If this could be fixed in Morrowind by the "http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes3Mod:Morrowind_Code_Patch" / Added features: Rain/snow collision. Rain and snow now collide with statics. / I cannot understand how on earth Bethesda is/was not capable to fix this with PROFESSIONAL game designers coders among their lines.

I really really hope that however made the fix for Morrowind will pick this up. I know its a minor thing for the majority of players, but for me, it is one of the most immersion killers ever. I was planning to take shelter from a snow/rainstorm, or just sit and watch the beautiful snowfall from the porch of a house.

They even said back then that people and animals now seek refuge from weather effects (just look at Witcher 2, where they actually do, in addition even textures get a wet look), turns out it was again bending-the-truth (cough*lie*cough*) in Beth' style. If it was a brand new engine as they claim, they should have addressed this in the first place ( if you still think that its a brand new engine, I have bad news; it-is-not).

Don't get me wrong, I'm truly amazed by Skyrim and I think it's their best and most incredible game ever (I'll play the s**t out of it), I'm just sad and disappointed that in 2011 a thing like this can be overlooked by one of the biggest names in game industry.

Seriously, no fix for this since 2002? LOL

So if you are out there Hrnchamd and Psyringe, I beg you to please look into this, when the necessary tools are available.

It seems odd to me as well. I'm sure that it'd cause a fps hit if they did have a fix for it. I know people like to throw this around, but did the fact that the game was designed for a console affect this in anyway? Any console games like TES have rain/snow collision? I'm asking as I don't play on my consoles anymore.

LOTR war in the north which also available on 360 has it. I'm not on consoles, but I'm sure there are lot of game that has it, in fact I believe TES games are the only ones in the world without rain collision. Shame.

Witcher 2 has it and that's coming to consoles. Arcania has it also and a few other games, like Red Dead Redemption.

I'd like to see this also, big immersion killer.

+1

I agree. While it's not a huge problem for me - it doesn't really affect my enjoyment of the game - it makes it a little hard for the roleplaying aspect. For example, on the way to Winterhold I stopped at Journeyman's Nook, this little stone hut thing in the wilderness, killed the bandit inside and thought it looked like a perfect little shelter. But alas, the snow went right through the ceiling and walls (there were only a couple little windows), so it just seemed a little silly. In a game where every other little detail is so wonderfully attended to, something like this sticks out even MORE. In games like Morrowind which were fun but not very realistic-looking or functioning anyway, the rain/snow collision or lack thereof wasn't as noticeable to me. But it definitely is here.

As much as I'd love to see this happen, it's going to take YEARS for it to.

An issue like this deals more with the source code of the engine, which of course, we are not allowed access to. True, the Morrowind Code Patch does provide this functionality, but that's on a much older version of the engine. Not to mention, it took at least 6 years (MCP first showed up around 2008) to implement this (and even then, the way it's implemented could still be better in some aspects). I wish it was a simple fix, as then we could easily just forward the changes to Oblivion and the current gen Fallout games, but sadly it isn't.

I hate to be a "negative Nancy" here, especially since I'd love to see it happen, but I'm just stating the supposed truth. Who knows? Maybe it could be figured out by the time Fallout 4 or The Elder Scrolls VI rolls around, and maybe by then, they may have this implemented in the engine itself, especially since those should be utilizing much better hardware on the console end.

Though to be honest, I'm surprised Bethesda didn't implement it in Skyrim, with how much they were touting about the new water system.

How was it accomplished in Morrowind?

Not many other games have as much going on as TES games, not even Witcher 2. If they can shave off some CPU load by making rain/snow just a screen effect rather than something with collision detection than I completely agree with that design choice.

That said, gaming PCs can handle it. Which is what mods are for and Im looking forward to seeing if someone can put out a better rain system

By modifyng the Morrowind.exe, and increase the size of the snow particules and their quantity in the Morrowind.ini.

I believe they reverse engineered morrowind to see the source code and edited the aspects of the source code that held that and other low-end problems. Which is also why it takes a long time and is hard to do for skyrim\oblivion, since they hold considerably more code then morrowind ever did.

