Okay, I think you're talking about something different to me! What giant black/white screen? Can you show a screenshot of this?

OK, I posted the pictures previously because that demonstrates the problem. You have seen my world, so you know it isn't just that tiny little bay in the picture, it is much larger. When I zoom out, a large white screen begins to cover the opposite side from which I am viewing. I occurs in EIG too just it is black there instead.

Also When I meant the fog, I meant the option under View in CAW which allows to unmurkify (if thats a word) the water so its see-through. the fog is sometimes automatically off when I load a world even though the program says its on and it wont turn on unless I restart it.

Oh, you're just talking about the draw distance? I thought you were talking about when the different weather types don't show in game or in CAW when you use the 'cloudiness' slider.

The white 'screen' you're talking about is just a limitation to the distance CAW will render at; it won't draw things in the extreme distance. So if you zoom right out, parts of the map will vanish. In game it is similar, but of course you cannot hide the fog so the viewer will just see a foggy haze anyway. This is why I did my map in-game, by taking lots of quite close images and stitching them together. If you zoom out far enough to get the entire map in, you lose the world in fog (or reach the extent of the draw limits in CAW).

It's not something that is likely to bother people who play your world, since they are not likely to want to zoom out that far.

OK, thanks

*n00b warning*
I haven't had much time to play with the weather files up until now, outside of a few quick tweaks to the ini files and adding Billowycloudfx in CAW.

I'd like to make some flavor packs for weather as package files, so anyone who plays my world(or any world without embedded ini files) can change the weather to suit their preferences. Could probably make a folder named 'Weather' in the Mods framework and rename all the package files therein to .page. Then change .page to .package if you want to activate a particular weather formulation. I like the flexibility that grants the individual player.

Mainly, I want to know if I should still package according to Claeric...
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=388840
and if I make them as packages, will I still be able to easily embed them into a world file, later?

Another thing I'd like to do is make a precision(better backdrop) color ramp designer as a layered PSD file, where you could add gradients and slide them laterally to adjust the timing and focus(among other things) of custom made gradients.

I'm curious as to why the ini files fail to load at times(save game and weather change). I had this happen numerous times at first, then made a set of ini's with only the probabilities and daytime blooms altered...in 5 weeks these have never failed to load.

Interesting that you can use altered Medieval files, too...

For making an override, Clearic's method of editing the basegame ini files would still work, but you would need to manually change the RGB values. If you are planning to import these files to a world in future, I would go for the EP colour ramps and ini files rather than modding the basegame inis. The main reason for this is that this is the way EA have done sea/sky overrides for all of their worlds, so there may be a performance advantage. Also, anything EA have used in their worlds will most likely work with future EPs too, so that's a good reason to do it that way. The colour ramps work fine when bundled with the ini files into a package, and you can just import the contents of that package into a world at a later time.


That's a good idea, but it's already quite easy to select an individual gradient in a DDS to change it. Remember that they are small files; each gradient is only a few pixels high. If you make a PSD then users will need to flatten that image to make their DDS, as using the wrong format for these ramps can crash the game!


It seems to be just the cloud pattern that fails to load; the colour ramps, weather intervals and lighting settings load fine. It's a bug that happens with the EA worlds too (France and Lunar Lakes are two I can think of where I've particularly noticed it). So if you only change daytime bloom then you won't notice it!


The weather files seem to be mostly similar, but there are a few files in Tamlo31's download which do not seem to exist in the Sims 3 files, especially when imported into worlds.

China and the other vacation worlds only have a custom clear and partly cloudy sky. For China the probability weightings are set to 1 for clear and 0 for partly cloudy. So it is extremely likely that China will use the China clear sky, and unlikely that it will use anything else.

I presume that China will occasionally use the basegame default skies for the settings that it doesn't have overrides for, but I've never played it long enough to prove this.

If you want to use a combination of Bridgeport and China, try using the China files for clear/ partly cloudy, and the Bridgeport files for overcast, custom and Stormy. If you change the probability weights to be equal, then they should all show up at different times randomly.

