Command to change/disable weather (especially rain).

[ApacheTech]

I've read through the Wiki, and I can't find any way to change the weather to stop it raining. Is there such a command? If not, it would be a massive help to add a command that allows the change of weather.

The biggest reason for this is for people with epilepsy. I had infantile epilepsy, and although I don't have it now to any major degree, rain within video games is still very disorientating. In multiplayer games, I usually stay inside when it's raining, or use mods that disable rain effects. In Minecraft, I use Optifine to get rid of any visible rain on the screen. This game is nowhere near as bad as Minecraft is, but the constant streaming lines down the screen, mixed with mouse movement, and frame rates... it's nauseating.

Just something as simple as...

/weather clear
/weather set rain
/weather set stormy
/weather set extra-sunny

Currently, it says, "No such weather pattern found" whenever I try anything to stop the rain.

[Kaelty]

Yeah that sounds like a problem, but rain is kinda important since it waters fields etc. and so i think an option for people with epilepsy that disables certain effects (just the visuals not the effects themselves) might be a good way to go about it. weather will hardly be the only thing that might cause trouble, if not now then maybe later. It would also be a good idea to make it known how to add effects to the list for modders so they can make their own stuff affected by that option too.

Edited March 13, 2020 by Kaelty

[ApacheTech]

It's just been raining in my super-flat creative world for about 35 minutes, non-stop. No way to turn it off, so far as I know. That's why a specific command is necessary. In creative mode, I should be able to have full creative control of the game. Including the weather. I can turn the time back to day time, but not turn off the rain. It's not just the visual effects; it's the constant drilling of noise you get in the ears as well from the rain SFX. The weather system in the game is beautiful, don't get me wrong, and even in a Creative Sandbox, it can be hugely important, but most of the time in a Sandbox, weather systems just gets in the way. Even shutting down the world doesn't help because it saves the current state of the world. Just a simple "/weather clear" to stop the nausea would be a huge boon.

ADDENDUM:

If you run "/time speed 0" as a workaround, it stops the visual effects mid-animation, but the sound effects still play. You still get the sounds of the wind and rain, even though it's technically no longer raining, or windy.

Edited March 13, 2020 by ApacheTech

[Jeremy Betts]

I actually would just like the sound for weather to be a separate sound slider for weather. Thunder is always stupid loud without turning down all sounds. I get that thunder is loud IRL, but if you have the ability to adjust sound and music volume you should be able to turn down weather a bit. Also I was in a cave at like y10 and thunder was still loud? That's probably excessive.

[ApacheTech]

Definitely. Weather should always be on a separate sound channel. Immersion is great, but if it makes the game unplayable, it ruins the game. Weather sounds, including wind, rain, and thunder need to stop when the time speed is reduced to 0.

[ApacheTech]

Just turned off ambient sounds to get rid of the white noise of the rain, but wind and thunder are not classed as ambient sounds, for some reason. I still get the 120dB thunderclaps, but now with absolutely no warning. I've had to resort to playing only on mute.

Edited March 14, 2020 by ApacheTech

[Ari]

Any update on this? I'm glad there's now a separate volume slider for weather but I still need a way to turn the rain off in creative mode. I'm trying to build something in creative mode and I can't see anything and it won't stop raining. I get that rain is an important mechanic in survival but there should be a command to disable it or set the weather to "sunny" or something. I'm astonished to realize there is no such option, given how many customization and world edit features the game has. I've tried everything I could find in the wiki to no avail.

[junawood]

The problem is that we now have regional weather, and the rainfall can go up to "almost all the time". And that sucks.

In the previous versions, the weather in my worlds was always nicely balanced, mostly nice sunny summer (spring?) days to enjoy running around in the worlds exploring and doing whatever and having a great time, and then the occasional rain or thunderstorm to make it a bit more interesting and realistic. I really enjoyed that, but as discussed above, that occasional rain/thunder was already problematic for some and there should be an option to change at least the sound.

Now in the new version and a new world, I found a really nice area for my base, started building and gathering all kinds of stuff and everything was great... except for the rain.... By June I didn't want to leave my base anymore and run out into the almost constant rain under the dark clouds and just wanted to live in a cellar to get away from the nerve wrecking constant rain sound. It was depressing. The few moments of sun and no rain and no rain sound were such a relief! But then it kept raining again.

I actually thought about going back to the previous version of the game, because this can really ruin the game for me. But first, I wanted to see a whole year in the game and I had read about problems with rain that lasted too long and I thought Tyron was working on that and maybe I was just really unlucky in the first couple of months in the game and it rained way less in September and I had some better weather on some trips.

But then we got the next update with "Feature: The environment dialog (opened by 'C') now also shows rough rainfall frequency" and I saw that my base is in an area where it is supposed to rain "almost all the time".

