Weather...

@FF - rain could be a 2D overlay to save on performance, it doesnt have to be fully 3D rendered throughout the whole park, it worked fine in rct3
 
@FF - rain could be a 2D overlay to save on performance, it doesnt have to be fully 3D rendered throughout the whole park, it worked fine in rct3

then people would be complaining that its showing when in buildings and underground which they obviously dont want to deal with
 
then people would be complaining that its showing when in buildings and underground which they obviously dont want to deal with

I cant remember if it rained underground in RCT3 or not, I assume if the devs can have terrain block light, there could be a way to have terrain block rain. I personally dont think it would be that big of a deal if it rained though walls, but for those who dislike it it could be disabled
 
I cant remember if it rained underground in RCT3 or not, I assume if the devs can have terrain block light, there could be a way to have terrain block rain. I personally dont think it would be that big of a deal if it rained though walls, but for those who dislike it it could be disabled

I mean people already complain about light not being blocked in scenery buildings so I can only imaging it would be the exact same
 
I mean people already complain about light not being blocked in scenery buildings so I can only imaging it would be the exact same

I think it would help if the terrain tools were improved to make it easier to create large rooms with walls of terrain [up]
 
it all sounds nice, and would be fun until the point it starts to lower performance and melts CPU's.

Just try to place a map full of Rain, cloud, snow, fog, etc.. ( need spooky dlc for some of them if i'm correct) and see that CPU meltdown for yourself :D
Weather would be exactly the same, like any other special FX, just on the scale of the entire map... (you won't be happy when it rains or snows in your park)

So for that reason alone i'm glad weather won't be added.

  1. Put a plane in front of the camera, locked to it

  2. Add an animation of rain that responds to the camera angle

  3. Add guest-brain code to tell the guests when it's raining and to buy/open umbrellas (which darn well better be flexi-colored!).
Minimal resource usage, not too much extra coding. Yeah, voxel-particle rain would be too resource-intensive, but that's nowhere near the only way to do it.

Raining under shelter would be annoying, some kind of masking that responds to pieces or ground above the camera might help.

Oh, most important bit: toggle-box in the settings so you can choose if you want weather or not! [yesnod]
 
Last edited:
Yes, yes there are easy ways to create visual rain.. just take a screenshot and paint it... (2D)

But from what I read, you really want it all... including all the effects it has on buidlings, objects, rides etc... (wet effects or snow for example).
All object also have to have a "rain/snow/weather" collision box, and it has to collide with the terain.

That means: it needs physics, and "normal" physics only apply to 3D object, so weather has to be 3D.

Every 3D object needs to be drawn by your GPU, but before it can draw anything it needs to be calculated, guess where... Yes your CPU we call it DRAWCALLS.
Since planet coaster uses DX11 it can only happen on 1 core, wich if you didn't notice already has it's limitations depending on your CPU speed how large and detailed your park can be.
Because the game is mainly focused on building nice and beatiful parks and some seriously complicated management, it already melts CPU's when you skyrocket your creativy.

SO it's highly unlikely that we ever see weather except from special FX like we have, just like Bo mentioned here before.


short conclusion: It would break the playability and main focus of the game thanks to (extreme) performance loss.
 
weather has to be 3D

"weather" can also include temperature and clouds... but "rain" doesnt have to be 3D, I mean yeah people will complain about it clipping through buildings, but as long as it can be blocked by terrain that would be good enough IMO
 
Last edited:
It may just be me, but in my book there's few things than looking at the Santa's Workshop vid currently on PCFB page seeing the snow on the ground and the icicles hanging down and watching the peps walking around in their shorts and short sleeve shirts. May just be my mid-western mentality and while it's pretty. It just doesn't fit.
 
Yes, yes there are easy ways to create visual rain.. just take a screenshot and paint it... (2D)

But from what I read, you really want it all... including all the effects it has on buidlings, objects, rides etc... (wet effects or snow for example).
All object also have to have a "rain/snow/weather" collision box, and it has to collide with the terain.

That means: it needs physics, and "normal" physics only apply to 3D object, so weather has to be 3D.

