Of Weather and the Environment

Details
Created on Thursday, 01 July 2010
Written by David McDonald

Participants will have already seen a sampling of the weather system that Alba will employ, but you may ask why bother? Why should it be dark or raining and what's lightning going to add to the game. Read on to see why weather will be very important to every player.

 

Those of you who have been testing in the past few days will have seen some of the weather conditions currently in place. What you can expect in the future is a direct impact on your gameplay brought about by the weather, time of day and the seasons.

Time of day effects

Firstly, and this should be fairly obvious, the time of day will impact visibility. When it is a dark night (Such as no moon or heavy cloud cover) then the night will be very dark indeed. It will be hard to travel without a lantern, torch or some form of illumination. On a clear night you could probably travel by moonlight without too much trouble. Naturally the brightness and quality of players monitors will impact how dark it really is for individuals so we will do our best to make a functional lighting system.

Combat will be much more difficult on the darker nights as you can't wield a weapon and a light source at the same time so best you keep your incursion to the daylight hours unless you are planning a sneak attack or assassination of course.

Additionaly, night time is the domain of the unscrupulous folk. Expect bandits, thugs and other criminal elements to be a little more prevalent once the sun sets.

Lastly, it will be much harder to find shopkeeps and other NPCs in the off-hours should you need repairs or supplies. Naturally, the Inns will be much busier and the 'red light' districts of the larger town a little more popular in the dark hours.

Weather Effects

The weather conditions you will be experiencing in Alba and their generalised impacts are shown below:

  • Clear
    • High visibility day and night.
    • Able to travel at night without additional light
    • Optimal for outdoor activities
    • Markets populated with vendors
    • Positive effect on the health of those outdoors
  • Overcast
    • Average visibility day and night.
    • Will need additional light at night to follow paths/roads
    • No real impact on outdoor activities
    • Market stalls populated
    • Nil effect on the health of those outdoors
  • Light rain
    • Average visibility day and night.
    • Will need additional light at night to follow paths/roads
    • Outdoor activities requiring dry goods or similar products will suffer
    • Market stalls may be populated depending on how eagre the vendor i
    • Nil effect on health of those outdoors
  • Heavy Rain
    • Low visibility during the day, almost no visibility at night
    • Must have light to travel at night (unless you are very good at knowing where you are in pitch darkness!)
    • Out door activities will incur hig penalties
    • No NPCs will populated outdoor stalls
    • Negative impact on the health of those outdoors
    • Movement slowed/takes more effort
  • Lightning Storm
    • Identical to the Heavy Rain condition except there are lightning storms in the area
  • Snow Storm
    • Generally just in the higher areas
    • Identical to Heavy Rain exzcept visibility is reduced even further and movement impacted further
  • Snow
    • Identical to light rain with the added effect that movement is impaired and there is a minor negative effect on the health of those outdoors
  • Foggy
    • As for Overcast however visibility is limited to only a short distance.

The Seasons

Alba will make use of (on our 3:1 time frame) seasons. As each season rolls around there will be penalties or bonuses for certain seasonal activities. As an example if you harvest a crop at the right time you may get double your normal yield or double the quality. Harvest the same crop off-season and you could halve one or both of these attributes.

This may not be an issue for some farmers (as an example) as the price you can demand for out of season produce will most likely be much higher since NPC supplies will dwindle and the produce will be scarcer.

As we work on a 3:1 timescale it means that each season will pass in one real month. In perspective of real time this means approx 4 weeks to do a seasons work, or if you miss the opportunity, then you only have to wait a short time for the optimal period again.

Producing your goods, staging your battles, building your structures and so on will all be impacted by seasons but not so much that it is unworkable to do your trades in the off seasons, it is just more productive to do them at the right time.

We have also designed the skill trees so that all professions have alternate activities to keep them occupied should they wish to stall doing something until the time is right.

Summary

So that's a brief overview of how weather, time and seasons will be utilised in Alba. I suggest you avoid bad weather as much as you can, try to optimise your trade by understanding the seasons and get to know the habits of your favourite NPCs so you know which Inn they frequent after hours.

 

Regards

DS

 

Note that this BLOG talk of features not completely integrated into Alba at this time and designs may change based on technology, testing feedback or on a whim!