Hi, I've been a lurker for more than 3 years but finally have something to contribute now.

I'm working on a custom world in CAW and wanted to achieve a crisp and golden lighting which is typical to late summer/early autumn here in Scandinavia. So after fiddling about with both the colour ramps and .ini files I think I have figured out, which ones correlate to each of the EA weather types.

In CAW there are five slider settings in the Time of day panel (at least that's what I think it's called in the English version) and I've assumed that they run in the following order:

1. Clear
2. Partly cloudy
3. Overcast
4. Stormy
5. Custom

This assumption is based on observing how the cloud cover and atmosphere looks under each setting - I could be wrong but it also seems like a fairly logical order to me

After changing the hue for each colour ramp quite drastically this is the result I came up with:

Clear
S3_1F886EAD_00000000_967BC6C3B3808C00%%+_INI.ini
S3_00B2D882_0076A684_7529C26EE8E2A9E6%%+_IMG.dds

Partly clouded
S3_1F886EAD_00000000_560C0FD7012DA7F3%%+_INI.ini
S3_00B2D882_0076A684_ECCBBCB773C02131%%+_IMG.dds

Overcast
S3_1F886EAD_00000000_8DEA7AE7631A026A%%+_INI.ini
S3_00B2D882_0076A684_F0A86F660985BF20%%+_IMG.dds

Stormy
S3_1F886EAD_00000000_2C02B3532B64EB49%%+_INI.ini
S3_00B2D882_0076A684_E422CDDE7FE1F25F%%+_IMG.dds

Custom
S3_1F886EAD_00000000_FE1F6A95A24A604A%%+_INI.ini
S3_00B2D882_0076A684_28C841C9462BCDE0%%+_IMG.dds

Hope this helps.

simsample - concerning your problems viewing your changes in game, I'm experiencing the same issue when testing in CAW. More often than not all five different weather settings only show the clear weather but I find that reimporting the altered files and reloading CAW corrects the issue. Still, as you say, it makes testing quite tiresome.

Thanks for that, atra-virago- you've saved me some time there! That's good to have a link to each weather type with the file overrides. I must admit I never thought of trying the CAW weather slider, I'll take a look in my game and see if I can make the same correlations. If so, I'll add the information into the first posts.

For testing in CAW, you are aware that CAW eats INI files? Meaning, if you import your inis to CAW and then save, the ini files will be discarded. The DDS files remain, as do certain other added resources (such as texture overrides and water planes) but inis definitely go. So, each time you save in CAW you will have to re-import the inis. This isn't the same as I'm experiencing in game; there I am just finding that, if I play a custom world I've made, I have to save, then exit to main menu and reload the save to get the weather to show up. Otherwise, the game does not read the ini files (although the colour ramps are working). It does not matter whether I am playing a previous save or beginning a new game, the result is the same. So I just have to save/ reload each game session, not reimport the ini files.

Yes, I found out by reading this thread that CAW has an ini appetite but I find it so much quicker to test the results in CAW than in the game itself. Loading up the game is quite a time consuming task on my computer whereas importing the altered files and opening the world in CAW takes less than a minute. Also, I like being able to jump instantaneously to specific hours of the day to see whether the changes I've just applied look good or not. It's a hit-and-run procedure for me

I haven't saved yet in CAW as I'm testing the weather changes on a world file specifically set aside for this purpose but I suppose that only changes made in the colour ramps will carry over in an exported world... or do you know of a workaround to include say altered sunrise/set hours?

It's been a while since I actually played the game so I'm not aware of the same issues you are experiencing but apart from the saving problem I can highly recommend using CAW for testing.

atra-virago, I can confirm your findings! It was easy to check the correlation between the cloudiness slider and the custom INIs, but more difficult to prove the link between the basegame weather types. But after editing the basegame ini files, I can say that the sliders do indeed represent the weather types you assumed. Great work! I've added that to my findings in the second post.


It's a brilliant idea, I really never thought to make the correlation between the cloudiness slider and the weather types. I wish they had labelled the slider better!
Thanks for the idea, I've added it to the third post.


Yes, just get your world ready, save it and then close the world in CAW. Import the INI files to the world file, then go back to CAW and select the world for export. The INI files will be included in the packed world; it's only saving that makes CAW discard the files. Exporting works fine.

It did indeed work - thanks for that very useful piece of information.

Whilst testing my new weather in game I did notice one thing, however, which is this dark line along the horizon:



Thinking that I'd done something wrong I tried loading a game with EA's default weather settings but that same line was there again which I find odd since I've never noticed it when playing before. The line is not present in either CAW or EIG.

Is it just me who hasn't been very observant and that line has always been there or have I borked something? The only thing I did different when starting the game was setting all the graphics sliders in game to maximum...