It is certainly possible to do this in Oblivion and Skyrim. I created a mod (a very buggy one, mind), that fixed the issue to some extent in Oblivion - but trying to use it with other weather mods caused it to break. I don't see any reason as to why it would take six years to fix it for Skyrim, especially considering the possibility of a radically new scripting engine.

If I had more free time, I would likely have a better "no rain" mod for Oblivion, but my time is more limited then ever.

I think the issue is that in Skyrim, snow and rain blows around all over the place, even horizontally in strong winds. Morrowind's rain fell straight downwards.

That's not really the issue. Rain / snow in Oblivion (and I assume Skyrim) operates on a billboard that is applied to the camera node on the player's NIF model. The NIF has properties that allow it to be modified by changing wind variables in-game. Of course, this is all conjecture on my part, but is based on what I learned when creating my Rain Mod for Oblivion.

So these billboards need collision detection or something so that they disappear when hitting a surface?

Rain / snow is actually a particle emitter, if I remember correctly. I don't know for sure if particles could collide with objects in that way - they can certainly be shown to disappear after a time (by colliding with something also inside the NIF) but not with other NIF objects like buildings.

I was just thinking about this today... would it be possible just to turn precipitation off completely if something is directly above the camera? Ideally, one would still be able to see snow or rain in those areas that aren't covered, but I'd settle for it to just be turned off.

Turning it off is (relatively) simple. Making sure it turns back on properly when the player moves out from underneath something was the major issue that my Rain Mod had in Oblivion.

I too was disappointed Bethesda did not implement collision detect with the weather effects. I'm not programmer, but I seriously doubt it's as much of a resource hog as some people may make it out to be. At the very least Bethesda could enable it in a future patch for the PC.

EDIT: Heck, such a thing is almost expected when the accumulating snow textures are touted.

yes!!! a million times yes!! I had to log back in here just to for this. Its literally one of the first things I looked for when I started skyrim. How can somethin so low level be missed in a huge budget game like this

I seriously cannot believe people care about this. They dont care about how balanced the smithing is, or the new sneak system, they care about rain falling though objects.

This isn't a shot at Bethesda, but it's this kind of thinking from the consumer that leads to 'lazy' programming from developers. The graphic presentation of a game is important, especially now in 2011, and especially when other studios are putting forth more effort into these things now.

And I don't have to be a programmer to know such things are possible, especially since they've been done on the consoles already.

Or perhaps you should not worry about things that bother us? There are lots of great things about this game, so lets all ignore the bad parts? Seriously? This is a terrible practice, and a sad view point to have from a consumer's point of view.

The way Beth spawns rain/snow, as a giant particle effect around the player with no regard for other objects, is the lowest apple in the tree approach imo. It can be fixed by modders, but it's much more complicated than having it work correctly from the get go. It's just annoying that this is the 5th game in a row that they haven't improved this design (albeit, the last 4 are all on the same engine.)


I find that it svcks me out of the game when I take shelter from the snow and it flys straight through the walls. Does it keep me from enjoying the game? Not really. Will I download a mod to fix it as soon as it's available? Absolutely.

I will repeat the trend here, because it's so true:
This is just sad for a PC game in 2011.

It's been a huge immersion breaker for me in every gamebryo game. And the post that mentioned that this is NOT a totally new game engine, you are correct.

It's just modified old TES gamebryo, or heavily influenced by the old gamebryo engine used in all of gamesas's other games since Morrowind. Bleh.

I really hope that this topic will bee seen by any devs cruising this forum, and the issue addressed, at least for PC users. (0.01% chance of that happening, I know).

On topic, this is a complicated fix that will take awhile for anyone to fix. It's above my pay grade, I'm just barely competent enough to understand how/why it works the way it does. It won't take 6 years of work though, and unfortunately as Reneer said, it won't be compatible with various weather mods without extra work.

I do care about those things as well, I too think that smithing is basically pointless at the moment and stealth again is a joke. BUT, those are things that will be improved by countless of mods.
While they are more important aspect in gameplay mechanics, immersion and role playing are just as important, and I think that this is a huge let down which annoys me yet again for the last 9 [censored] YEARS!