Weather

Suggestions
1

Foreword

(I know this has been referred to here but I’d like to bring it up again in the Suggestions forum and offer my thoughts on it!)

For those of you who don’t want to read my mini-novella on this, I included a shortened tl;dr version below.

Weather in Tower Unite

I, and I’m sure many other players, would absolutely love some sort of weather system implemented into Tower Unite. I know a good majority of people will prefer the constantly sunny and tropical atmosphere, but I love rain. Thunderstorms. Snow. Clouds. One of the reasons I loved Theatron map for Cinema was that it took place at Night and while raining! Seeing as how advanced this game will become, I see a need for weather!

Benefits

What are the benefits of adding weather to the game? For starters, it will add great diversity to the beauty of the Tower Unite world. The lighting in the game, at least to me, is fantastic. With weather introduced, an already beautiful engine will be able to translate that perfectly into a very beautiful scenic experience! Secondly, it makes Tower Unite feel more realistic and immersive as a game. Let’s be honest, the same solar angle, brightness, and weather will get old after awhile. Just like in real life, weather changes. Tastes change. Feelings change. So why not have this in Tower Unite?

Solutions to Possible Issues

I understand that adding weather may cause some possible conflicts of interest or budgeting. I’ve got some solutions for the first part, though the budgeting is ultimately your discretion. For starters, not everybody will want to experience weather. Adding an option in settings to decrease or remove extra-weather effects would be a great solution to that problem! Furthermore, if you’d rather avoid changing the core theme of the sunnyside Tower Unite location, you could enable weather settings in specific condos, perhaps even for purchase! For instance, one condo could have rain enabled, but if you were to leave said condo you would revert back to normal Tower Unite weather.

Thanks for reading!

Please do give some consideration to this idea! The game, at least in my eyes, is near perfect already with what has been planned. Adding something like this would greatly improve the quality of the game. I wanna chill in my condo while Zeus bowls!

TL;DR

Tower Unite would benefit from a weather system, as well as a day/night cycle. That way, Tower Unite would have extremely dynamic visuals that I believe would meld well with the already great structural design. Weather settings could be enabled or disabled in the settings to avoid users who may face FPS issues.

10 Likes
2

Please everyone leave your ideas, thoughts, comments, and concerns about the inclusion of weather below to help the developers better make their decision!

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I absolutely think this is a wonderful idea, that would probably be best to enable on a server by server basis. Maybe allow server owners to specify the type of weather, the duration could be random, or even based on the local of where the server is hosted.

This idea is great in theory, but I’d be curious about how it’d be executed.

4 Likes
4

Most of the experience that I have had with games that enable weather is that weather happens normally at random intervals, but may be turned off at will according to the specific player. I like your concept of having duration being manually controlled as well as random.

I don’t know anything about Unreal Engine 4, the development of games using it, or the extent to which graphics can go, but there has to be a way to let specific users disable it. That way, they really wont be bothered by other people enjoying it.

I say this because I feel as if most server operators will opt for disabling weather because, in reality, not every user can handle it, even though there’s a setting to disable it for yourself in the options. Perhaps if each server had a warning stating weather was enabled, issues like this could be avoided. It’s sad, but not everybody knows what’s available in their options menu!

5

We’re still doing research into the possibility of weather. We would like to do it, but it’s extremely expensive at the moment ( realtime lighting / shadows ).

At some point I’d like to look into some optimizations ( lightmap fading, screenspace post-processing ) that might make this idea more viable.

The problem with making it an option right now is that we’d have to ship two versions of the lobby map, one with baked lighting ( performant ) and one with dynamic lighting.

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I’m elated to hear that the idea is at least being considered. I’m hoping with the surplus of funding you guys will surely get (81% at 11 days? Amazing) that you all give this a good shot.

I don’t really care when it comes. It’s an extremely large overhaul of the current system that I can understand it possibly not even making an appearance until the game’s actual release. I just request you all don’t forget about it, as I know you are faced with several other ideas each day!

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7

I wouldn’t mind seeing real time seasons. Like spring, summer, autumn and winter.
So we can have actual events too, like Halloween and Christmas, Easter egg hunting.

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8

Holiday events would be awesome! Imagine the entire Plaza decorated!

For Halloween there could be some sort of Trick-or-Treat event. The possibilities are endless.

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9

The option to customize what weather is displayed outside of your suite would be very nice. Having a constant, but light drizzle outside the window that casts nice shadows into my suite would be the perfect atmosphere for me.

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10

I’d probably opt for a nice thunderstorm but that also sounds quite nice!

11

Weather sounds pretty neat. Surely some random/scripted events may be able to happen with weather (for example, lightning strikes the theatre and the power goes out temporarily, or the water slides are closed when raining or storming, etc.). This would add some realism and some entertainment value. Not to mention it will make the lobby and condos more interesting and have more of a “real life” feel.

