[Raolinx Aeromancer]

Some questions about Zoneing and Moods in other games and how was Vangaurd going to set the mood.

Originally Posted by Manaleeshi:
......In everquest, it used zones, and there where alot of zones that where in a permanent state. For example Greater Faydark was always dark.... I think it was because it was meant to be beneath very tall trees. But the effect was that it was a permanently dark forest. It was great.... and it was soooooo moody. You also had places like Unrest, which was a haunted house basically. And im pretty sure it was always night time at that place.... Most of the world was subject to weather and the day and night cycle, but i liked how some of these places where preserved in their ideal state.

Something im wondering about Vanguard, is if theres a dark, moody forest.... will the day come and ruin the experience? Or will they manage to keep it dark and misty 24/7? And in the haunted house type area (i forgot what its called... something Manor i think...), will the day come and spoil that experience too? Or will that area be permanently dark and therefore, permanently spooky?

Im glad the majority of the world will be subject to the day + night cycle. And im REALLY glad that there will be random weather patterns that even move across the world...... Thats all awesome. But do you think some areas should be preserved in a state that suits them? Otherwise.... a dark myserious, spooky forest... would only actually give you that effect while the game is in its night cycle.... Which would ruin the experience.

feed me

Brad wrote this in response:
It is harder to do this with a seamless world, but we're pulling it off. It required a lot of thought, work, and the latest tech to make it work.

So we can take any given region and have it have different weather, atmospheric effects, and even some crazy stuff we may do in an expansion (dimensional effects, etc.).

But we can definitely keep a dark, murky forest, using your example, that way throughout the day even though it's a region within a vast seamless world.

Jolee Posted:
What a great feature, different weather in different regions. I'm assuming that the changes between regions wont be abrupt, the tech to pull this off must be quite sophisticated, can't wait to see it!

Manaleeshi responds to Jolee:
He even said in some other thread, that the weather will travel... So a storm will build up over and area, but will move with the clouds to a different location. (Just like real life)

Im pretty sure thats what he meant anyway... i may have interpreted that in my own way. But either way, it sounds super impressive.

Brad responds to Manaleeshi's response to Jolee:
Yes, the weather system is actually run in its own process (e.g. not part of a region server -- sort of like the world server process) and is totally global. It moves around weather systems, spawns them, despawns them, and then talks to each region process when it tries to enter a weather system into it and then the parameters set by each region (is this a desert, or high mountain, or a jungle or swap) then change how the global weather system manifests itself in that region and therefore in-game and what you see while playing.

VERY cool stuff, especially when we continue to advance it and make weather systems pop up, move around, and affected by holidays, special events, locally changed via characters casting spells to make the weather to their advantage (say, a storm makes your lightning spells do more damage), and maybe even have NPCs try to change the weather to their advantage?

Again, too early to promise to what extent this will all be true at launch (although I should know by beta 4), but we will have a lot in by launch but also the potential of such a system after launch to be added as the game evolves is also fantastic!

From viewing the videos showing the sky and reading threads like this I get even more antsy to play this game.

Special event weather? I'm thinking snow all over for christmas.
Wonder if they can make four leaf clovers pop up on St. Patricks day. Or sunshine everywhere durring the world cup. Or Gloomy all over for memorial day.

Rao