Weather autism in Vidya

Are there any video games out there that really make weather anymore than an afterthought, superficial atmospheric effect, or one-off mechanic?

If you're lucky you actually get volumetric clouds instead of a static 2D skybox. Some games I can think of that do this are GTA V, Twilight Princess, and Minecraft. Never is weather really explored in-depth though, like things like storm fronts and specific cloud formations. The only game I can think of that actually has different cloud formations is GTA V but even then its very subtle and it seems to be random and not actually indicative of wither or not there is an incoming storm is it would be in real life.

Oh yeah, one thing not everyone notices about Wind Wakers sky is that the clouds actually move in the direction of the wind. Very subtle

Rule the Waves is dominated by weather. Accept a fight in a drizzle and see the enemy fleet dissolve and escape in front of your eyes, stumble into an enemy fleet in the middle of a midnight storm and find the ships that you thought were your destroyer escorts are hostile and watch your entire line get torpedoed only to regroup on the other side and find out that the same happened to them, get caught by the Royal Navy's brand new battlecruisers at 8AM with bright sunny skies and calm seas and watch your entire armored cruiser force get eaten up by ships that they can't hope to force into gun range or escape.

How in-depth is the weather system though? I'm wondering if there are any games out there that actually track weather fronts and shit

Not that in-depth. I'm curious if any game does.

Neo Scavenger

Breath of the Wild has a wind simulation, in an interview Oman Au talked about a level designer tweaking the wind to move pots in a dungeon which caused the wind to blow pots around the world. I think the direction the clouds are travelling in indicate the winds direction because of the way they rigidly shift. It looks like Breath of the Wild has some kind of weather system but it still seems to be quite generic, the only neato thing is watching the clouds swell until it's overcast and lightning starting fires when it strikes grass, I doubt you will be able to watch rain clouds approach or have areas of the map be affected by rain differently.

I know that Sea of Thieves has proper 3d clouds but I don't know how deep the system goes for the weather.

Never knew that about Wind Waker, nice little detail.

Wind definitely is simulated, there are tiny particles flowing through the air which follow the wind and the bush near link moves around with the wind, the large dust clouds appear to flow in whatever direction the wind is currently moving too, even the blades of grass appear to be shifting with the direction of the wind although it's hard to tell, it's mostly obvious when the wind changes suddenly. Just over a month to go.

I think Nintendo has always tried to give weather more depth in Zelda. I know in Majora's Mask there is a wind mechanic with a specific wind direction but it's never actually used in-game and you can only even check the wind direction using debug menus

Myst 5.

I remember modding new vegas with the Nevada Skies mod and it was pretty fun.

Could it be related to the biggoron on snowhead or is it definitely something different?

Jesus, Holla Forums really knows how to run something into the ground, huh.

this was a very autistic post

Too bad clouds and wind currents are a bit more complicated than that.

Skyrim with real clouds, vivid weather and frostfall.

Wasn't vanilla Skyrim supposed to have "dynamic snow accumulation" or some other Todd bullshit?

I'm pretty sure that there was plenty of dynamic snow that accumulated on Todd's desk.

Maybe a city builder game or a farming simulator.

I've thought about this for an autism-tier RPG

You can either simulate it and make it unpredictable, or make it simple and videogamey. In the former, it's hard for the player (eg, a weather wizard or a druid) to get the effect they want

Why can't you make it realistic but not give the player a way to predict it?

I meant to say and still give the player a way to predict it

I meant to use cursive not spoilers

he always dodged that question in interviews. you can pretty much assume the worst when someone refuses to go into detail about a mechanic, but i suppose its better than telling outright lies like with RADIANT AI

The most straightforward answer I found was the game being showcased in one of it's previous builds before release and the people who saw the snow accumulation described it is completely ugly. Since people didn't really like it they simply removed it. Hilariously a modder put snow accumulation in as a simple texture when in an area when the snowing weather effect was in place, just another example of Bethesda QUALITY.

In pokemon, the weather alters your monster's attributes. Some will possess skills that will automatically change the field's weather the moment they enter the fray. Some moves and strategies are centered around using weather (i.e. solarbeam usually requires two moves to execute - one turn for a charge and the second turn for the attack - but you can use Sunny Day to make solarbeam attack without charging; same with rain dance + thunder's accuracy), and some pokemon will acquire passive buffs or debuffs during certain weather conditions (pokemon with the Swift Swim ability will get a speed boost in the rain, and pokemon with Sand Veil will get a boost to their evasion during sandstorms). In addition to this, Ruby and Sapphire's main story revolve around Team Aqua/Magma, a criminal organization, and their attempt at harnessing the power of the earth/sea in order to cover the globe in their respective element yeah it's moronic but it's something

Dwarf Fortress has warm and cold fronts that move in a logical way and storms travel with them.

The latest expansion for Endless Legend added weather on sea tiles. Some effects include damage at end of turn, changed movement point consumption and visibility effects.

The best example I can think of are New Vegas heavily modded and Stalker with mods.

Though Stalker is really just, bright crisp day, twilight, overcast, and then stormy. And stormy hardly impairs vision.

Certainly better than the bunch of homos that was Team Flare.

If we're talking modded shit there's also I think a mod for Minecraft that is supposed to add storm fronts

Yeah, pretty sure weather effects in turn-based RPGs is something everyone knows about already, no need to lecture us but yeah

Thats true, but not always. Yeah its true that wind currents on the ground are very much different than high-altitude wind currents at cloud level, usually along the coast where storms come from the ocean, the wind at ground level will usually blow from the coast to inland in the same direction as an incoming storm

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Yes, and M'aiq even says something to make fun of you for wanting it. That guy is such a cunt.


Once in a while weather from the overworld carries over to battles, I don't remember which games did this though (Ruby/Sapphire?). There's also like one or two areas where you can enter on certain seasons (one of the B&W games) or at different tides (Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald.).

If I remember correctly, Xenoblade Wii has certain monsters only come out at certain times or under particular weather, so sometimes if you want to find something, you'll have to come back later in the hopes that the weather's different (which becomes easy enough with landmark fast travel).


RSE started the trend of weather on the route coming into play in battles (being an automatic and persistent rain dance, sunny day, or sandstorm), with DPPt adding in snow/hail on some routes (and thus resulting in hail in battle). What's interesting is that the weather not only plays into powering up or weakening moves, but in some cases the wild Pokemon can get annoying when they have abilities that take natural advantage of their native environment's weather. Like some ground types gaining a speed or evasion boost in their natural sandstorm environment.

Deadly Premonition changes various things depending on weather, NPC schedules, side quest availability, whether or not monsters show up, etc.

Todd has dandruff?

Forza Horizon 2 and 3 have some pretty autismo weather as Playground created an atmospheric conditions simulator that will build cloud based on the pressure/humidity/temperature using seasonal logs from the country its based in (Seriously, they got the weather data for the past 20 years from France and Australia's Metorogical agencies and based the RNG around that parameters) and if it builds in the right way. It can do things like go overcast, fog up and build convective showers. It will even do things like localised evening thunder showers inland in H2 because it's a feature of that climate in the summer while Horizon 3 will do more frontal band based weather (Since it's technically winter when it takes place in Australia and the Gold Coast's rain is a lot more frontal based than convection at that time).

It's pretty crazy detailed though it's a shame it's not super spectacular. I do like in H3 that rain will produce puddles in the grooves of the road you can aquaplane off as well. But the sheer attention to detail making the whole thing run like a real atmospheric simulation is amazing.

The original Watch_Dogs has a really autismo weather system as well with five day forecasts that follow accurate builds for the Chicago area. Rain and storms look amazing as well.