(formerly Deadly Exposure)

Status: Closed Beta

Hi everyone. I'd like to discuss what I'm working on right now, Frostfall, a mod centered around hypothermia, freezing water exposure, and cold weather survival.

The balance I'm trying to strike is one between promoting immersive behavior, without being a complete pain in the ass. Thoughtful players should not have much of a problem, but you will be swiftly punished for jumping in icy water with no clothes on, or standing indefinitely in a snowstorm. Drink your soup, put some clothes on, and stock up on Frost Resistance, you're going to need them.

Here is https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjHiOQcYP6DudFpiQjFwdXMyWUEyNUkwNlA3UjBTN3c#gid=3 I'm using to balance temperature formulas across every Hold in Skyrim. Check it out if you like staring at numbers and colors. It should give you an idea of how threatening Skyrim's climate could be, and the depth at which I want to model Skyrim's climate and weather in affecting your character. In general, you can stay down south without any ramifications; it's once you start getting into Whiterun and beyond that things can turn from bad to worse rather quickly.

Literally tens of minutes of research has gone into this! There are two major components to this mod:

Hypothermia

You now have a new resource: Exposure Points (EP), with a maximum of 100. This represents the loss of core body temperature over time. They behave as follows:

• 120-101 - Warm. A special condition that can only be acquired by standing near fires.
  
  • (+5% Health, Magicka, and Stamina Regeneration)
• 100-81 - Comfortable.
  
  • No problems.
• 80-61 - Cold. You feel "chilly".
  
  • (-10% Health, Magicka, and Stamina Regeneration)
• 60-41 - Very Cold - Early-stage hypothermia. Difficulty performing tasks requiring dexterity.
  
  • (-25% Health, Magicka, and Stamina Regeneration, -10 to most combat skills, all magic skills. -30 to Pickpocket, Lockpicking.)
• 40-21 - Freezing - Mental confusion, slurred speech, loss of coordination in the extremities.
  
  • (-50% Health, Magicka, and Stamina Regeneration, -30 to most combat skills, all magic skills, Sneak, and Speech, -60 to Pickpocket, Lockpicking.)
• 20-1 - Freezing to death - You are dying.
  
  • (-75% Health, Magicka, and Stamina Regeneration, -60 to most combat skills, all magic skills, Sneak, and Speech. -100 to Pickpocket, Lockpicking.)
• 0 - Death - You die, suddenly. No damage to heal, you are simply dead. You can't potion / magicka your way out of this.

So, what contributes to losing EP? Several factors:

• Location - Where you are in Skyrim greatly affects heat loss due to exposure. I am keeping track of where you are, and what (I think the) ambient temperature in the area is.
  
• Weather - Paying attention to the weather can save your life. Your survival time in a blizzard is measured in minutes in real life (an hour or two in-game).
  
• Staying dry - Getting wet will cause you to lose heat much more rapidly. You stay wet for a time after swimming, or getting rained on. We'll talk more about water in a second.
  
• Time of day - Skyrim's nights are more unforgiving than her days. You will lose heat faster at night.

What contributes to replenishing EP?

• Heat sources - This is the most important one. Proximity to heat sources (excluding torches) will replenish your EP rather quickly. Use Fire Kits in the field to warm up. Standing near fires long enough also provides you with the "Warm" condition, which improves your Health, Magicka, and Stamina regeneration temporarily.
  
• Certain foods - Still working on this. This will probably be limited to soups and the like. What I don't want, is high-level characters being able to "buy their way" out of suffering from hypothermia, so I'm going to try to avoid that. I'd also like to incentivize hunting, as it's something that doesn't get done enough as it is.
  
• Interiors - EP will not be lost in interiors, so taking shelter can be a good idea in some circumstances. Water in interiors will not harm you, either, in the instance that water is used for a thematic or gameplay reason in a dungeon.
  
• Lycanthropy (WIP) will tie into this as well, perhaps restoring a large chunk of EP automatically, and giving substantial bonuses to the cold.

What can you do to help stay warm? Several things:

• Wear clothing - Running around naked spells death for the foolish. You will receive a bonus to EP loss for each piece of equipment you wear (Hands, Feet, Head, Body). What kind of clothing or armor does not matter; only that you have something on.
  
• Frost resistance - Something Nords are born with. Frost resistance will help reduce heat loss.

Note that neither of these will entirely stop the loss of EP, only give you more time.


Cold Water Exposure

Bodies of water in Skyrim will now have their own temperature values based on location, ranging from Refreshing to Frigid, with varying levels in between. Jumping in water considered "Frigid" will have a few effects:

• Immediate loss of all stamina (torso reflex, hyperventilation)
  
• Temporary blurred vision (immediate disorientation)
  
• Reduced movement speed (loss of limb dexterity)

After this happens, you have approximately 30 real seconds (10-minutes in-game) in which to save yourself. If you do not, you will be paralyzed (loss of consciousness, complete loss of limb movement). If you're in a moving river, you may wash up on shore in time. If not, you will drown.