I've been trying to figure this out all day ... and I still don't have a clue So please excuse my ignorance!

I've read the first few OPs thoroughly, but as I said I'm still very much confused. Simsample, I download the extracted files from Twinbrook and Bridgeport, saved them to my desktop etc etc. Backed-up everything (wouldn't want to lose me lovely world )Imported them to my world fine. But, in game, I've a weird graphical issue:





As you can see, everything looks fine from Map View, but when I zoom down ... And it's only those two textures; the mud texture that also forms the base etc for the lane ways in the world, and also the pebbles texture (from Hidden Springs).
This glitch occurs with both BP and TB files (I tried them seperately - I don't plan for them to stay, was just trying stuff out to see how it'd look). Strange though how the textures look fine in CAW.

Also, do you know of any pre-set ini files that would be suitable for, eh, an Irish world :pint: After playing around with the Bridgeport settings in CAW and seeing it in action in-game, I think they'll be suitable. It's just the camera flyover intro thing that I may want to get rid of...

Sorry if I'm being a bother, I'll revise the 1st page again tonight, if I've time. I just need a head start, that's all I've learned how to import the files into the world, so at least that's a start! Thanks if ya can help. :lovestruc

Hmm, that's odd; have you tried deleting your CAW caches, game caches and world caches? Does it happen if you import any other files apart from the Bridgeport and Twinbrook files? Both of those are quite similar and very foggy, so it could be that there is an issue with the way your computer renders the fog. Also, make sure you are importing the DDS colour ramps as well as the ini files, as those are necessary. It does look to me as though that's an error in your world though- does it occur if you remove the files altogether?

The flyover is containted in S3_1F886EAD_00000000_7886A7F59355762F%%+_INI.ini, just delete that one to get rid of those.

For Irish weather, I really like the France ini files- the clear one has some nice clouds and gives a nice colour to the grass. I used that one incombination with one from China and the foggy ones from Bridgeport in a world I made for my daughter, and it was quite similar to the weather you get in the UK and Ireland. So maybe try those?

Hmm, I'll see about deleting those caches. I've only imported the files from Bridgeport and Twinbrook, so I wouldn't know about any other files

I'll try everything you've mentioned ... thank you sample & I'll get back to ya about it

I really just wanted to pop in and say thank you to everyone for their invaluable information in this thread. I have long wanted custom skies/seas etc and could never figure it out. Like so many things in life, all it took was slowing down and correctly following instructions, haha. So again, thank you My new world thanks you too, for its sexy new sunsets :P

Well done i saw drones- we would all be interested to see some images of your skies, and of course you are welcome to share your ini files here too if you like!

Finally finished the Color Ramp designer that I alluded to in an earlier post. This has what I consider to be a more accurate timeline indicator along with a layered arrangement that should significantly reduce the
time it takes to construct color ramps. All EA color ramps are included as layers...thanks to simsample for providing those.


This assumes that you have the DDS plugin.

Photoshop:
All layers are precisely aligned so as to allow fast interchanging of color ramps between layers.

Zoom to around 600%

Use selection tools(Magic Wand Tool with tolerance set to 1 & Rectangular Marquee Tool) to select the row or section of row you wish to edit on the 'Designer' layer. Copy & 'paste in place' from included EA color ramps, or design your own gradients. Use the selection tools 'add to selection'(for the wand) and 'intersect with selection'(with marquee) modes to enable multiple & partial row selection(s), respectively.

As per simsample, when you have finished with the color ramps on an image, flatten the layers, save as a 8.8.8.8 ARGB 32 bpp DDS file, with no mip maps.
Maybe an easier way to do this would be to open up the DDS file you are replacing and copy and 'paste into place' the final flattened PSD image and simply select save.

Also, the original weather type and last 3 instance characters of the original files are used as layer names where applicable.

Let me know if there are any corrections I need to make...



4-18-12 Updated

I've uploaded a new version that includes a graph overlay, a flashbar builder and override package along with other tweaks...