Anyways, to get somewhat back to topic I have spent the last couple of days playing around with both colour ramps and ini files. I started with the ramps, thinking that it would be really easy but found that it's in fact extremely difficult to get the times and colours right relying solely on those tiny colour charts. Especially sunrise and sunset ended up being almost impossible to control so instead I'm going to concentrate on the ini files.

Playing around with the two cloud files (in this case Sky_Custom1 and 2) I have the following to add:

Sky_[type]1.ini controls the lower layer of clouds and sky_[type]2.ini the upper layer.

The value set for VisibilityThreshold will determine how dense the layer of clouds is. The higher the value the thinner the layer of clouds - ie. set it to 255 and there will be no clouds at all whilst setting it to 0 will produce a heavily overcast sky.

Sharpness controls the clouds' opacity. The higher the value the 'whispier' the clouds.

Set it to 1 and there will be no visible clouds.



Set it to 0.5 and the cloud layer looks like this (with a VisibilityThreshold of 30)





The sharpness settings are quite sensitive and even changing the value the slightest bit has quite noticable effects:

VisibilityThreshold 30
Sharpness 0.999




VisibilityThreshold 30
Sharpness 0.995




Cloud layer 1: VisibilityThreshold 70, Sharpness 0.985
Cloud layer 2: VisibilityThreshold 30, Sharpness 0.999

Lovely pictures, atra-virago! They demonstrate the cloud values well! I notice that for the EA clear sky, they have the visibility threshold at 255, which gives totally clear.

To be clear, the information contained in Sky_[Type]1.ini and Sky_[Type]2.ini is overridden by the five weather files in the EA worlds:
S3_1F886EAD_00000000_560C0FD7012DA7F3%%+_INI.ini
S3_1F886EAD_00000000_967BC6C3B3808C00%%+_INI.ini
S3_1F886EAD_00000000_FE1F6A95A24A604A%%+_INI.ini
S3_1F886EAD_00000000_2C02B3532B64EB49%%+_INI.ini
S3_1F886EAD_00000000_8DEA7AE7631A026A%%+_INI.ini

So, I would advise to edit those and use them in conjunction with the colour ramps to import into your custom world, instead of editing the Sky_[Type]1.ini and Sky_[Type]2.ini files.

The information in there is just bundled into one:

Whereas in the basegame ini files, that information is split between Sky_[Type]1.ini, Sky_[Type]2.ini and Sky_[type]Sky.ini. Of course, in the basegame ini files there are a lot more figures too- all of the RGB values for sky colours- which we don't need to import to our custom world when using colour ramps.

I already had some information about the clouds in post #2 under weather types, but I hadn't added that layer one is the lower and layer 2 the upper clouds, so I'll add that with a link to your pictures. Thanks for the information! Had you noticed that a negative value for the [TextureOffsetChangeRate] figures will give a reversed cloud direction? For example, from the stormy basegame files:
Cloud 1
[TextureOffsetChangeRate]
texCoordU=0.03
texCoordV=-0.065

Cloud 2
[TextureOffsetChangeRate]
texCoordU=-0.009
texCoordV=0.008

That gives the seething stormy sky effect, with the cloud layers going in different directions and at different speeds.

For your horizon problem, I think you must have something in the colour ramp wrong, or perhaps a conflict. If you are using Sky_[Type]1.ini and Sky_[Type]2.ini in conjunction with a colour ramp then you should be aware that they are both recolouring the same thing- the Sky_[Type]x.ini files have RGB values pertaining to the horizon, and so does the colour ramp. For that reason you should use the five ini files I mentioned above instead. Here's what the horizon looks like in my game:

You can see that there is a definite tint to the horizon, I'm guessing you have that coloured wrongly either by RGB or colour ramp values.

No you're not the only one, but I haven't spent any time trying to isolate it yet. There is one of the sky shader lines in the color ramps that does seem to control a thin area along the horizon, but again I haven't explored it much beyond making that vague observation, so I can't say if that influences the 'line' we're noticing.

Thanks much for your cloud observations...I'm off to play with my clouds now!

Line number 9 according to this list:
http://www.modthesims.info/showpost...37&postcount=32
BUT: some of the colour ramps seem to have a different number of 'stripes' to others, as they are often hard to make out if they are very subtle. So, you may have to experiment to find the right one.

As I mentioned in my last post I gave up on using the colour ramps as I find them too inaccurate. Although I'm a digital artist I somehow lose all sense of direction sitting there looking at those colour charts not knowing what half of the bars represent and unless there's a really good reason for not not using them I'd rather keep fiddling with the basegame ini files

Anyways, to make sure I sifted through my world file just in case I had a leftover ramp lying about in there somewhere which could be causing a conflict with the modified ini files and create that dark line on the horizon... but didn't find anything.

