Starting up of Project Lightning

Every project starts with an idea. This one started with an idea I had a few years ago about implementing some kind of weather simulation in an MMO RPG, because I thought it would look and feel really cool. I wrote it down somewhere in a notebook and then forgot about it. Until a few months ago when I had to come up with an idea for my graduation project.

The idea involves a dynamic, self-sustaining weather system where the weather is "different" everywhere you look and has an actual influence on the game-world and thus on the gameplay, i.e. with every move you make, you'll have to take the ever-changing weather into account.

The first three weeks consisted of setting up a basic engine in C++ with OpenGL, coming up with ideas for gameplay, researching the basics of meteorology to get a more thorough understanding of the weather itself and researching existing games that in one way or another involves the weather.

While researching existing games I noticed there are mainly three uses of the weather. The first group of games only uses the weather to create more immersion into the game-world. An example of this is Alan Wake, where most of the time you run around during the night with heavy fog, which creates a feeling of uneasiness and results in actual relief when finally the day breaks.

The second group of games completely integrates the weather into the level design/the puzzle. This way, the weather is so deeply integrated into the game that without the weather, there wouldn't be any game. Thus, the weather is simply another part of the puzzle and no longer a feature of its own.

The final group, the smallest group, actually implement the weather as an extra feature in the game, thus affecting the rest of the gameplay. One example of this is the Harvest Moon series. When it's raining, there is no need to water the plants on this day and thus you save time to go fishing, but you'll have to make sure your animals are kept inside, otherwise they might get sick.

Project Lighting will be part of the final group.