Yeah. That means that this whole region is basically uninhabitable. And every other region like this.

Now to find a nice place for a base, you don't only have to find an area that looks the way you want and has all the things you want and great areas around it, and with high temporal stability (one thing that already ruined great areas for some people so that they asked if it's possible to change that) and maybe no wolves around and whatever people prefer around their base, but now you also have to find all that in a region with the amount of rainfall you prefer. Whyyy?? What's the benefit? It's unrealistic and I don't know who'd actually enjoy constant rain, constant rain sound and the darkness under the clouds all the time or having huge uninhabitable areas because of it. Some rain is nice for crops if you don't use water blocks for some reason, and it's nice in the winter when it snows a lot, but to me that's no good reason for this regional weather system with rainfall going up to "almost all the time" in otherwise normal areas. Is there something that makes this depressing weather system worth it?

I absolutely love this game, have a couple of worlds, played xxx hours o_O and really hope that this continues to be a game that I love this much, not only because I enjoy it but it was also a great escape over the last couple of months and the absolute opposite of depressing. But if this constant rain thing had happened to me as a newbie who doesn't know much about the game, I'm not sure if I had fought my way through this depressing weather and kept playing.

 

[junawood]

2 hours ago, Aira said:

a command to disable it or set the weather to "sunny" or something

Maybe this helps? I haven't tried these myself yet, though.

https://wiki.vintagestory.at/index.php?title=List_of_server_commands/weather

[Tyron]

Errr yea, sorry about that. Particularly v1.13 made rain less controllable. For now, in v1.13, you can use this command:

/weather setprecip -1

...to stop the rain during a play session. I still need to make that it remembers that settings so you don't have to type it on every startup.

It's definitely not intentional to force that amount of rain onto players. v1.13 introduced a new trade off in that regard, where i sacrificed rain control-ability for being able to simulate snow accumulation in an efficient manner.

I'll see if i can get a world edit UI and maybe world config thing in there to control the rain to a greater degree!

 

[Tyron]

Ok, made 3 things now:

- The value of /weather setprecip is now permantly stored with the save game
- Already from a few weeks ago i coded /whenwillitstopraining where you can look up after how many days the rain ends
- I now added /weather stoprain which fast forwards only the rain simulation to the day where it stops raining
- Did some tiny tweaks to the rain simulation to have the rain patterns change a bit more often

Is Aira (and everyone else) happy now?

[David Taylor]

I seem to have settled in a place where it rains 'most of the time' and it is pretty annoying. Luckily not far away is something else where it only rains a lot so might move over there and it's just a bit of a walk to the farms.

I was looking at the json files and see landforms.json has a islandchess entry with minRain: 120. No other entry has that key. Is that what's causing the rain? If so, what unit does "120" represent?

[junawood]

Thanks a lot for the workarounds, @Tyron! That should help in Creative mode. And /whenwillitstopraining sounds lovely, I need that IRL. ;D

Though I hope you'll find solutions to let it rain waaayy less and make the sky less cloudy and gray for one of the next updates (or does the more often changing rain patterns already do that?). It was really great in the previous version. I love the sunny days with blue sky and some white clouds, but I also like some rain and thunderstorms once in a while, to make it more realistic.

And especially newbies might not know enough about the game to search for commands to change the weather and just find the weather annoying and maybe even the mood of the game unpleasant, if they haven't experienced the awesome sunny days yet.

[Bladimiro Herrero]

I love the weather update, but yes the rain has to be twiked a bit, on one occasion it started raining and I let it go it was raining for six days straight before I got tired and used the stop rain command and finally decided to move my base even thought  I loved the area.

And I also "need " my sunny days to explore around ( live in Ontario Canada) we have enough gloomy days. . .don't need them in my game , I'm in winter now and the snow looks terrific and I think I know a bit about snow were I live. cheers

[Zanthippe]

Hi, another newbie here in agreement that rain can use some tweaking when there’s time for it. I’m on seed #3 trying to get away from 24/7 rain in game but it’s back again. The worlds seem to do the same thing-start out sunny then in day 2 or 3 it starts raining and never  stops. I live in the tropics in real life and it sure doesn’t rain this much!  I love the game, so beautiful and dynamic, I can’t wait to see what future updates hold! Thanks for a great, if slightly drenching, experience!
 

UPDATE: I have now hit on a location that is only raining intermittently, with the sky also clearing at times, so I think trying several seeds paid off in the end. 

Edited October 4, 2020 by Karen Newcombe

[Ari]

Thanks for adding these options. It seems clear that rain needs some tweaking - even rainforests don't have constant rain. But having some tools to tweak it ourselves is extremely helpful for now.