Every 3D object needs to be drawn by your GPU, but before it can draw anything it needs to be calculated, guess where... Yes your CPU we call it DRAWCALLS.
Since planet coaster uses DX11 it can only happen on 1 core, wich if you didn't notice already has it's limitations depending on your CPU speed how large and detailed your park can be.
Because the game is mainly focused on building nice and beatiful parks and some seriously complicated management, it already melts CPU's when you skyrocket your creativy.

SO it's highly unlikely that we ever see weather except from special FX like we have, just like Bo mentioned here before.


short conclusion: It would break the playability and main focus of the game thanks to (extreme) performance loss.

Eh, I mean, you can cut a few corners to get the effect of rain pretty easily without all that needlessly complex functionality. What you could do is render the whole world from above into a texture using an orthographic projection. It would essentially be a height map of your current park and it would only change when you add an object. Then you make a few assumptions. Rain/Snow can only fall directly down. Slanting rain/snow would be a whole new can of worms. With that, you know where rain can and can't be. There's other complications too, I know, but you don't even need physics for a basic rain/snow.

The reason lighting is an issue is because a system has to be made that can handle N number of directions. This makes things like shadow mapping in a game like PC ridiculously expensive and complicated.
 
i could live with an weather overlay to be honest as long as it would not rain in the stalls or under terrain things would be fine for me i guess.

the more importang thing for the majority of people who want weather i guess is the reaction of the guests either by buying raincoats and umbrellas or avoiding outside attractions to prevent to get wet.
 
Last edited:
Eh, I mean, you can cut a few corners to get the effect of rain pretty easily without all that needlessly complex functionality. What you could do is render the whole world from above into a texture using an orthographic projection. It would essentially be a height map of your current park and it would only change when you add an object. Then you make a few assumptions. Rain/Snow can only fall directly down. Slanting rain/snow would be a whole new can of worms. With that, you know where rain can and can't be. There's other complications too, I know, but you don't even need physics for a basic rain/snow.

The reason lighting is an issue is because a system has to be made that can handle N number of directions. This makes things like shadow mapping in a game like PC ridiculously expensive and complicated.

That would be great for a map that doesn't change (pre-made). But since we are the creators of the map and are able to create infinite different lay-outs with it. Such projections would have to captured everytime you change the map (with every object you place/delete or terain edit). Since the main focus is building that would be like every few seconds it has to be calculated again, again, again,...

So in the end it's your GPU or CPU for those calculations, again.


I'm not saying it's impossible to make it, i'm just sayin it would be a serious performance loss that 80% (or more) of the players won't be happy with.
Even if you can toggle it off in the options. Those who don't turn it off will eventually start complaining about performance when it's on in their larger detailed full of guest parks.

I doubt anyone wants rain/snow or weather in general at only 10-30 FPS (isn't pritty)
 
But the rain is annoying in RCT3, you can’t shut it off. I’d rather have no rain in Planet Coaster or have a toggle to turn it on or off.
 
We could find the same immersive stuff with less works by instead of adding water/snow into the park, adding new cloths to the guest who will depends of the month ingame.

We could have 4 sets of cloths Spring/Summer/Autumn/Winter who will start and finish bond to the ingame months.

In winter time we will see the guest pup op with warmer cloths etc..
 
I just like the gameplay elements that can come with weather. Light sprinkle = a small % of guests will ignore the rides and seek out stalls/vista points/benches/tables. Heavy downpour wouldn't happen often but when it does it creates a high % of guests that wont ride anything. If it's a thunderstorm, coasters will shut down momentarily. These kind of random events would create better gameplay.

Plus you'd get new stalls for umbrellas and maybe rain ponchos. One of my fav memories was visiting Disney World when I was a kid back in the 90's and it was rainy so we bought plastic ponchos. We and others on Splash Mountain were all wearing them and I just have that vivid memory of everyone in rain yellow ponchos going through and down splash mountain! [tongue]
 
We need to be realistic, their is no way to have a real weather in this game, not with 15/20 fps max when the park is open.
 
I did some research and the only way we can get weather in PC is when Frontier completely rewrites their Cobra game engine which can affect the game on critical levels. Is that what we want then?
 
Back
Top Bottom