Request: Seasonal Effects & Environemental Growth

[Majidah]

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[Nakiamiie]

Just out of curiosity, would it be too difficult from a technical standpoint to implement seasonal effects and environmental growth characteristics to give the world more of a live feel over time?

Seasonal Effects: Four seasons a year with a transitory period from one to the other. Obviously Winter snow melts, Spring showers and flowers, Summer growth and abundance, Autumns brings about changing colors and colder temperatures which lead back to winter...

How hard would it be to create 4 versions of Eorzea corresponding to these seasons with a transition from one to the other on a yearly cycle? which leads me to my next point...

Environmental growth: This cycle would repeat over a 10 or 100 year (in game) period, but the concept stays the same. Let's use a tree for example: Seedling Sprouts, grows into a shrub or small tree, attains maturity at which point it can be harvested, and finally falls over in the wind due to it's large stature and a weakening root system to finish as a fallen log which harbors the growth of various forms of flora that can then be harvested such has mushrooms etc.

You can see I have tied in Botanist into the above example, in this case a tree only becomes available to logging at it's mature state and eventually the same point becomes unavailable to main hand logging but available to offhand harvesting in the form of a rotting log. In this case each tree would have a 10 or 100 year cycle, and if each tree was implemented at a different period in the cycle you could create a living forest of sorts.

Any ideas? I am no game designer or programmer so I have no idea what the feasability or complexity involved would be but I am informed that other MMOs have seasonal effects to a degree or another.

Please, Discuss.

Edit: Like if you would like to see this implemented.

That would be awesome!

An easy way to do this too is to have certain game elements the devs change with every update. They can also re-use these elements for years to come too, so it's one time effort and only swapping after that. (Similar to what they are doing with Dalamund, every patch it changes.)

[Matsume]

That would be awesome!

An easy way to do this too is to have certain game elements the devs change with every update. They can also re-use these elements for years to come too, so it's one time effort and only swapping after that. (Similar to what they are doing with Dalamund, every patch it changes.)

Yes, my thought's exactly. Actually it would be closer to the moon phases than Dalamud in that it would be a cyclical event that repeats over cycles much longer than 30 in game days. For 1 season this would obviously change every 4 in game months, and repeat every in game year. As for the environmental growth characteristics this could change on a longer term cycle such as that of 5-10 or 20 in game years.

It wouldn't necessarily have to be tied to patches but I'm for anything that works. I assume that every tree or cluster of trees is hand mde and placed ontop of a 3D computer generated map. So my assumption is that the devs could take eah element, make four versions of them corresponding to the seasons and implement cyclical changes on them like that of the moon phases. It shouldn't take 4x as long since the first stage is already complete and the first stage would be the base upon which the rest would be built. Since they wouldn't have to recreate everything, just change the colors and add snow for example, this should theoretically take a lot less time than the constrution of the actual environments themselves.

As for the life and death of trees etc, this might take more time, or not. Again, i imagine they could make 4 stages in their growth cycle, not unlike the seasons. That would be, seedling/sapling, young tree, mature tree, fallen over rotting log. The seedling stage and young tree stage would not be harvestable in any shape or form, but the mature tree could be gathered for logs, and the fallen over rotting log would provide food for off hand harvestable mushrooms, herbs etc.

The one thing to consider would be that, combined, every tree would need 16 images corresponding to each growth cyle in each season. Understandably this would take quite a lot of work. But my original question is to field professionals out there that might give me a hint as the the feasability of my assumptions from the server stand point and the complexity involved in programming.

A rep respons would be ideal, but I've never gotten one from all of my honest posts. All the while I have seen some rediculously banal suggestions get reps attention which leads me to believe I am being ignored by bayohne and the like...

[Tombah]

This was actually one of my questions that didn't get chosen for The Future of FFXIV (TM) interview.

From a technical standpoint, it doesn't take *that* long to make three extra sets (of textures/models) for a total of 4 seasons, it's just that the transition would be abrupt. Like, yesterday it's all cherry blossoms and today there's nothing left.

A smooth transition is out of the question, development cost etc.

Anyway I think even an abrupt theme change would be better than nothing.

[neorei]

i like this!

[Elexia]

Hell even FFXI has seasonal changes. They aren't that big (some places get snow that normally doesn't, like Batallia/Rolanberry Fields as well as Rolanberries change color with the seasons) but they did it there so they could easily do it here.