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Extended Weather Audio-Visual add-on

Extended Weather Audio-Visual add-on
This mod changes weather audio-visuals by altering weather particles, thunderstorm light and their corresponding sounds.
It is designed as an add-on to my Severe Weather mod, but is fully stand alone and can be used separately.

[discontinued]
Funcom made sure I don't really want to make any more content for their game, mod works, it will very likely continue to work for years to come, but... no more updates

Mod ID: 2448526796

First of all, why an add-on, not just make it a part of Severe Weather?
for following reasons:

• To achieve desired effect basegame assets had to be edited directly and SW is designed with maximum compatibility in mind, so that's a no go.
  
• It bears a performance hit which I'm not willing to put into SW as it would limit systems capable of running it smoothly, during the storms anyway.
  
• As standalone mod it can be used by people who are not interested in SW, but may try this one out.

So what it does exactly?
It upgrades/expands/scales existing weather effects (strictly audio-visually)

• It gives weather particles (rain and snow) much more dynamic scale that, meaning there is not many of them when weather is just little bad (light rain or thin fluffy snow here and there) and the more weather goes bad, heavier the rain and more blizzard-like snowfall gets.
  
• Furthermore rain and snow particles now simulate windy conditions and follow in-game wind!
  
• Revised weather soundscape with dynamic values changing along weather intensity.
  
• Shelter provides natural-like muffle to weather sounds/fx.
  
• It makes thunderstorm glorious! Ok, little exaggeration here, but it makes it visually better in every way by introducing high quality light with dynamic shadows and overhauled audio.
  It means thunderstruck will cause real-like effect with shadow casting, distance based light, it takes many things into account, static objects, foliage, your buildings, player characters, thralls, other NPCs, it just makes it real, and that leads us to the next topic/issue.

Performance hit
So just how fps hungry those dynamic shadows are?
pretty hungry, there is a reason why Funcom made the simplistic workaround in terms of thunderstorm. Dynamic lights and shadows are calculated when they happen and that's a lot of calculations for GPU to instantly handle. Good news is, it happens only during thunderstorms.
Bad news are: when lighting flashes, it gets heavy on the GPU, how heavy? it all depends on how complex calculations would be for you in that very moment and how wide your current vision distance is and it may vary between systems, I however did not measure significant (if any) performance hit difference between modern and rather old rig.

I have benchmarked two GPUs (RTX2070 and GTX970) running CE on ultra settings and capped at 60fps on Isle of Siptah map, as it is most taxing due to volumetric fog and lightning present also giving best visual result for same reasons.

Both GPUs took similar drop ranging typically from 5 to 30% of stable fps level, that said,
RTX system runs CE with solid 60 fps (save occasional 1-3 fps drops in dynamic scenes) while GTX system typically varies between 50-55fps, sometimes going down to forties.
I intentionally not mention remaining rig components as their impact on rendering HD thunderstorm is negligible.

Compatibility notes:
EWV add-on modifies following basegame assets and is not compatible with other mods that edit them.

• BP_DynamicWeather_Master
  
• BP_DynamicWeather_Ash
  
• BP_DynamicWeather_Snow
  
• BP_DynamicWeather_Rain
  
• BP_DynamicWeather_Thunderstorm

It is advised to use EWAV on systems capable of running Conan Exiles on Ultra/Cinematic settings.

Load order:
should not matter unless other mod touches assets listed above.

Legal Note: This mod contains assets (art, music, code, items, systems and/or designs that are the intellectual property of Funcom Oslo AS or their licensors.


Due to recent influx of witless users leaving baseless and misinformative comments, those got disabled.

Constructive feedback however is welcome, those with more then pair of functional braincells can join my discord here [discord.gg]