Loading up fresh games of both Sunset Valley and Bridgeport I notice that both of those have the same line albeit not as defined as the one in my world (although that could be due to the fog present in those two worlds):

Sunset Valley




Bridgeport



Going back to my world with the custom weather settings I then changed the colour of the water to a bright blue which resulted in this:




It seems that the line is the colour of the water before the reflection of the sky is added. Just to test my thesis I made the water the same colour as the sky which did make the line less harsh:




So does this mean that in order to have a light blue sky you must also have light blueish sea or am I overlooking something? If the former is the case that would rather limit the realism in my Scandinavian world as the choice seems to be a dark line on the horizon or a sky which is too dark or a sea colour that's too bright.

I did try and change the HorizonLight value to the same colour as the sky just to see if that would have an effect but no, the line happily persists.

I know I must be doing something wrong as your (simsample) horizon looks perfect. I just for the life of me can't figure out what it is *sigh*

Is it possible to change your CAW world's sky and sea settings by simply using the ini files of another world? Say, Twinbrook? How can this be done?

@theludwig- yes, please read the first three posts of this thread and all is explained.


Ah, I misunderstood- I thought you were just mentioning that you'd put them aside whilst you worked on the cloud parameters.


That's fine, but I'm hoping we can figure out what each line of the ramps corresponds to eventually. I'll have some time to do some more experimenting next week hopefully!

The main reasons I can think of to use the colour ramps are:

• EA use the new format INI files and colour ramps in their EP worlds, so perhaps there is some performance advantage;
• Because EA use the new format INI files and colour ramps in their world files, we can be reasonably sure that this method won't cause any conflicts should they ever implement weather in a later EP.

So that's why I'm keen to get them working, rather than using edits of the basegame ini files.


This has to be something to do with graphics settings; I'm not really seeing the line in Sunset like you are:

Are all of your graphics settings on high? I don't recall having a horizon line with my old computer, either.

I am already pretty sure that this is a wasteful post but I was wondering if maybe you have a global override somewhere?
Maybe you downloaded a package containing either a weather ini file or a colour ramp and it's ended up in your sims 3 mods folder?
The only reason I am thinking this is because you mentioned your EA worlds are affected as well.
Either that, or more likely, as simsample mentioned, it might be to do with your graphics settings in game. Maybe try altering them and see if that makes any noticeable difference? And maybe just humour me and check your mods folder just in case?

Sorry if this post was wasteful and you have already tried those things.

I've fiddled around and looked everywhere but cannot figure out what may be causing the problem so I'm beginning to think it might have to do with my graphics card. I don't have any global overrides installed and the line disappears if I lower the quality setting for reflections and water in game, so perhaps it's simply my computer not being able to handle the high graphic settings. It would make sense as I normally run the game with medium graphic settings and haven't noticed any horizon lines before. Maybe it's a hint that my intentions of acquiring a new computer ought to be realised soon.

@simsample: ah yes, now it does make sense to concentrate on the ramps I'm in the process of finishing my world right now but when I get some spare time I shall see what else I can find out about them.

@Jay290783: Thanks for your reply, it was definately not wasteful but alas no mods were installed so I'm inclined to think it's just my computer which isn't suited to handling the high graphic settings under which the screenshots were taken.

The strip on the horizon is not really that noticeable, though- it doesn't really detract from the sea and sky colours.

For the ramps, it's possible that they are less processor intensive. For certain values, such as the fog, some values are calculated by formula:


;; Fog equation is basically:
;; f = saturate(((end - distance) / (end - start))
;; f = pow(f, curve)
;; color = lerp(color, fogColor, f);

It could be that having the colour ramps already in a gradient gives direct RGB colours in Hex instead of having to interpolate the gradient, so pehaps lessening the calculation. Only an assumption, but I would have thought there has to be some reason why EA did it that way right from the start (Vacation worlds) and not by direct file override. I've never tested whether the RGB overrides persist in the next world loaded, but the colour ramps certainly don't, enabling you to play vacation worlds without the main world having the same sky when you return.

Hi,
Why is the solution in post#51 only works in clear sky and not in partly cloudy, stormy or overcast sky ?

Jawusa- the solution in Post #51 works for all of the sky types- it is just that when you start a new world, the most likely sky type to be shown will be 'clear', so it will use your custom sky ramps with the EA clear sky cloud parameters.

I think it is a problem with how the game initialises, as I've noticed that sometimes, if I load the game and leave it on the 'choose world' screen for a few minutes, it will show clouds correctly when I then enter my world. I thought perhaps it was an issue with my old computer running out of memory, but my new computer with more RAM still does this so I think it must be a game bug.

