Weather

[Divebomb]

Maybe it's snowing NEAR Hell, but as long as it's not also snowing IN Hell, I think we could all call that an improvement in the "sense" department...even without the fuss of rearranging the whole Realms.

I don't think all of BR needs to redesigned, just some of the weirder places. I can't even name them offhand. It's not like we haven't moved areas before, this wouldn't be a big deal.

[polgara]

Maybe it's snowing NEAR Hell, but as long as it's not also snowing IN Hell, I think we could all call that an improvement in the "sense" department...even without the fuss of rearranging the whole Realms.

Well, I think it should snow in the freezer that's in hell

[Stars]

Personaly, I think there could be that really rare moment when snow does indeed fall in Hell. You know, when soaring piglets sprinkle icy flakes down on the fiery pit. This usually comes true when my ex-girlfriend admits she was wrong. On second thought, maybe it doesn't snow it Hell after all...

[Lairian]

Sure it could be snowing in one area and the next it's sunny...I'm fairly sure somewhere in newbie help it states that the distances between rooms is not uniform.

I mean, Hunting Grounds <-> Tropical Forest certainly not, but the text on the way from the Eastern Path and Coven sounds like a lot more than circa 5 rooms if all rooms are only 10' cubes.

[Divebomb]

And isn't it funny how it can take 5 movement points to go from "The beginning of the street" to "The middle of the street". And it can take 3 movement points to go from "The beginning of the desert" to "The end of the desert"?

[Comatose]

It is a good thing we all live in a perfect world so that we can go to an imperfect world and get away from all the perfection.

[Stars]

So what might the change look like? Would the climate depend upon the terrain of a room, or would new room flags be added?

[Enter]

to make it even more realistic, make it so that in some months, the weather condition will strengthen. Like in certain months its more cold and another month it is more warm, like summer and winter. Maybe even spring and autumn could be put in between them? More rainy weather in the autumn and so on. How would that be?

[Stars]

How about something with hail? I had some massive hail here the other day and I thought I was being bombarded by the US military.

I don't know how weather works or how these changes might work, but maybe these could be some possible effects of bad or good weather.

1. Rain (flying increases hail damage)
a. drizzle (no effect)
b. steady downpour (scan doesn't work, can't sleep)
c. thunderstorm (scan doesn't work, can't sleep, possible lightning or tornado)
d. hail (same as above, also causes 1-10 damage)

2. Wind (flying increases chances of being swept)
a. slight breeze (no effect)
b. blustery (rare random movement to an adjacent room, can't sleep)
c. windstorm (strong chance for players to be swept every round, can't sleep)
d. gale (players swept, can't sleep, and damage from debris (increases if flying), 1-10 every round)

3. Snow
a. flurries (no effect)
b. snowstorm (scan doesn't work, can't sleep)
c. blizzard (freezing damage depends on number of eq slots filled - If a player is naked, then they receive the most damage 10-20. They take none if all slots are full. Avians are ok with less eq, since they have feathers.)

4. magic weather
a. color swirl (no real effect, just random colors in the sky)
b. magic storm (chance of a random spell being cast on a player, could be good or bad)
c. magic vortex (same as above, can't sleep, drains mana slightly)

5. Fog
a. mist (scan doesn't work)
b. pea soup (cannot see room description or objects)

6. Sunshine
a. partly cloudy (no effect)
b. balmy (hp/mana regeneration increases slightly, 10-20 bonus)
c. tropical (hp/mana regeneration increases even more, 30-40)
d. hot (hp/mana bonus goes back down to slight, or no effect)
e. blazing (no effect, or slight damage 1-10 every few rounds)

If someone is inside of a container, then they feel none of the effects from weather, good or bad, except tornado. Tornadoes have a chance of destroying vehicles or tents. Unsheltered players receive incredible damage from lightning and tornadoes. On the plus side, these phenomena are rare.
I do like Enter's idea of changing seasons. Each season (group of months) has a certain weather type that is predominant, and one that is rare. Chances of weather increase or decrease accordingly.

Winter: +Snow -Sunshine
Spring: +Rain -Wind?
Summer: +Sunshine -Snow
Fall: +Wind -Rain?

The builder has the option of keeping or removing any weather type to his/her area. For instance, Joey is building an area with two different climates. One part of his area it is a valley, the other is a mountaintop. Joey decides that it can snow on his mountain, but is too cold for rain or sunshine. He adds the appropriate flags to his mountain rooms that indicate no rain or sunshine (the default includes all weather types). His valley rooms can receive all kinds of weather so he leaves them alone.

These are merely suggestions. Change them or ignore them.

[Stars]

Instead of tremendous damage (or along with it), tornadoes might pick up a player and transport them to some random room in Barren Realms(assuming the new room is not indoors or underwater). It is kind of like a farmer's cow getting sucked up by a twister and deposited in a farm in another county.

[xorex]

Hmmm, I think that wind should only move flying players. It could have an effect like trip on non-flying players...knocking them over. It have to be some incredibly strong wind pick up a full-armored warrior and throw him into another room (A tornado could do this). I could see it having a drunk like affect on movement though. You try to walk in one direction and the wind pushes into another.

I like most of Stars suggestions, but I'd like to see the effects of weather on players be kept fairly minimal. It's already highly annoying to fight when the fog or rain makes it difficult to scan. I think if the effects of weather on game play are kept to a minimal amount then when they do occur players will find the surprise cool and interesting whereas if a player is constantly being bombarded by cold and hail and being thrown about by wind that it will be nothing but an annoyance.

additional room flags for weather would be cool. i'm not sure how viable they are to implement. then we would have to go back through every area and put them in. we could just base them off terrain type flags which would work pretty well except for snowy rooms. whatever we do, we should put in seasons and they should be different for each weather type. the desert might have more rain in the winter but never snow, for example.

[Exo]

If someone is inside of a container, then they feel none of the effects from weather, good or bad, except tornado. Tornadoes have a chance of destroying vehicles or tents. Unsheltered players receive incredible damage from lightning and tornadoes. On the plus side, these phenomena are rare.

ok, seriously, ask nyteshade, me and him used to group and we used tents, like, all the time. TENTS NEED MORE USEAGE

[disaster]

i think there should be a command allowing someone to see the terrain type of the room they're in. it makes sense that i could look around and see if i was in a city, under water, in the air, etc

[Everybody]

Eh... the only sort of problem with that is that a lot of the terrain types don't actually match up to the description of the room you're in. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that large areas (spanning underground, mountains, plains and a city - like Cormyr) were entirely terrain type woods or something silly like that.

[disaster]

all the more reason for us to eb able to see the terrain types, so that we can submit rediculous stuff like that in typo and improve the quality of our areas.