As for weather mechanics, it would be nice to have mechanics such as wind speed and humidity. A real-time or simulated (this should be a server option) day/night cycle and season cycle can also help in determining the occurrence of some weather types, such as dew or fog. The water level of the ocean should be able to change when needed. Weather should be predictable and realistic, meaning if there’s going to be a hurricane, the sky, wind speed and the waves on the water should show that. The more realistic the weather and the environment, the better!

Sidenote: If a remastered Lobby 1 was ever available to players to be in, weather could happen there too!

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12

I never really thought about the inclusion of impact by weather but those are some pretty interesting ideas! I would probably opt out of all the negative ones such as the parks closing (hell, I’d love to go to a water park in the rain), but other than that I like where you’re going with it.

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You can never close a person with a jetpack out of a water park during a hurricane! :smiley:

1 Like
14

I think that’d be a cool feature. For Easter, eggs would appear all around the plaza, boardwalk, and sometimes in games, and you could open the collected eggs and get prizes and Units. For Halloween, you could go to people’s condos, and you’d fill up a bag of candy, (The first time you log on during that season, they give you an empty bag) And depending on how full it is, you’d get prizes and Units as well. Christmas, you’d enter your condo and if you purchased a Christmas tree and you log on on Christmas morning or after Christmas morning, there’ll be presents underneath that tree. After the season’s over, you can put the tree in storage or keep it up. (You can also press ‘E’ on the tree to turn on and off the lights, as well as other seasonal decorations could be sold.) Gifts could give you seasonal special items you can ONLY obtain from opening the Christmas gifts. Items you can’t get from the store during the season. Just a few thoughts.
-DignifiedPeach

I also do like the idea of reskins of the Plaza for the different seasons. That’s an awesome idea.

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15

This sounds like a good idea. However, what if instead of instantly changing to a different reskin of the map, the map changes realistically? For example, it can have a chance to snow during the winter months (I’m unsure exactly where on the globe TU is supposed to be on) and leaves can fall off of trees during the autumn months. It doesn’t snow on Christmas every year in real life, so a small detail like that can make snow a weather event that people look forward to finally seeing, just like in real life. (Obviously not everybody wants to see snow, but my point is that seasonal weather isn’t a scripted event)

How would this work, then? Since snow may be gathering on the ground, you want it to form piles and sheets on the ground. Why not let players stand still while it’s snowing, just to pop out of said piles? Players should be able to be buried in snow if they let it happen, for example. Getting out of snow should be as simple as jumping out or digging through the snow. Some seasonal weather can form piles and whatnot for players to jump into and in some cases, walk on.

In this case, we have one of the limitations keeping us from having a dynamically-changing lobby out of the way. But what about seasonal decorations in the lobby? Well, a simple solution is to have the decorations be put up by the players themselves! Instead of having it done for them, why not give players the option to decorate the lobby with Christmas lights, etcetera while still preventing players to grief the lobby with custom-made designs (custom-made designs can be made on unranked servers based on server settings)? Decorations can be put up in specific templates that go on each specific part of the map, while only one design can go to a place at a time. Rewards can be given to the players who decorated the lobby to motivate them (think of it as a minigame).

In addition to random event snow, let’s talk about ice. Ice is different as it depends on how cold the internal temperature of the water is. Using a temperature mechanic, it is possible to emulate when and how thick ice may be. Some places in the plaza/condos, such as the pools, could freeze over if the conditions are correct. Perhaps if it is cold enough after it rains we can run on black ice? Keep in mind that all forms of precipitation can be emulated in TU.

As for random events or minigames during specific seasons (and during specific weather types, such as snowball fights), I think they are a good idea as well. Also, non-weather related minigames can happen, too! If you wanted to pile together the leaves scattered on the ground and jump in them, it is possible to do. Building sandcastles may be possible all year long, but minigames or rather, “competitions” are only held in the appropriate season.

In conclusion, seasonal weather should happen realistically just like any other weather type. It shouldn't be a scripted event like how leaves fall off of trees in autumn, but instead it should be a random event, like rain. Decorations can easily be put up by the players in the lobby without the need of another map variation. Seasonal minigames could happen that get players involved in the lobby. Ice can be implemented, just like any other side-effect of weather and season (such as puddles after and during rain, or leaves on the ground in autumn).

TL;DR

Realistic (but fun) seasonal weather types, events and minigames can be added to avoid needing alternate versions of the main lobby map by having every element change dynamically.
3 Likes
16

Agreed on theatron map at night and rain, best part. If I can buy a private theatre room from theatron in Tower Unite I’ll die happy.

Seriously though we need this ASAP.

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17

Lots of extremely well put together ideas in here!

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18

Weather for the $70k Stretch Goal Poll…

:wink:

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19

I LOVE the idea of having different weather for different seasons. I like the idea of weather in general though. However, since it is by the beach, it couldn’t snow in the winter, but maybe they can have different areas. Like in the winter we can visit a ski resort or something, when in the summer you can go surfing or something like that.

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What if a random event happened during those seasons that could take players to said locations?

1 Like