Winter at Totambu, but green plants

[King of Worms]

Its just a mess. Enable winter for swamp and jungle biomes fully and I will create the missing sprite variants. Lets keep it simple. As it is now, it makes no sense anyway.

Than if someone is offended by winter in jungle, we can just turn it off super easy as a option, once the system is actually working properly.

Done

[Interkarma]

Winter variant is +1 from base texture. The following terrain flats have a winter variant:

• TEXTURE.504 (Winter=TEXTURE.505)
• TEXTURE.506 (Winter=TEXTURE.507)
• TEXTURE.508 (Winter=TEXTURE.509)
• TEXTURE.510 (Winter=TEXTURE.511)

The following do not have a +1 winter variant in game data.

• TEXTURE.500
• TEXTURE.501
• TEXTURE.502
• TEXTURE.503

DFU is consistent as possible in that it will always use winter textures if they are available in the game assets. Unfortunately, winter textures are simply not present for all terrain textures. It's like not we've gone out of our way to remove winter sprites from the game or anything.

We all know Daggerfall has messy art organisation, and I've done the best I can with what the game has available. The winter variants don't exist in classic, therefore they aren't available in DFU. It's a mess, but it's in an inherited mess rather than one of my design.

Considering the above - what exactly would you guys like DFU to do here?

[King of Worms]

Hi Interkarma:)

I re-checked the winter in Jungle & Swamp throughly. Its different from the report from previous page on the DOS Daggerfall and thats good, because its actually consistent in DFU (Sollrakc post at bottom http://forums.dfworkshop.net/viewtopic. ... 9&start=10 ) Desert biome does not have any winter variant and thats good, so lets forget those for now.

As it is now in DFU Swamp & Jungle winter both have and use:
- winter terrain texture
- winter version of city walls
- winter textures of buildings with few bugs:
(winter jungle/swamp mages guild exterior tex is missing (435 summer = ok, 436 winter = non existent in archives :X)
(winter variant of texture 410 is not used but exists, uses summer variant 409 during winter - easy fix?)

And both Swamp & Jungle do not have:
- winter nature sprites


So I cant ask more of you Interkarma
Because DFU is using what is available, and thats a job well done. Sorry if I came across as not being appreciative of this. I was also confused with the report from DOS version, and I thought thats how it is in DFU, but thats not the case thanksfully.

What I miss is, to be able to support winter variants of sprites for these biomes (and the missing exterior mages texture if possible) That gets us to different topic I think:

Might it be possible to open modding for this system in a sense, that if ( _winter) sprite/texture variant is found, its used. And if not found, it uses the default?
Example sprite: 500_1-0_winter

Also theres the issue with above mentioned non existent winter texture bug(s)
The same system would dictate to use "435_0-0_winter" or creating texture 436 (which would be normally used if Beth did not mess up) - not sure if thats even possible. It would be useful, if I could also add things like the winter variant of Daggerfall Castle or winter hedge around the cemetery etc by supporting the "_winter" texture variants. Still I feel this texture part is not happening But forcing the DFU to use tex 410 in winter should happen Id say, its in the archives, and using 409 during winter is a vanilla bug. There are more these issues in other biomes but I dont want to mess this post even more...

Thanks for your time, sry for a long post!

[King of Worms]

It's weird that in desert and jungle regions the snow is inconsistent. Don't know if this was already addressed somewhere else in the forums, I just found this.

Hmm as far as I know there is no winter in deserts in DFU, am I wrong?

[Lokkrin Zhataros]

It's weird that in desert and jungle regions the snow is inconsistent. Don't know if this was already addressed somewhere else in the forums, I just found this.

Hmm as far as I know there is no winter in deserts in DFU, am I wrong?

Woops, lol. I meant swamp. Sorry

[Interkarma]

As it is now in DFU Swamp & Jungle winter both have and use:
- winter terrain texture
- winter version of city walls
- winter textures of buildings with few bugs:
(winter jungle/swamp mages guild exterior tex is missing (435 summer = ok, 436 winter = non existent in archives :X)
(winter variant of texture 410 is not used but exists, uses summer variant 409 during winter - easy fix?)

Looking into swamp castle .410 not being used. This was excluded because the .410 archive is incomplete. Note that .409 has 5x records and .410 has only 4x records. What I can do though is only exclude the missing texture rather than the whole archive. I've made a change now that will use the available snow textures for swamp castles. Now only the flat tops of castle have no snow (because no winter variant exists).

swamp-castle-snow.jpg (467.67 KiB) Viewed 223 times

Handling missing snow textures, whether it's a full archive or just a single texture, is a bigger challenge. The climate processor has to deal with some really funky rules and hacks to work around the very inconsistent game data. There's basically no way to completely "unbreak" this based on the state Beth left the game in. The classic assets will always be a best effort kind of thing.

But your idea of adding an optional "_winter" tag to load a winter variant via mod system sounds quite feasible. This could override the texture selected by climate processor when season is winter and a "_winter" variant exists for the base texture. There doesn't need to be much in the way of special handling or rules, as the modder is providing bespoke replacements where they want to see them. You could even use this for places that don't get winter swaps, such as deserts (e.g. dry & cracked rather than snow).

This falls more into TheLacus' wheelhouse as the mastermind behind texture replacements. I wonder if this is something he has time/interest to build? Maybe ping him next time he's online and see if he salutes the idea.

[King of Worms]

Well, even if the outcome of this thread is just the castle being transformed in winter, summarizing the state of things and rise of the idea of _winter tag, it was worth it

I think the castle change is for a better! One missing part at the top is not as distracting as whole castle being off during the winter, thank you. Ive created the thread for a _winter variants http://forums.dfworkshop.net/viewtopic. ... 93f7c07f08 and let Lacus know in a PM. Maybe it will move us forward towards complete winter in the regions in the future.

[TheLacus]

But your idea of adding an optional "_winter" tag to load a winter variant via mod system sounds quite feasible. This could override the texture selected by climate processor when season is winter and a "_winter" variant exists for the base texture. There doesn't need to be much in the way of special handling or rules, as the modder is providing bespoke replacements where they want to see them. You could even use this for places that don't get winter swaps, such as deserts (e.g. dry & cracked rather than snow).

This falls more into TheLacus' wheelhouse as the mastermind behind texture replacements. I wonder if this is something he has time/interest to build? Maybe ping him next time he's online and see if he salutes the idea.

Right now i prefer not to work on new features like these ones; i have limited free time and already a few things that i'm slowly making progresses on, i prefer not to add to the list of things to do.

[Interkarma]

Thanks for the reply TheLacus.

[King of Worms]

Well that was enthusiastic