Is a Weather control addon possible?

Rm4g3dD0v · July 2014

Eversince i started the game I'm having rainy weather [like 80% of the time] in all regions that have dolmens. I suspect it's a messup with the overcast that spreads from a dolmen, however I have lately gotten quite tired of the depressive monotony. Since I 've realized that weather is a clientside phenomena and does not sync with the server, i 'd like to ask if it would be possibe for someone to make an addon to control weather?

ombyoureaninja · July 2014

I'd use this. Sounds interesting.

SirAndy · July 2014

From what i can tell, the weather is determined locally by your client.
That means there might actually be a way to control the weather.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/122684/ineresting-observation-about-time-of-day-and-weather/p1

GnatB · July 2014

SirAndy wrote: »

From what i can tell, the weather is determined locally by your client.
That means there might actually be a way to control the weather.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/122684/ineresting-observation-about-time-of-day-and-weather/p1

Don't see how that thread indicates anything of the sort. Just that PTS shares the same day/night/weather cycle as regular servers. Could just mean that it's all based on the clock/weather where the servers are located or somesuch.

Should be easy enough to actually tell if it's clientside though, wait for it to rain, and ask folks in chat what kind of weather THEY are seeing. Assuming no trolls, if they say something different, then it's not client side.

SirAndy · July 2014

GnatB wrote: »

Don't see how that thread indicates anything of the sort. Just that PTS shares the same day/night/weather cycle as regular servers. Could just mean that it's all based on the clock/weather where the servers are located or somesuch.

Should be easy enough to actually tell if it's clientside though, wait for it to rain, and ask folks in chat what kind of weather THEY are seeing. Assuming no trolls, if they say something different, then it's not client side.

@GnatB
Already did that, even if that wasn't explicitly mentioned in the thread i linked.

If you're grouped with people some have completely different weather on their screen compared to yours, even if you're standing right next to each other in-game.

I haven't been able to confirm the exact mechanics of this yet, but i suspect daylight and weather are seeded from your local computer time.
Which would explain both, the fact that people that are geographically far away from you see different weather and that your local weather is the same for LIVE and PTS.

nudel · July 2014

@SirAndy‌ Gonna go and throw a monkey wrench in your theory there. My SO and I play the game together, within the same household and our weather frequently does not match in game. So it's not based on your real world geographic location. I have no idea what it's based on to be honest.

SirAndy · July 2014

nudel wrote: »

@SirAndy‌ Gonna go and throw a monkey wrench in your theory there. My SO and I play the game together, within the same household and our weather frequently does not match in game. So it's not based on your real world geographic location. I have no idea what it's based on to be honest.

I agree (to an extend). You can change your computer time and timezone and the weather and daytime will not change.

However, it is still possible that your game time and weather cycle is *seeded* when you install the game, possible using your local time as an initial seed.

My point being, it's still somehow client based and not a universal server time/weather.
It is also shared between characters (and the LIVE and PTS client) on the same computer.

Try it out, if you're in-game during a rainstorm, load an alt that is in a different zone/alliance etc. and your alt will have the same time of day and weather.

zgrssd · July 2014

I often play with two others behind the same router, connected to the same switch and in the same group. And we all got different weather.
So we can exclude a IP or Geo based weather.
We can also exlcude group synched weather.

Weather currently has no ingame effect, so there is a decent chance it is actually purely client side. No point hogging your server down with something that has no real value.

There seems to be no data being shared in the "%userprofile%\Documents\Elder Scroll Online" folder.

The game also has no folder in "%userprofile%\AddData" (the usual place to share information).

While it has writing rights to it's folder, there is no file there to share such data.

It could still be something in the registry.
Or maybe the login server stores when your account was created and that timestamp is used as seed?

nudel · July 2014

I find the revelation that weather effects are client side amusing. This means that those on the forums who complain about constant rain literally have their own private Eeyore cloud following them around. :P

Seerah · July 2014

lol at the Eeyore cloud.

In order for an addon to be able to control the weather, there needs to be API for this purpose. There is not.

DigitalHype · July 2014

nudel wrote: »

I find the revelation that weather effects are client side amusing. This means that those on the forums who complain about constant rain literally have their own private Eeyore cloud following them around. :P

This sounds like a classic case of negativity bias, to me.

I suspect its random, or probably has the same level of randomness for each client. If it is part of the client code, then we all run the same client. It could be somehow seeded at install. But, what would be the purpose? You could try deleting and re-installing the client, to see if you get a different result?

One might argue that it uses some sort of hashing algorithm to seed. In which case, you might get he same result. (e.g. it's based on your h/w). But, this would be a lot of programming complexity for no real purpose.