I'll be writing a tutiorial for this in the upcoming weeks, but for now I should mention that if you want to alter a section of one of the included EA colour bars there are two ways:
The first is to simply select the colour bar section you want to change with the Rectangular Marquee Tool(Photoshop), add a new layer and then use the Gradient Tool inside the selection...this will make an abrupt blend.
The second way is to select the full colour bar and then add opacity stops set to 0% to both ends of your gradient and apply in a new layer...this results in a smooth blend.
By putting your alterations in new layers, you have the ability to shift them laterally to get perfect timing using Edit>Free Transform with the altered layer selected.

Note: The included Weather Override uses the 7529C26EE8E2A9E6 dds(all other weather profiles have been deactivated) and is nominally set for full blackout...you need to replace the dds in S3PE with one that has a colour bar or flash bar in the slot you want to research.

Looks interesting! I can see that this will be handy. Would you be prepared to write a tutorial with pictures? If so, we could put this in the tutorials section.

Yes, I could do that. It will probably be 3-4 weeks, though, as I'm just starting to get seriously into weather structures. I want to create some custom weather flavor packs...and have some other research/experimentation to do. Good graphics and intelligible scribbling comes slow to me, too.


Do you think the Medieval ramps should be included? There's one set posted somewhere on this forum. Is there more than one Medieval world?

Sure, you could include the Medieval ramps- to my knowledge there's only one set, but I don't have Medieval so perhaps someone else could confirm.

I did some tests to see what each of the layers on the ramp does, and I came up with an admittedly pretty crappily labeled ramp. Some things I am not sure about, and could probably think of better descriptions for some of them, but it's a start at least


I did notice that things like the colour of haze which is reflected on the water is different in 2 directions, with one layer each, and I think that is the same for clouds too, so you can have gray clouds in one direction and pink clouds in the other if you want. Its all very customisable, and I loved seeing what tiny tweaks made a big difference in the look.

Working with the colour ramps has been much much easier for me, possibly because working with colour in general is easier for me than with hex or RGB numbers etc.

And here is a little video of my partly cloudy colour ramp in action
http://awesims.tumblr.com/post/2123...ow-its-a-little

That's the most comprehensive description I've seen so far. I wonder how the bars correlate to the RGBs in the basegame ini files.

Edit:
That gives me an idea...make a colour bar that alternates between two colors(say yellow and red) on each progressive pixel(which equals 12 sim minutes), this should create a flashing effect ingame at high speeds and make it easier to study each individual bars function.

Edit 2:
Made a test package with this colour ramp and set the game speed to ultra. The first bar looks like it's terrain lighting...

I'll make an override for each of the 21 colour bars, and upload the full set tomorrow for anyone wanting to research...

To get to this stage I went through bar by bar changing the colours to solid neons to visibly see what each thing did. Some bars are more opaque than others, some are blended with other layers to create mixed effects, especially the clouds which have quite a few bars of varying opacities

Good idea with the flashing bar, PoisonFrog! I'll have to try that out, I made the ramp bars neon like i saw drones suggests, but even then some were not detectable.

i saw drones, I've linked to your colour ramp guide in the first posts, and I've linked to PoisonFrog's Photoshop template too. Thank you both for those!

I'll put information as to the function of the 21 colour bars here. If anyone has info to add, let me know. Here are some preliminary findings, I'll update periodically...


Colour Bar Functions:



Light Colors

1) Directional light and shadows...normal time cycle. This is based on the suns current position in the sky. Needs to be darkened before sunset or there is an abrupt shift in light/shadow direction when the source changes from sun to moon.


2) Ambient light...may be Bloom. Seems to be a 12 hr per color cycle & limited to 2 colors. Looks to be the main nighttime luminance in EA colour ramps. I used a blue/white flashbar in these pics...



3) Indirect/Reflected sunlight? Horizontal lighting..strong on trees, sides of building structures and steep
terrain..weak elsewhere. Not a normal time cycle. Usually pretty dark in the EA worlds.