Perhaps you could try viewing your weather in CAW, if you are designing weather for your custom world. See post #3 for details.

It don't works in my game, it only works for clear sky and not for partly cloudy, overcast or stormy sky. I see the fog and the grey sea but there are no clouds on the sky, i reload the save file and the fog dissapearing and the sea colour is default. The active weather is clear and not overcast...

Are you talking about in-game or in CAW here?

If your weather isn't showing correctly after you re-load, then I can think of several possibilities.
1) You don't have your cloud parameters set up to display clouds correctly.
2) Your colour ramps aren't showing a definition between sky and cloud colour
3) You have modded one of the less likely weather types, and the game shows the 'Clear' (S3_1F886EAD_00000000_967BC6C3B3808C00%%+_INI.ini) parameters initially. You have to play the game to make it display all weathers, and that depends upon what settings you have for probability and weather randomize interval.
4) If it's in CAW, if you save then remember that the INI files will be deleted. So you need to re-import them.

If I've misunderstood, perhaps you could post some more detail, attach your INI files and colour ramps and show me some pictures, so that I can understand exactly what you have tried.

The overcast sky has no clouds, you can see it.
The clear sky works when i reload the save game.
But when i reload the save game in a overcast day, disappears the fog and the brown lighting, it jumps to clear sky.

Does anyone know if there's an easy way to get rid of the grey haze that blocks my view of all my lots and terrains when I go into the Edit-in-Game feature of CaW?

Every new world I create and send into the game has this layer of grey that I don't know how to get rid of. I don't know if this is some fault of the developers of CaW or if I'm screwing something up without realizing it.
Apparently there must be a fog layer naturally in the world while creating it, and I can disable viewing it while in CaW. I just can't get it to go away while modifying the lots in-game.
I have to zoom it to see only a few lots at a time to actually see the sizes of the lots, making it impossible to do any proper planning of which building goes into which lot or quick filling of lots - I tend to put lots of lots in my worlds, community and residential (regular and townie - can't create townie lots in the game).

Okayyyyyyy I'm really confused ....I'm not anywhere on you guys' level Im a beginner and I really want to learn how to do all of this stuff and I've actually learned quite a lot so far by experimenting with these color ramps and stuff However, one thing I really needed help on was knowing specifically what each bar in the last section of the color ramp does because that seems to be throwing me off . Also, in CAW, for some odd reason, my stars don't show up at night and I made my sky a dark purple so that it could but it doesn't

One last thing: I'm using GIMP to edit the color ramps and I need to know how to smoothly blend the colors together because everyone else's color ramps look like that....Or to put it simply, what is the best way to edit these color ramps in GIMP? Please help!!!

buildersim21, I just answered this question here:
http://www.modthesims.info/m/showth...888#post3734888
That problem is due to the world having colour ramps but no sea/sky INI files.

GoofyGirl17, the best way to discover this is to make your colour ramp bars a very vivid colour, and then test in CAW or in-game to see what has changed. Then I could add your findings to the thread to help others. For the stars bit, what do you have your star intensity set to? If you have very thick for the stars may be obscured.

For GIMP, the best way to edit the colour ramps is the same as for any other program- select the bar you want to change and change the hue, saturation, contrast, etc, of that area. You could also try recolouring it completely with a gradient fill to get different colours at different times of day.

Thank you so much for that information simsample. However, my results have come out even weirder now that I have attempted to actually recolor the ramp adn do everything else completely
Yes, I have re-imported the INI files as you said but things look really weird and not how I want them to look
Here is a description of what I want my world to look like: A springy bluish-green ocean (R=11,G=244,B=142) with the same color sky, and pink clouds (R=246,G=10,B=104).
Pretty simple you would think, right? Well, below are the images taken in game and you will see some of the weird results I've been getting
So how do you think I should go about in correcting this?
In the first image, my night sky is supposed to be that way but there are barely any stars in the sky
In the second image, the color underneath is exactly the color I want for my ENTIRE ocean....Is this where it has been hiding?
In the third image, the color underneath is what I am seeing for the entire ocean in CAW.....Weird, huh?

Kay so just quickly clarify, what exactly needs to be done to add our colors to a world. Go into the .world file and import the new files?

GoofyGirl17, having the colours appear unusually saturated is sometimes a symptom of an incorrect file format on the ramp files. Try saving them again, using the 32 bit A8R8G8B8 DDS format. See post #3 for more details.

vgbookworm- Yes, import the resources to your World file (either the CAW world file or the installed World file). If you import to the CAW world file be aware that saving will cause some resources to be lost, so be sure to import after saving and before exporting.