If you do manage to save yourself, you need to tend to the state of your body temperature and get warm immediately. Not only did you just lose a good chunk of EP while in the water, you're losing more now due to being wet. Standing near a fire for a minute or so should take care of this.

Portable Campsite Items

• Fire Kit. Components: 6 firewood, 1 steel ingot. 3 uses. Places campfire at location, and restores Exposure Points (EP). Permits fast-travel (1 firekit consumed). (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAkwAnjM9cI&feature=youtu.be)
  
• Bedroll. Components: 10 Tundra Cotton, 5 Leather. Indefinite uses. Permits waiting/resting in exteriors in cold weather (no EP Loss). (I may disable resting in exteriors without a bedroll. Togglable option.)
  
• Tent. Components: 5 pelts, any type (even mixed). 5 uses. Permits resting with bedroll in bad weather conditions (rain, snow, blizzards).
  
• Cooking Pot (WIP). Indefinite uses. Heavy. Places cooking station at location. Activate to use / pick up. Requires proximity to Fire Kit campfire to use.

Since I wanted the player to be able to craft these items "in the field", I decided not to use the standard Crafting system. Instead, when you start the game, you will have a new item placed in your inventory: "Camping Gear". Use it in your inventory to bring up a menu. In the menu, you can choose to craft new campsite items, or place ones that are already stored in your pack. Your pack can hold 12 Fire Kits, a bedroll, and a tent.


What needs to be done?

Currently working on: wetness shader effect, preventing waiting when outside (a difficult problem), detecting clothing, checking water temperature.

Current Feature Progress (v1.0 Release)

• (Complete) Learn Papyrus!
  
• (Complete) Assign Temperatures for every weather type in Skyrim
  
• (Complete) Track EP in real-time
  
• (Complete) Make nights harsher than days
  
• (Complete) Assign Temperature to bodies of water, detect swimming
  
• (Complete) Special effects (for Freezing water, hypothermia)
  
• (Complete) Player gets warm near fires, including placed Campfires
  
• (Complete) Add craftable Campsite items (Bed, Tent, Fire Kits)
  
• (Complete) Implement Food effects
  
• (Complete) Make Fire Kits a prereq for Fast Travel
  
• Spit / polish / balance
  
• Ship that guy

Future Features (not in v1.0 release):

• UI addition to show temperature / condition (optional) (will require SKSE / SkyUI Library)
  
• Cooking pots for campsites
  
• Lycanthropy/Vampirism bonuses
  
• Optional settings based on Testing / User Feedback

Sounds really cool. How are you going to handle non-vanilla timescale settings?

Very nice.
Had a look at the numbers and I think they are very well chosen.

I like the idea, I like the implementation. Looking forward to it!

(And a slight pet-peeve: I find it immersion breaking that half-naked outfits still count as 'warm clothing', but I can understand that it's impossible to code the specific type of clothing in).

Timescale factors into the calculations, automatically. Timescale is one of the numbers that gets put in to the formula, and out the other end comes how many EP you should have lost, given your current conditions.

To keep the immediacy of the emergency high, however, I will probably keep the number of seconds to save yourself in freezing water rather low. Hypothermia effects however will be scaled.


Yea, me too. I wish I had a better way of handling this. As it stands, I didn't want to leave out the possibility that someone might be wearing non-vanilla armor, so I didn't want to assign "protection values" to each armor one-by-one, and just kept it generic instead. Maybe an innovative solution will present itself in this regard.

Makes sense to me. Thanks for answering.

This sounds awesome. Will bring a much needed dose of realism and immersion to Skyrim.

Not sure there is a convenient way for your mod to automagically figure it out, but you could give "warm" armors a "warmclothing" keyword or something... it'd be easy for modders to add it for compatibility with your mod, wouldn't affect anything if a user isn't using your mod, or you could (fairly) easily make patches to add the keyword to modded armor.

Thanks for pointing this out! I forgot we have the Keyword concept now. That's a definite possibility. I'll check into it.

I'd like to avoid patching every user-made armor mod under the sun, however. If the keyword isn't present I'll just assign some "base" protection value. (If I end up using the Keyword system for this at all).

It might also be possible, based on ARMA (Armor Add-on) records to at least determine whether or not you're wearing a shirt, pants, or both.

Or you could assign not warm armors a "not_warm" keyword. Then dock the protection on armors with that keyword. This way be default modded armor provides warmth, and a modder who wanted to increase compatibility could assign "not_warm" where appropriate. I don't know seems like that would provide all the current functionality to support mod armor while allowing those skimpy outfits in the default armors to provide less protection from the cold.

EDIT: I'm very excited about this mod. I think the overall plan is about the level of detail i'd want to see for the underpinning. I'll be keen to see how this (exposure) get's integrated into the UI for feedback to the player. It could be a bit tricky just because Skyrim's HUD is one of the best around and built on elegant simplicity (especially now that I've removed the compass from my game!).

-Starcrunch

Ding ding! Elegantly simple.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1336804-relzwip-rudimentary-hypothermia/page__st__60

Just thought I'd let you know that there's a mod just like this already well underway.