Water Colors

4) Water color...uses a normal time cycle, so it's possible to have many color changes throughout a 24
hour period.


5) Sun & Moon Reflections on Water...normal time cycle. This pic is a yellow moon reflection...








Sun Colors

6) Sun color...normal time cycle.


7) Halo color...May not be activated. Found this in the 0x5E20253AF53E517F.ini: SunHaloRadius = 0 //this does not do anything
I have checked twice with differing parameters and found no color detection in photoshop.







Sky Colors

8) SkyLight > Sky mid region...normal time cycle. Exhibits nighttime color banding problems. Strongest influence near sun. All 4 of these components are most prominent at sunrise/sunset.


9) HorizonLight > normal time cycle...banding. Strongest influence near sun.


10) SkyDark > Sky mid & top regions...normal time cycle..banding. Although the pic doesn't show it well, the dome of the sky is red, too. I made a camera mod some time ago that increases pitch, so I can see it...no sense posting a pure red pic, however. Strongest influence away from sun.


11) HorizonDark > normal time cycle..banding. Strongest influence away from sun.


**************************************************************

*See note 1 below*
SkyDark, SkyLight, HorizonLight, HorizonDark was the component order in the basegame ini's. While the light/dark is hard to call due to interpolation and locational blending...the sky/horizon differentiators are easy to spot and clearly don't match up with the early ini orderings. Components 9 & 11 in this group are horizons as evidenced by the screenshots, which were posted after testing of each bar to avoid errors. Bar 9 would be named SkyLight if I used their order and bar 10 would be HorizonLight.


As to the light/dark nomenclature, here is a screenshot at the beginning of the sunset with bar 8 yellow. The top is the sunset, the bottom is the diametrically opposed region at the same time. Since the yellow is strongest by the sun, that would make bar 8 SkyLight following the rules layed out in note 1. It would then follow that bar 10 is SkyDark.

Finally, a screenshot of bar 11 with sunset top, and diametrically opposed region bottom. Again following the rules laid out in note 1, that would make this HorizonDark, and subsequently bar 9 would be HorizonLight.








Cloud Colors 1

12) ColorWRTSunDark This bar is the darkest of the 5 at night, even darker than the shadow bar on EA colour ramps...so it would have to be SunDark..and it follows that 14 is then HorizonDark

13) ColorWRTSunLight The sky dome has clouds showing green here, that's how I know its sky and bar 14 is horizon.



14) ColorWRTHorizonDark

15) ColorWRTHorizonLight


16) ColorWRTShadow You can tell by looking at the EA colour ramps that this is shadow


*See note 2 below*
There are 2 similar ini files in the basegame(Sky_Clear1 & Sky_Clear2), so components 12 - 16 & 17 - 21 should both be cloud colorings. WRT=WithRespectTo methinks...






Cloud Colors 2

17) ColorWRTSunDark

18) ColorWRTSunLight

19) ColorWRTHorizonDark

20) ColorWRTHorizonLight

21) ColorWRTShadow


*See note 2 below*
I haven't figured out why they have duplicated the cloud components or how to determine under what circumstance(s) each set will be used.









Notes:



[1] Taken from Sky_ClearSky.ini in basegame:

Sky Colors

These are the colors used for the sky. There
are 'dark' and 'light' components to the sky
color, which correspond to the sun's position
in the sky. These are interpolated across the
sky so that the position where the sun is
gets the 'light' color and the position
opposite the sun gets the 'dark' color. The
light and dark colors are in turn blended
from day, sunset and night colors.

**************************************************************

Horizon Colors

These colors are used for the sky at the
horizon. They work the same as the Sky color
with Day/Sunset/Night plus Light/Dark
variations. The results of sky and horizon
blends are in turn blended together based on
the pixel's altitude from the horizon line.






