Project Viewpoint: True Weathers & Lighting

Project Viewpoint: True Weathers & Lighting

Storms worth standing in and light that feels real, for (https://everget.net/posts/project-viewpoint/)'s first and third person (Build 42). Walk through storms that roll in from kilometres away, leave footprints in the snow and see light behave like real light. Built on Viewpoint's renderer and driven by the game's own climate, so everyone on a server sees the same sky.

Features

Weather

• Storms with character - drizzle to severe thunderstorm, blended smoothly. Heavy rain swallows the distance, sheets of rain march across the land with the wind, and mist lingers on calm mornings after rain, and some severe thunderstorms bring bursts of hail skipping off the ground.
• Fixed to the world - rain, snow and hail fall across everything you can see, out to the horizon; walls hide them, roofs keep them off.
• Wind with weight - rain and snow follow the wind with inertia; gusts lean and swing them round.
• Snow and blizzards - soft drifting flakes; snow builds up on the ground, roofs and cars and melts in the thaw. Severe blizzards become white-outs, with walls of snow rolling through on the gusts.
• Footprints in the snow - you, other players and zombies leave left and right boot prints, further apart when running. Fresh snow slowly fills them in.
• Fog storms - dense fog rolls through the streets in banks. A few metres of sight, the next block gone.
• Lights in the weather - lamps, fires and windows glow in fog, rain and snow; flashlight beams (yours and other players') stand in the air as shafts.
• Lightning and thunder - near strikes light the street and cast hard shadows, distant ones light the clouds, and thunder arrives at the right delay.
• Wet world - roads darken in the rain and dry with sun and wind; puddles ring, roofs drip, litter blows through the gusts, your breath shows in the cold, and rainbows follow the rain.
• Rain on the glass - rain and frost on windows seen from inside; every car gets real rain, snow, frost and mist on its glass, and wipers clear the windshield.
• Storms you can see coming - thunder cells tower on the horizon with rain shafts under them before they roll in.
• Through the scope - all of it stays on while aiming down sights with Recoil & ADS, picture-in-picture lenses included.

Lighting

• True Weathers & Lighting shader pack - Viewpoint's Default look (its shadows, flashlight, wet streets, puddles and eye adaptation) with True Weathers' light and weather on top: storm skies that darken and drain, the green cast of a severe storm, lamps glowing through falling rain and a colour grade that follows the weather. The sun rises and sets at the game's own dawn and dusk, with a real blue twilight either side (adjustable). Installed and selected for you automatically, in single player and on servers.
• Realistic lights - every light falls off with distance and bounces off the ground, like real light. Street lamps pour their light down in a pool from the lamp head, whichever way the lamp faces, including lamps from 3D model packs, and every lamp you can see lights the road all the way down the street.
• Interiors - ceiling lights fill rooms from above at a natural, adjustable brightness.
• Your flashlight - sways as you turn, moves with your steps and kicks when you fire. Weapon lights follow the sights; head lamps follow your view. Each flashlight has its own colour temperature.
• Car headlights - bright beams that light the road far ahead.
• Fire - campfires, fireplaces, burning buildings, candles and lanterns flicker, and lights dip when lightning strikes close.
• Details - walls darken in streaks in the rain, and leaves glow with the sun behind them.
• Seasonal profiles - summer haze, golden autumn, crisp winter days, green-tinged thunderstorms and blue rainy nights. Add your own in a text file.

Regional weather and gameplay

True Weathers - Gameplay, the second mod in this item, is optional and has sandbox options:

• Regional weather - the game still decides what the weather is; this decides where. Storms kilometres across drift over the map for hours, fog lies in banks and showers pass by. Rain barrels fill, crops get watered, you get wet and fires go out only where it's actually raining; watch the next storm come over the horizon.
• Lightning can hit you - caught in the open in a thunderstorm with nothing taller nearby, a bolt can land on you. A direct hit can kill, or leave you burnt and knocked flat. Trees, buildings and vehicles protect you. Death chance and frequency are sandbox options.
• Weather and zombies - rain, blizzards and thunder cover your noise; fog, downpours and white-outs shorten how far zombies can see.

Settings and performance

• Settings > Mods > True Weathers & Lighting: every part can be turned down or off, and one switch returns to Viewpoint's own weather.
• Shader pack options (realistic lights, indoor light brightness, wet walls, leaf glow, storm sky, rain glow, weather grade and more) are in Viewpoint's settings.
• Distant rain, snow and fog are drawn at half resolution (Mod Option) for much higher frame rates in storms, and lamps behind you that can't reach you are skipped.
• Admins get a weather control panel in place of Climate control: presets, manual climate, lightning strikes and time of day.

Load after Viewpoint. On first launch, ZombieBuddy asks you to approve the Java files.

Compatibility

• Works with every Viewpoint shader pack, including custom packs and Iris packs (under Iris packs the small world details are not drawn).
• Works with Recoil & ADS, Advanced Movement (prone included), True Ballistics, Advanced Throwables, Equipment Overlays, Viewpoint - Interface and 3D model packs.
• Made for Viewpoint 0.1.6. Replaces nothing in Viewpoint; if a Viewpoint update changes something, only that part turns itself off.

Multiplayer / Server Setup

Everyone sees the same weather: it comes from the game's synced climate, gusts, lightning, fog banks and rain sheets run on the server's clock, and regional weather is the same map everywhere. Wetness, snow cover and footprints are kept by the server, so players see tracks made before they arrived. The weather panel's effects reach every player. Add the mod IDs below to your server; the Gameplay mod (optional) needs ZombieBuddy installed on the server too.

For Modders

Shader packs read the weather through uTW* uniforms. Register lights and fires from Lua:

VTL.registerItemLight("MyMod.Headlamp", 4000, "head")
VTL.registerFlicker("brazier", "fire")

Regional weather from Lua: VTWG.precipAt(x, y), VTWG.fogAt(x, y).