Whither the weather?
 

Been playing with some weather mods, and noticed that in a career every patrol starts with clear skies, unlimited visibility. Looking over the campaign .mis files;

https://scontent-msp1-1.xx.fbcdn.net...5b&oe=5D747072

A random sampling of all the assorted year, campaign, and other missions, and patrol objectives missions, they're all the same - clouds, precip, fog none, variations = no changes.

Obviously the weather DOES change, some patrols I get heavy seas, rain and fog for several days.

Anyone know if there's some kind of master file that controls the weather changes, and where it is?

Probably related to the SIM.act, remembering Stiebler weather tweaking in SH3...
Maybe other files implicated also, or even hard coded? (Remembering H.sie patch)

Hmmm, opening EnvSim.act with a hex editor I see some text that describes the process, so that may be it.

"The upcoming weather. If different from CurrentWeather, a transition between the two weather types is made...CloudsTransitionTextureName...The texture used for blending between two different cloud textures...CloudsTilingFactor..." and it goes on like that.

No program I know of to actually edit or make sense out of .act files, so I guess the next thing is to pick one .mis file that loads at start (EastAsiaCampaign.mis, US_NavalBases.mis for example) and see if changing the weather in one of those overrides the default. If it does, then it would be interesting to see if clear with no wind in one .mis file overrides high wind fog heavy rain in another, or vice-versa. Might also be a load order factor, obviously when you start a new patrol in a campaign career there are a whole bunch of different .mis files that have to load.

I'm not sure if the "layer" files will change the weather pattern or not, but one way to think of the settings for weather in those files is as a "standard weather", or "default" setting, so that whatever the game engine generates is what you get. The last mission file loaded is the one that you would put weather changes in, such as "Patrol Attu Island 01.mis", and in those Patrol Objective files is where I'll see some weather changes, though I have not "proven" this as so, especially in light of the fact that sometimes the mission still starts with clear weather... :hmmm: - but missions into the North Sea, or the Bering Sea, you would want inclement weather more often than not... As to the "big picture" of controlling it in the game, I have no idea myself. :salute:

Yeah, just looked, the PatrolObjectives folder has 233 subfolders with 521 files, so to test this (unless I can figure out how to find the info of which one is assigned in the save game files) I'll need to start a patrol and read the objective, then edit the weather in a dozen or so files to see if it works. For instance if the assignment is "Patrol Celebes Sea" there are 8 folders with 16 different .mis files, the only way to confirm the theory would be to edit the same weather parameters in all 16. Miss one and that could be the one you're running, I can't find anything that details the exact one you currently have.

You could always add a "Test Start" to the CareerStart.upc, link to a new "Test Flotilla" in Flotillas.upc, point the assignments to particular missions code calls, and if you got really adventurous, add some missions into the PatrolObjectives.cfg file just for the "Test Flotilla" to use... :salute:

Or copy and paste.

[Mission]
MissionType=0
MissionDataType=0
MultiMissionType=0
Year=1940
Month=1
Day=1
Hour=0
Minute=0
Fog=2
FogRand=0
Clouds=2
CloudsRand=1
Precip=2
PrecipRand=1
WindHeading=0
WindSpeed=15.000000
WindRand=1
WeatherRndInterval=5
SeaType=0

Edited one for rain/clouds/fog, then opened in notepad to copy and paste in all. No effect. I suspect the reason why it's off in all of them is because it's yet another leftover that isn't actually used.

The evidence is irrefutable then... :arrgh!: - So the campaign side of things overwrites the weather "header" of the mis files, but in Single Missions, it manages to work fine... :salute:

I suspect the main difference is a single mission uses one and only one .mis file, campaign loads a dozen or more when you start a new patrol. For the WIP "GONE ASIATIC 3" mod I've been trying to limit to editing only two, US_NavalBases.mis and EastAsiaCampaign.mis, but the traffic gets kind of cluttered and makes sorting out waypoints totally nuts.

Not giving up yet though, possibly the programming takes the weather from the first one loaded or the last one loaded, or based on time of year or something.