Weather Generator [library support]

[Boy_Wonder]

I'm someone when coding I normally have 10 ideas at a time but focus on one XD

[Wormopolis]

v1.2.0 submitted to library

added in temperature high and low to weather type
added option for Celsius or Fahrenheit display
added in option to fluctuate temp based on time of day
added option to put all text below image on one line

[Wormopolis]

I used a sin function for the variation of the temperature and had it put lows around midnight, slowly gaining up the high around noon, then slowly dropping again to midnight. the caveat is when midnight hits, the seed for the pseudo-randomness gets changed so there might be a weird fluctuation from 11:59 to 12:01. I cant really smooth that out easily since it doesnt really save the previous day's number. I thought about maybe adding in some extra math to effectively gradiant the number between 11PM and 1AM more smoothly, but I reconsidered when I realized these are all just fake numbers anyways and most people probably wont care that much. I might revisit it later if the clamor for more realistic numbers becomes too loud.

the fluctuation is based on a simple percentage of the temp it calculates for the day. the temp for the day is a pseudo-random number between the low and high for that weather type. then the fluctuation becomes centered on that temp.

so for example, lets say "sunny" was low 65 and high 85. it will return a number between them (lets say 73). then if you have a fluctuation percentage of 10%, it will use 10% of the 73. where at midnight it would be (73-7=66) climbing up to (73+7=80) around noon, then working back down towards 66 at midnight. then the number changes and it could be anything again, but since it usually follows a bell curve might still be around 70 again unless the weather type changes and the highs/lows are drastically different. as I said, not really easy to make it smooth. the fluctuation percentage in the real world is based on many factors including topography, humidity, and elevation, so if your world is based in a particular type of environment (desert, jungle, arctic wasteland, etc...) you might want to do some research to see what earth-similar regions have in the way of fluctuations. I set a default to 10%. if you try and be weird and set it to less then 0 or more then 100, it will force it to 10% again.

[Boy_Wonder]

I'll understand if you say no as I suspect this would require a rather large rewrite - have you considered making this a plugin so it can display multiple areas for people who may want to be using this to depict global weather on a separate page?

[Wormopolis]

I dont follow?

[Boy_Wonder]

On SHIELD for example the roleplay happens all over the world.

So what I'd love if its possible is for an option to create a page to almost make a "global" weather center with multiple locations showing different weathers as required. So for example:

Page named: Weather Center

Europe - United Kingdom Europe - Germany
[Weather Image here] [Weather Image here]
[Temperature Here] [Temperature Here]

South America - Brazil
[Weather Image Here]
[Temperature here]

etc for an example

If you don't want to do this as I'm assuming it would be a huge rewrite would you be fine in me eventually coding something like this just for use on SHIELD?

[Wormopolis]

The difficulty lies in the fact that you cant have autoforms within autoforms. each weather type is already an autoform in order to setup all of the occurance weights. Im assuming you would want an autoform that allowed you to choose specific weather types for each region, and probably a custom occurance weighting for each weather type. you can see yourself in the plugin setups that autoforms cant be nested.

now if you wanted to try a seperate autoform for weather types per region, but keep the occurance weighting the same, that can possibly be done.

[Boy_Wonder]

That would be what I was looking for - to effectively have an autoform for weather types per region with the weighting remaining the same

[Wormopolis]

ok.. so good news. I managed to come up with something spectacular.

You now have a "Regional Type" autoform where you can setup Locations, give them timezones compared to UTC, give them a unique target identifier for placement on the page (using an element with id="identifier"), and monthly weather types. you list the weather types using the same Label that you you used when you defined them, separated by commas, and if you list them more then once you effectively increase their chances of getting hit that month. so in a sense, you have double weighting where regions can add weighting to the weather type, and the weather type has weighting depending on the month. if you want to eliminate the weighting of the weather type, you can set set all the numbers to 1 for each month it would happen, and just use the regional weighting to affect the outcome.

so for instance, lets say we have 4 types: Sunny, Rainy, Windy, Snowing. for July we could put a 1 in each Frequency (except Snowing we would leave blank). then if we set up a region called "Cairo", for July we would set the weather list to: Sunny,Sunny,Sunny,Rainy,Sunny,Windy,Windy,Sunny,Sunny,Windy
(notice no spaces after commas).
That would give Cairo a 60% chance of Sunny, 10% chance of Rainy, and 30% chance of Windy.

or we could do
Sunny,Sunny,Rainy,Windy,Windy,Windy,Sunny,Windy
and it would have 37% chance of Sunny, 50% chance of windy, 13% chance of Rainy

if you also used frequencies on the weather types for each month, it would expand the chance arrays even further.

If you are also going to use a generic weather display, it would be best to still use frequencies in the weather types. Its all fake anyways...

should be able to submit tonight

[Boy_Wonder]

That sounds awesome Wormo!

[Wormopolis]

v1.3.0 submitted to library

added in Regional Types where you can define multiple different weather areas that have their own frequency ratings
hovering Date will show the local time

[Boy_Wonder]

When you've got time btw is there any way you could add in some way of temperature support (if at ALL possible) for regional areas per month?

[Wormopolis]

If you have temps set up on the weather type, it will carry over on to the region.

[Boy_Wonder]

I understand that but would there be anyway to adjust temps to set the range per month (Sorry I'm probably being very very awkward!)

[Wormopolis]

Not without complicating the current autoform for a weather type. It might be necessary to just create another weather type. Call it partly sunny instead of sunny or something. Weather types cannot have the exact same name.