[2] Taken from the Sky_Clear1.ini file in basegame:

Cloud Colors

Clouds' color is obtained by interpolating between two values: color based on just the position of
of the sun (ColorWRTSun) and the color based on how close the cloud is to the horizon (ColorWRTHorizon).
The "ColorWRTHorizon" color component dominates when the cloud is near the horizon and the "ColorWRTSun" color
component dominates when the cloud is elsewhere (i.e., away from the horizon). The horizon component is
useful to give a different coloring for the cloud when it is near the horizon.

The "ColorWRTSun" and the "ColorWRTHorizon" components in turn are obtained by interpolation as discussed below.

Cloud's color considering only its position relative to the sun ("ColorWRTSun")

"ColorWRTSunLight" is used when the cloud is exactly at the position of the sun and "ColorWRTSunDark"
is used when the cloud is diametrically opposite to the sun. The actual values for "ColorWRTSunLight" and
"ColorWRTSunDark" vary over the course of the 24-hour day cycle and are obtained by blending the values specified for the
times of day.

**************************************************************

[This precedes the two horizon components and has no heading-PoisonFrog]

Cloud's color based on which half of the hemisphere it occupies relative to the sun.
This color term only has a strong effect on horizon clouds.

It is only strongly polarized to Light or Dark when the sun is also near the horizon.
During midday the horizon clouds will take an average of the Light and Dark values.

HorizonLight is used when the sun is shining from behind the clouds.
HorizonDark is used when the clouds are diametrically opposed from from the sun.

I successfully incorporated Twinbrook INI files into a world I'm working on, because Twinbrook weather seems to be a bit duller than default, I wanted this look in my world. Well, I see the cahnges in how the sky and water looks, but suddenly i noticed a strange thing: I see the borders of the world, the sea bed is green (well, it has to be green, as I use Starlight Shores light grass as my basic layer, but the sea bed was not visible before, and now the water is so transparent. Looks ugly. What shall I do about that? Or is it just a glitch?
Here's the screenshot

Thanks for your input, PoisonFrog- I've added a link in the first posts. Very useful, your images will help a lot!

@SommarBlomma- Do you have the Twinbrook colour ramps imported too? If you have some files missing you can get strange results with the water transparency.

If you are sure you have all of the Twinbrook files in, then try importing S3_1F886EAD_00000000_D89F9D186B7BB372%%+_INI.ini from Bridgeport in as well- but edit the WaterDepthFactor to 10 or greater to see if that will obscure your sea bed.

That seems to be the same in original Twinbrook, too. I opened its lite version in CAw, changed the base layer to that texture, and there was such a transparent sea bed on the outskirts of Twinbrook, too, maybe the water there is such transparent. In Twinbrook and in my world it looks the same: transparent, with small vawes, and very reflective at some angles. Anyway, I'll try that with Bridgeport file.
And one more question: will Twinbrook INI files cause earthquakes to happen in my custom world? (should have thought about it before importing files, just forgot)

Well, there is no change to the water transparency in the Twinbrook files, as the file that governs that (S3_1F886EAD_00000000_D89F9D186B7BB372%%+_INI.ini) is absent. So Twinbrook uses the default setting which is WaterDepthFactor=10. However, the Twinbrook fog distance is set to be close on some of the weather types, which means that the fog affects the water (making it foggy but transparent, and removing the water 'murk' which the WaterDepthFactor controls). Adding the Bridgeport water file will allow you to change the default setting of the WaterDepthFactor but whether it is enough to counteract the fog settings, I don't know. If it fails then you have two remaining choices- 1) Make your water deeper and paint the seabed, 2) Change the fog distances for each weather type.

For changing the fog distances, if you look at the Twinbrook Clear file 9S3_1F886EAD_00000000_967BC6C3B3808C00%%+_INI.ini) you will see this:


The start figures are very low; 10-30. If you experiment with raising those figures (100-500 perhaps) then you'll see that the water will become less transparent/fog affected, and the water 'murk' will take over. You just have to find the start and end point that gives the effect you are after.

For the earthquake question- No, these files have nothing to do with that. Earthquakes happen with the Firefighter profession, I think.