A fully dynamic weather system for GZDoom, LZDoom, and Zandronum.

  • View media
  • View media
  • View media
  • View media
  • View media
  • View media
Post article RSS Articles

Hey all! Have an update for you all.

First thing that's changed is there's a new, much larger map! Although, I still have to populate it with more buildings.

Screenshot Doom 20240706 225008

In addition, I've fixed the graphical glitching when buildings collapse. I used to have 2 stages of destruction on the original house, I plan on re-implementing that again before the final release, but for this update I prioritized functionality over a single feature. The yellow house has incomplete destruction implementation, the roofs will collapse to the ground but walls and wood debris will not appear, this is not a bug.

Screenshot Doom 20240706 231806

Speaking of yellow house, my real-life storm chasing partner Moss re-designed the red bricks, it's a subtle change but over time I hope to have very few assets left over from Lenny!

Screenshot Doom 20240707 091139

I also prioritized making hail melt thanks to a comment by TwisterGuy:

Screenshot Doom 20240706 232620

I wanted to mention a few plans for near-future updates and share some of our footage of the real life storms and tornadoes the ones in the games are based on!

+Make Tornado Outbreak Mode toggleable from the main menu

+Add tall, "destructible" grass

+Add NPCs - NPCs seem to be lacking in the modern storm chasing genre, and speaking of the storm chasing genre. . .

Originally I only set out to make a dynamic weather system for modders and developers using modern ZDoom forks, but after a long-awaited storm chasing game recently slapped fans of the genre in the face with poor performance, entirely preset weather, and a price tag you'd think would be a joke, my long-term goal with this mod now is to make a sequel to my 2005 Storm Chasing game for TI-86. I have not found a single storm chasing game that pre-dates mine, the closest I found from my research would be the original flash version of Storm Chasers - The Chase, which corresponded to the Discovery Channel show that first aired in 2007, although I never found a specific release date for it.

Although I titled the game "Storm Chasing" when uploading to ticalc.org, the title screen said "$torm Cha$er." Considering "Storm Chasers" is now in two game titles, I think I'll be naming the sequel "Storm Chasing 2."

TI86 screenshot2

Difficulty was determined by the "Tornado Strength" selected by the player. The player then had to survive driving past a tornado of that "strength," the stronger tornadoes were more likely to kill the player, it was really all just RNG driven though!

TI86 screenshot1

Something I want to bring back for the sequel that's in all the modern storm chasing games is currency! In the original you did earn money for surviving a chase, however, high scores were not saved and money wasn't cumulative. Just like dying, the amount of money was somewhat random, although higher F-scale difficulties would generate larger sums of money than small ones.

TI86 screenshot3

For the sequel I want money to be earned by selling photographs, saving civilians with warnings, and taking contracts from NPCs (such as retrieving lost probes, deploying UAVs, taking them on tours, etc). I want the player to own the house with the indoor area, and lose money if the house is destroyed, as well as making other houses for the player to buy with money they earn. Of course, as a storm chasing game there will be a vehicle to drive and maintain, fuel to consume (and possibly food), and new equipment to purchase!

Happy cloud watching!

The Weather Mod


The Weather Mod 0.81B Uploaded!

The Weather Mod 0.81B Uploaded!

News

Recent upload adds bouncing hail, snow melting animations, and the tornado outbreak add-on!

Introducing The Weather Mod!

Introducing The Weather Mod!

News

I'm expanding the dynamic weather system from Lenny for all modders and GZDoom developers!

Add file RSS Files
The Weather Mod

The Weather Mod

Demo

Second public release of The Weather Mod, 0.81. Supports GZDoom and Zandronum, standalone running versions included for both. Tornado Outbreak add-on...

Post comment Comments
TwisterGuy
TwisterGuy - - 3 comments

Hello,

i'm just leaving this comment here to encounter some issue,
the issue is the house lag, on random times, the house collapses and my frame dropped to almost 0 fps,

Overall this game is quite nice, really brings back retro times.
maybe the hail should melt after it's there for 8-15 minutes.
and maybe fix the tornado leaving the parent storm if you can

Thanks.

Reply Good karma Bad karma+2 votes
An00bus Creator
An00bus - - 52 comments

Duly noted, thank you for the feedback! I've been trying to find ways to optimize performance, one of those being to simply decrease the number of weather spawners on the map. The destruction physics are a bit jank, that I might have to recode.

Hail melting is completely doable, consider that done by next update!

I've been trying to figure out exactly how to pull off keeping the tornadoes from wandering outside the parent supercell, because I also want them to be able to retrograde. That said, it's one of the many things on my to do list!

Reply Good karma+1 vote
ANDROIDFERRET
ANDROIDFERRET - - 1,183 comments

Hey there

First I was absolutely hyped.
Thought we get an universal weather mod with dynamic changes and such.
Then I started the game.

It's opening a big open map with one building.
On the open area the clouds you can see in the pictures above spawn and start to poor down random stripes of rain. I say stripes cause it looks like 2m thick areas. Not like real rain sadly.

Then there are snow ones. The snow falls and even stays on the ground for a few moments. Looks strange but I wonder if, with some work, we could get building up snow. That would be insane.

Then there are the thunder clouds. Those are amazing.
Love the effect of those lightning strikes.

I hope you manage to make the mod work universally and change the functions so that it really starts looking realistic.

The original weather mod I know has some amazing effects. Is that yours?

Other than that I hope you continue working on this.

Reply Good karma Bad karma+2 votes
An00bus Creator
An00bus - - 52 comments

So I actually already have plans to change the rain, it's placeholder from Lenny (https://www.moddb.com/games/lenny), a cartoony TC mod I made for an E1M1 game jam with dynamic thunderstorms that I eventually derived this whole weather system from. I am not the creator of the original weather mod, this is just something I've been doing for fun on my spare time.

The snow piling was already a plan as well, I could make it stay indefinitely and pile up, but my current thinking is just to make it stay longer, pile up, and make a melting animation for when it disappears so as to not have it pile so high it inevitably affects playability.

I'm glad you like the thunderstorms, those were created using real-life photography gathered by chasing storms and tornadoes! I'm hoping to make the hail stones bounce, I did try at one point but they glitched around the map so I removed the feature for now. The thunderstorms are going to be a focal point for me as I want to use this as a basis for a storm chasing game. I know there are a lot of them out there now, but I technically invented the genre on my calculator (https://ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/372/37289.html) and wanted to make a slightly updated version.

As for the map, I know it's currently small, but my main focus with it right now is making the house collapse properly when it takes enough damage. It currently partially works, it gets a little janky but it's triggered by a script, which in turn is triggered by destroying a fake hitbox asset that's also SUPPOSED to create "roof shingle" projectiles when hit by lightning, hail, or a tornado.

I will definitely be continuing to work on this, and I appreciate the feedback!

Reply Good karma+1 vote
ANDROIDFERRET
ANDROIDFERRET - - 1,183 comments

You invented storm chaser games?? That's SOOO amazing!
I'm playing one ok android called GETAWAY STORM. It's free and one of my favourite racing games on android..

The house collapses ? I've not seen that. Have to check.

Will the mod be universal ?

Damn that sounds sooo cool. I hope you keep working on it

Reply Good karma Bad karma+1 vote
An00bus Creator
An00bus - - 52 comments

You mean universal for all Doom source ports? Unfortunately this will be specific to modern ZDoom forks (GZDoom, LZDoom, and Zandronum).

Reply Good karma+1 vote
Post a comment

Your comment will be anonymous unless you join the community. Or sign in with your social account:

X