After reading the description, "just like this" I think might be a bit of a stretch. The truth is in the name; "Rudimentary Hypothermia". Some of the underpinnings of the mod are relatively basic (is it snowing? are you swimming?), which is fine if you want to limit the amount of factors you need to deal with and reduce complexity. I'm aiming for something a bit more detailed while still feeling intuitive.

The author also has made some decisions that I purposefully avoided, such as singling out specific armor as "warm" and causing damage to the player (which can just be food/potioned/magicka'd away). Also the alcohol issue.

So, different approach to the same problem. I'm going to make this either way, just because I need to learn Papyrus, and figured this would be a good place to start

This sounds great to me. I'd use it!

I've decided I'd rather wait for this than get the rudimentary hypothermia mod, I like the fact that it isn't just a drain on your health (although it might be good for a healing spell to slightly replenish EP, perhaps linked to the Respite perk.)
And I agree with the above, better to assume clothing is warm and add keywords to the less protective clothing, so that people using nonstandard armours aren't required to edit in compatibility (but have the option, to add immersion)
I look forward to the mod's release.

this along with a NV style hardcoe mod will deffo improve immersion, hopefully it all works out

I'd like to suggest adding visual- and sounds to the latter effects. Something to make it feel chilly rather than simply add text or something letting you know your character is not feeling well. It's not very immersive without the visuals for it.

The only visual needed is breath condensation

So, some good news. I've been able to put all of the temperature values in an array (Thanks Bethesda!) and I can now read the temperature of the area based on your location. Progress, progress...

Next up is figuring out how to run a http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1345043-global-scripts-what-is-the-papyrus-equivalent/page__fromsearch__1 to handle calculations in the background, and everything else should fall into place pretty quickly after that.


Agreed. I'm going to try to use the game's already very good looking "frost" damage overlay (the way characters look when hit with a frost spell), but let it slowly build gradually over time in step with your EP loss. That way you will have a nice visual representation of how much of a popcicle your character is becoming. Also appropriate sound-effects and imagespace effects (though these will only be used for communicating important information, as too much of these kinds of things gets old fast).

Breath condensation will take a little more time I think, but it's very doable.

I'd like to add a togglable meter a la the Enchanted Weapon meter to represent EP on-screen, perhaps below the stamina bar, but I'm not a Scaleform UI guru and i'd have to work with someone else on that. Barring that, I'll find another way for you to check your current status, and the current status of the area you're in.

I had an idea the other day to tie this in to incentivizing hunting; allow all Pelts to become equippable Frost Resistance equipment (maybe taking up the Amulet slot? Or an unused biped location?), that provide a heavy buff to EP loss but get "damaged" over time (and are eventually lost, meaning you need to keep hunting).

Another use would possibly be making one of the http://images.wikia.com/elderscrolls/images/1/12/Hjaalmarchstormcloakcamp.png you see the Stormcloaks using a lot (the small one, center of image). Perhaps, 5 pelts makes a tent, and lets you rest outdoors without penalty.

Let me know if this would be something you'd want in a mod like this. Thanks.

http://i.imgur.com/11uBG.jpg

Real-time Exposure Point tracking works, so, hard part's over! Hopefully we'll be looking at a release "Soon?"

What you're seeing there is my character actually warming up, because he's riding in Falkreath, down south where it's warmer.

(note: what you see is debug text, which won't be there in the finished product)

Oh, a question: how will fast-travel affect EP loss?

If you are manage to make breath condensation and wearable pelts I would be very glad. This is indeed something I want to see. Your idea with the Point-system is really good. I will keep an eye on this thread.

wont this kill alot of npc or am i just a mod noob and its player only!?

Sounds cool. Will this apply for NPCs and creatures as well?

I'm going to have to come up with something clever, that isn't overburdensome on the player. It would be easy for me to associate some sort of resource with fast-traveling; "You must have at least one fire kit to fast travel" (which is consumed in the process). What would not be easy is doing some sort of distance calculation and subtracting some average amount of points. Not only could that lead to bizarre circumstances (for instance, you fast travel, arrive at your destination with 2 EP, and die almost immediately), I'm also not sure if that would be fun. You'd have to know the upfront EP cost of fast-traveling if some sort of system like that got put in place. I think just tying a resource to fast-traveling would be adequate. You eat the fire kit, you arrive with 100EP because you rested along your journey, and go on from there.

I'll have to think about this one some more. I'm open to any suggestions.


Affecting NPCs and creatures is a whole other ball game. For now I am just focused on the player's experience. My scripts will not affect NPCs or creatures.

If you look at it, the rules for the player are there because the player (you) has free will, so you need a system to handle that. NPCs, however, do not, so it doesn't make sense to assign / track EP values for them if they aren't programmed (AI-wise) to do anything about it. I think it would make more sense to just change their behavior to better align with trying to stay warm and not do ridiculous things like casually walk around in a blizzard in just a shirt and pants when the windchill is -40.

I'm secretly hoping someone else is working on an "NPC Sanity" overhaul mod separate from mine that would do just that. That way I can just focus on the player and not have to worry about it ^^;