Seasons

[anfros]

I know this has been suggested before but I hope I have a different enough take on it to justify another thread.

Right now we have a system in the game where the time of day is determined by how far west you are, where the lightness is morning/day and as you travel westward you gradually enter evening and further in you get to total darkness/midnight, well known as the time of the arcane. I would like to suggest a similar system for seasons, where the seasons depend on where in the world you are.

Spring, as the "dawn" of the year, is to the east. This reflects the optimism the pilgrims feel when first arriving in the new world. To the west is autumn, "evening", which reflects the general feeling of darkness and the heavy feelings the pilgrims feel as they travel further into the land. Autumn is also the best season to find mushrooms and witches are known to make all kinds of concoctions from poisonous mushrooms. To the north and south would be winter and summer respectively.

All the seasons should have their own characteristics. For example some crops could grow faster or some foragables might be more common. Winter could have animals which provide fine furs. Maybe you would have to wear warm clothes to keep warm in deep winter and drink water to stay hydrated in deep summer.

The summer/winter that is in the darkness might be dessert/ice wastes which would be really harsh but provide a good hiding place for crafty pilgrims. This wouldn't make sense geographically but the early colonists didn't really penetrate far into the continent and for all they knew this might have been the case.

[JohnCarver]

Kinda cool. I like the idea. Unfortunately it sounds like most of this would need to be a part of mapgen and thus require a world reset.

[DarkNacht]

Kinda cool. I like the idea. Unfortunately it sounds like most of this would need to be a part of mapgen and thus require a world reset.

Seasons, area or time based, seem like they would go better in the expeditions anyway.

[JohnCarver]

Yes, if they dont' make it in the first expedition I'm sure we will get around to them for a future one.

[anfros]

Well sooner or later I guess there are going to be enough changes of the kind that requires reset to warrant a new world. I just thought this might be a cool way to interpret seasons in a way that isn't cosmetic or cyclic (which in my opinion tends to just be annoying).

Maybe the expeditions could take place in different seasons. Though this might make even less sense than the system in my first post. Also it would ruin the thematic part of it.

[shizuka]

is day and night lighgting is ever gonna be added in salem?
that would be so cool, would feel so real

[grapefruitv]

is day and night lighgting is ever gonna be added in salem?
that would be so cool, would feel so real

Whole Darkness concept kinda stands in the way. Not saying that can never happen, but it would require much more thinking, than in any other game.
Also night lighting is not fun and realism is not always cool, if it will look same as darkness, everyone will simply play with nightvision turned on 100% of the time (a lot of people already do).

[Scilly_guy]

Kinda cool. I like the idea. Unfortunately it sounds like most of this would need to be a part of mapgen and thus require a world reset.

Seasons, area or time based, seem like they would go better in the expeditions anyway.

Why not both? The whole point of seasons should be that they change, there really should be some time aspect to them. But this then raises issues of what happens to newbies who spawn during winter, a time when survival should be much tougher.
I picture seasons running in waves vertically down the map, so that there is always spring or summer somewhere in the spawning belt. Don't see why this would need a new map, just have local temperature a function of the northing, I assume that is Y, something like sin ((y/Max y*2π)+gametime%gameyear) where % is the remainder operator. I wrote a whole seasonal weather system when I was at uni that would randomly decide (half a year in advance) if summer and winter would be late or early and harsh or mild, that was for a different project. I don't know how it would need to be adapted for the server to make it computationally cheap enough.

Reason for edit: I started writing this on my tablet and the battery died, so I finished the maths on my desktop

[DarkNacht]

But this then raises issues of what happens to newbies who spawn during winter, a time when survival should be much tougher.

This is the main reason that I think it would go better in the expeditions. Also making it so only some of the map is in a season at any one time removes some of the interesting things about having seasons, and would make noobs search for the right season to settle in.

[Scilly_guy]

I completely agree that they would work better in expeditions and look forward to that.

I believe the OP was suggesting "static" seasons, which completely misses the point of seasons. Sure, if all 4 seasons were available at once then someone without a base could find the ideal position, but once you settle down you would be subject to the changes that seasons are supposed to challenge you with. I'm guessing you didn't realise that I was suggesting a system where by the seasons would travel north to south (or vice-versa). If you were to try moving with the summer you would eventually get stuck against the edge of the map and have to run back through winter to get to the spring.