Mods / Realistic snow melting

Tags: #Tweak
Author: boff_etti
Side: Both
Created: Feb 4th at 5:23 PM
Last modified: Feb 5th at 12:15 PM
Downloads: 268
Follow Unfollow 46

Recommended download (for Vintage Story 1.21.0 - 1.21.6):
SnowMeltFix.zip  1-click install


Disclaimer: this mod was partly made with Gemini AI, i made it for myself but now i am posting it because i figured someone might be interested in it. 

This mod basically blocks the automatic chunks updates from removing snow, and implements new melting mechanics (snow remains on mountains and cooler zones, north slope shadow calculations). Grass with snow layers, loose rock, loose flint, loose sticks, loose boulders are also not updated by the game and managed by the mod's mechanics.
This comes at a small cost: unloaded chunks will not automatically lose their snow if you reload them again in spring/summer, but there are special measures to counter this, for example if the temperatures are high enough the snow in nearby chunks will be totally molten in around 100 seconds, at default settings.

The mod works with a "scanner" that performs calculations on blocks on the surface, in nearby chunks, to check their temperature, shadow level and melting chance.
There are 3 shadow levels: 30 degree shadow (existance of a solid block face facing north on the block just south of the examined block), 45 degrees shadow (the solid north block face needs to be located 2 block southward and 1 block upward, relative to examined block), 60 degrees shadow (the solid north block face need to be located 1 block southward and 1 upward, relative to examined block).

The mod is extremely configurable, just about any factor i used in the calculations can be changed. This of course includes time interval between scans, radius of scan, blocks checked per scan, every temperature threshold used by the mod, every melting chance used by the mod. I warn you that on default settings, snows in shade sticks around for long.

Now, this mod will lag a little bit when heavy melting happens during spring. It is not the scans that are the source of this, but more so the block updates. If you want to lower lag, in the config you can tweak certain parameters to lower lag (having less scans but melting more often, just to name one solution). Feel free to experiment and figure out what config work out best for you.

Compatibility: the mod shouldn't have problems with other modded blocks, but just to be safe i reccomend creating a backup of your world before using it. Also, if you have other mods that change snow behaviour, it might not load properly. Since this mod does not add any new blocks, uninstalling from a world in which you used it will simply cause the default vintage story system to take care of snow.

 

Mod Version Mod IdentifierFor Game version Downloads Released Changelog Download 1-click mod install*
1.4.5 snowmeltfix
1.21.0 - 1.21.6
185 Feb 5th at 12:15 PM SnowMeltFix.zip 1-click install

Just some minor optimization in the code

1.4.4 snowmeltfix
1.21.0 - 1.21.6
83 Feb 4th at 5:33 PM Empty SnowMeltFix.zip 1-click install

9 Comments (oldest first | newest first)

Stern, 3 days ago (modified 3 days ago)

I see that snow on the northern side of a mountain has more snow that the south, which is a great feature. However i wonder if this effect also works in the southern hemisphere, where the aspect of the sun is northern, thus snow accumulates more on the south side of a mountain. Just a question, and a recommendation if not implemented, for an otherwise amazing mod!

boff_etti , Feb 6th at 9:10 AM

artemax44 That's weird, this mod only affects snow blocks and does not interact with ice at all (i also checked the code again just to be sure). Are you sure it's this mod that's doing this?

artemax44, Feb 6th at 2:42 AM

boff_etti

I love that the snow disappears quickly, but the problem with this mod is that the lakes and rivers in the "rivers" mod freeze completely in two days! Is there any way to change that?
boff_etti , Feb 5th at 5:24 PM

Thap In my playthrough that happened very rarely, with only a couple of chunks that have residual snow. Besides, the point of this mod is to stop the automatic snow melting that doesn't account for temperature.

Thap, Feb 5th at 5:03 PM

"unloaded chunks will not automatically lose their snow if you reload them again in spring/summer"

 

Uhh, they do this? In vanilla if you explore somewhere in the middle of winter and then come back in July there will still be snow everywhere afaik.

MrApothic, Feb 5th at 3:51 PM

I'll give this a shot, I don't really see a good melting mechanic yet and vanilla has some.. Odd snow melting moments. if I come across anything unsusual with my standard lite mod list I use I will report back any issues. :)

 

Past that I understand you gotta learn - I won't judge as if it helped you but I do encourage proper learning over using AI if at all possible. <3 Past that thank you for taking time to learn a mod and I hope this provides some great winter experiences.

boff_etti , Feb 5th at 9:59 AM

The map is actually not a terrain gen mod, but a map i custom made with worldpainter program and imported in vintage story with the worldpainter mod. It is a very powerful tool if you learn to use it.

Regarding the vibecoding comment, i want to mention that i did manually write some of it, i iterated on it for several days, and i learned from it. But to put it frankly, there were some problems i would have never understood and solved if i didn't use AI, as it is a very powerful and useful tool. Despite this, i know that people have some hate towards it, so i wrote it in the disclaimer so that if it bothers you, you are free to not download it.

Gatnat, Feb 5th at 6:59 AM

what terrain gen mod u using in the screenshots?

Relydober, Feb 5th at 12:38 AM (modified Feb 5th at 12:38 AM)

bro not these vibecoded mods 🥀