RimWorld

RimWorld

Realistic Darkness V2.01 for 1.3+-
Willowisp  [developer] 13 Aug, 2016 @ 4:42pm
Modding the day/night cycle to suit your desires
----Part 1: Find the mod (or unsubscribe from the mod and just edit your core weathers.def)

(Note: I will include all the vanilla values for a clear day in this discussion at the end)

So for those who want to change some of the values around go to

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\294100\740930354.

That folder is this mod's workshop folder, from there you can change the weather defs which has all the information about the day/night cycle aesthetics during different weather patterns (including clear).

Part 2: Editing Brightness

Look for headers such as:

<skyColorsDusk>
<sky>(0.13,0.05,0.32)</sky>

Those three numbers are a perfentage RGB scale. so 1 = 255 and 0 = 0 (1,1,1) is a 100% clear and bright day and (0,0,0) is deep enveloping darkness. If you do (0.7,0.1,0.1) you'll get a very very red nighttime.

Part 3: Overlay

********UPDATE********
After playing with lighting settings for as long as I have I've come to understand that the overlay is probably the most important variable to alter. It is responsible for weather visibility AND overall color balance. Imagine a flashlight with three LED bulbs (Red, green, and blue) that is each covered by an optical diaphragm that regulates how much light is emitted from each bulb. The colored LED's are the color values and the diaphragm represents the overlay. So setting the RED color value to 1 but the overlay to 0 results in zero visible red ambient light even though the color value is set to its max.

<overlay>(1,1,1)</overlay>

Overlay is a tricky one and its full extent still excapes me. What I DO know is that is more or less controls the ability to see weather and night? effects inside the walls of interiors. Its kind of like a weather opacity scale. So you set a snowstorms overlay to 0, then you can only see snow falling in area that are lit up at night and in the outdoors. Set that same snowstorm's overlay to 1 and you'll see the whole screen snowing regardless of your ability to actually see that location.

Part 4: Saturation

<saturation>1.3</saturation>

This one is easy; this is color saturation. Its what makes clear days seem bright and happy, and fog so dreary. Saturation in vanilla is 1.25 on a clear day and 0.9 in all other weathers. Not much variance between the weathers here. My mod uses different saturation for each weather pattern.

Part 5: Vanilla Clear day example

<WeatherDef>
<defName>Clear</defName>
<label>clear</label>
<description>A clear day. No penalties or modifiers.</description>
<repeatable>true</repeatable>
<favorability>Good</favorability>
<ambientSounds>
<li>AmbientWind_Clear</li>
</ambientSounds>
<!-- Colors are Clear -->
<skyColorsDay>
<sky>(1,1,1)</sky>
<shadow>(0.718,0.745,0.757)</shadow>
<overlay>(1,1,1)</overlay>
<saturation>1.25</saturation>
</skyColorsDay>
<skyColorsDusk>
<sky>(0.858,0.650,0.423)</sky>
<shadow>(0.955,0.886,0.914)</shadow>
<overlay>(0.8,0.8,0.8)</overlay>
<saturation>1.25</saturation>
</skyColorsDusk>
<skyColorsNightEdge>
<sky>(0.482,0.603,0.682)</sky>
<shadow>(0.92,0.92,0.92)</shadow>
<overlay>(0.6,0.6,0.6)</overlay>
<saturation>1.25</saturation>
</skyColorsNightEdge>
<skyColorsNightMid>
<sky>(0.482,0.603,0.682)</sky>
<shadow>(0.85, 0.85, 0.85)</shadow>
<overlay>(0.6,0.6,0.6)</overlay>
<saturation>1.25</saturation>
</skyColorsNightMid>
</WeatherDef>
Last edited by Willowisp; 27 Aug, 2016 @ 2:46pm