain again lightly, then it's pouring for 2 hours, then it'll be cloudy. Then it storms again and the night finishes off cloudy.

 

If we as players had a way to know rain was coming, and rain was a little more persistent when it came, it'd create more RP opportunities. It shouldn't rain every day, but rain should be something we can RP off of. When it just suddenly goes into a rain cycle without any warning, and then it's over again within 30 minutes, all it succeeds in doing is kinda irritating everyone ICly and OOCly. Without fail, whenever it starts raining, there's always this funny moment in roleplay where literally every single character says something like "god dammit." I've seen the sudden rain ruin a lot of RP, and while it's a lot of fun to RP that your plans might be ruined sometimes and it can create some great emergent RP with people, it'd be more fun in conjunction with a basic forecast system and if things had a little more persistence.

I feel like this is the best solution, don't decrease the amount of rain, but make it more consistent, no more 30 minutes of storm and then sunny.

It will be a lot better to know that this week it's gonna rain for like two days, have clouds before and after etc, people will be able to RP it properly as well, preparing themselves for said rain and such.

 

The temperature discussion is negligible at the moment honestly,people barely RP the temperatures even if they drop down to like 40, people will still walk around wearing t-shirts.

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The following data was used : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Los_Angeles 

 

For now we've decreased the rain. I'll be honest we don't really want to spend some time making a smart weather system that transitions specific weather into others etc, it seems easy to do but it would be kinda complex using the current values we got and our system, time can be better used elsewhere for now.

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I would love, as people mentioned prior, a more consistent weather state. The temperatures are not necessarily as important. Sure, a warmer weather resembles the California area better, but a certain change to cold(er) weather also brings in new roleplay opportunities - warmer outfits suitable to the cold weather and thus an overall change of scenery bringing in fresh wind opposed to "the same old" throughout the entire year.

In addition to that, it would be nice, instead of rain lasting around ~30 minutes ever here and then, maybe have bad weather days where it might lightly rain throughout an extended period of time.

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2 hours ago, Nervous said:

The following data was used : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Los_Angeles 

"

Winter

Winters are mild, with average high temperatures at the Downtown/USC weather station of 68 °F (20 °C) and lows of 48 °F (9 °C), with occasional heavy rainfall. 

"

 

I made this system a while ago using the Climate of LA's statistics. I literally translated the table on that wiki into our gamemode.

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7 hours ago, Nervous said:

 

For now we've decreased the rain. I'll be honest we don't really want to spend some time making a smart weather system that transitions specific weather into others etc, it seems easy to do but it would be kinda complex using the current values we got and our system, time can be better used elsewhere for now.

Totally understandable! The weather system in and of itself doesn’t directly harm the roleplay of others, sure. I (and others that have commented here) think some improvements can be made down the line when developers have more time to work of these sorts of issues.

 

5 hours ago, St3fan[NL] said:

Winters are mild, with average high temperatures at the Downtown/USC weather station of 68 °F (20 °C) and lows of 48 °F (9 °C), with occasional heavy rainfall. 

"

 

I made this system a while ago using the Climate of LA's statistics. I literally translated the table on that wiki into our gamemode.

I think the main point of other people’s concerns on this thread is that that occasional rainfall gets translated into rain every few hours. Maybe it has something to do with how rain is calculated. For example, lets say the chance to rain is 34% in game. Does the game state that “it will rain 34% of the day” or does it state that “it has a 34% chance of raining for a few minutes today”?

 

Like I said, this is totally a small issue that can be addressed if and when larger problems within the server’s code get fixed up. Weather and temperature doesn’t directly affect the ability for others to roleplay, it just makes some situations a little bit hard to believe. 

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19 hours ago, Nervous said:

I'll be honest we don't really want to spend some time making a smart weather system that transitions specific weather into others etc, it seems easy to do but it would be kinda complex using the current values we got and our system, time can be better used elsewhere for now.

 

You sure you can't just set weathersystem.good to (1) instead of (0)? /s

 

Weather in real-life is 'unpredictable' to a degree, even with modern meteorology, but honestly, predictability is somewhat necessary in role-play. I'd 100% trade a system that somehow produces incredibly realistic weather transitions and/or emulates L.A. weather for one where I know with certainty that it will rain next week on Wednesday and can plan role-play accordingly. Even something as simple as three days of clear weather with one day of rain on a constant, predictable cycle seems preferable to me.

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I thoroughly enjoy roleplaying the effects of weather. I was on the side for snow, and I do enjoy a bit of occasional rain. That being said, it rains way too much. It doesn't need to be some complex dynamic weather system, literally just make it less likely to rain and play with the values until it seems to be okay. I feel like it rains at least once a day as is. Or if that's too much, what Exploits said above ^ .

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Risking to repeat myself, the impression of "too much rain" stems mostly from the frequent changes throughout the day.

 

What I would advice is to make weather changes much much slower for once.

 

GTA:W's weather behaves like what we in Austria and Germany call "April's weather", because, as foolish as the beginning of that month, it's randomly zip-zapping around, from clouds to sun to thunder to sun to coulds and so forth.

Dedicating whole day periord to bad weather or good weather might not ultimately change the total amount of rain time, but give the weather a much more consistent appearance.

 

Rain in LS currently means an all of a sudden, unexpected weather break, which was not wrongly compared in its effect ic to monsoon rains in the rain forest.

Having a consistent weather lasting for hours would correct that impression.

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