smaug/doc/WeatherHowTo.txt

This is a little something I threw together to explain how to make the weather system work.
Also included are the helpfiles for the different commands and other things needing an
explanation. - Kayle

First off, You're going to need a bit of a plan. The release version of the weather map is
set up to be a 10 by 10 square map, giving it 100 cells. Modify WEATHER_SIZE_X and 
WEATHER_SIZE_Y in weather.h to accomodate the size you want your map to be. 

Then, Each Cell that will be assigned an area is going to need to be set up. You do this by 
cycling through each cell (preferrably after you've figured out how you want your worlds 
weather and climates laid out), and assign each cell a climate and a hemisphere. You do this
with the setweather command. 

EX: setweather 0 1 climate rainforest  --This would assign the rainforest climate controller
to cell (0,1) which would then have any areas assigned to that cell an abundant amount of rainfall,
a rather high level of humidity, and normally high temperatures.
EX2: setweather 0 1 hemisphere southern  --This would assign this cell to the southern hemisphere
which basically causes it's seasons to reverse. Snow would fall in summer rather than winter, and
winters would be rather hot.

Now, the reason I state each cell that will be assigned an area will need to be set, is because 
it's alright to leave cells that will not have anything in them to be set to the default 
climate/hemisphere. The point of the climate controllers and hemispheres is to prevent the cell
from reaching a state that it should never ever reach. Equilibrium. Equilibrium is a state of 
utmost balance. If the system achieves balance, and that is what it's going to actively try and 
find. There will be no more changes. So if you don't change at least a couple cells, then you 
will have a problem when the system reaches balance, and there is no more changing weather. 
Earth is dynamic like that, the different climates prevent the worlds weather systems from reaching
balance because deserts always suck all humidity out of the atmosphere, and rainforests always
produce a lot of extra, its the same in this system. And that's what the climate controllers do.
A detailed explanation of what each climate is, and does will be included in the helpfiles at the
end of this document.

Once you've assigned climates and hemispheres to each cell, You'll then be able to assign areas to
cells. This is rather simple, With your plan in hand, begin going through your areas and assigning
them cells with the aset command. Initial release limits this command to immortals of level 60 or
higher. This can be adjusted in the aset command located in build.c. It would look something like:
aset newdark.are weatherx 0
aset newdark.are weathery 1

And you would then proceed to do this for each individual area your mud currently has. Now, you
are probably thinking, "Wow, this all seems rather tedious." And yes, you wold be correct in
thinking that it is tedious. It is honestly insanely tedious, and for already established MUDs
with a playerbase, it might honestly be a nightmare. But to have a fully functioning weather system
based off of Real weather, and that produces relatively real weather patterns, I think it's worth it.
When I undertook this project, I figured it would be something real simple, like adding a few things
here and there to the existing weather code. I was very, very, very wrong. No offense to Fireblade,
but that system was seriously lacking in a lot of places. There are a lot of things addressed in this
system, and while it's tedious as hell to install, I will admit, I think most people will find the
Pros, far outweigh the Cons.

PROS
# Real seasons calculated from the calendar settings.
# Climate regions which impact other climate regions nearby.
# Sensible weather events based on season. No snowstorms in summer. No scorching heatwaves in winter. 
Stuff like that. -This one is actually a little bit touchy. It will depend entirely on which hemisphere
the cell is assigned to as to which will occur in which season.
# Terrain changes based on season. ex: lakes which freeze in winter, and that sort of thing.
# Settable number of hours in a day, days in a month, and months in a year.
# Holidays which can be created and set to the desired date.
# Allows for Weather to persist over reboots/shutdowns/hotboots.
# Allow for full influence over all surrounding cells, and surrounding cells influence cell.
# Dynamic messages that will notify players of changes in weather for example:
"The pouring rain lessens a bit and changes over to a steady snow."
# Easily inegrate weather into other systems via the use or prewritten interaction functions. These functions
are used to prevent corruption of the map, and to emulate encapsulation.

CONS
# Tedious Installation and initial setup.
# Control Weather still a cheesy spell, just modified to fit the new implementation. Hopefully
I'll be capable of writing a better version of control weather for a later, updated release.