Community Lots and Weather

[Kralore]

I've just done a bunch of testing and have found that it is possible to have an all winter sub hood, and have a sim from another hood which is currently in summer, visit a comunity lot there and have a normal winter with all the winter interactions/content (deep snow on the ground, build snowman, auto changing in and out of outerwear etc.)  There are several quirks to this, but there are also ways around the quirks.

[Flamingo]

Mhm. Subhoods have their own climate, supposedly. I first noticed this when winter was occuring at Uni, and I typically don't have a winter in my neighborhood.

[syberspunk]

When this happens i.e. having your sim whose 'home' hood is experiencing say summer, visits a sub-hood experiencing winter, does the sim change into the appropriate clothing when they arrive on that lot?  Or are they forced to freeze?  Although that is somewhat more realistic I suppose... I don't imagine there is a way for us to find out what season a sub-hood happens to be in, without visiting it before hand that is.


Ste

PS. I finally got Seasons, and I've installed and updated the hacks that I use so far and deleted any of the ones still pending updates.  I am now in the process of updating my own hacks.  Hopefully I'll have time tonight to finish some and update my compatibility notice thread and release the updates as well.

[jsalemi]

When this happens i.e. having your sim whose 'home' hood is experiencing say summer, visits a sub-hood experiencing winter, does the sim change into the appropriate clothing when they arrive on that lot?

I know that non-playables (townies and other sims) that show up on a community lot dress for the weather on that lot, but I haven't sent a currently playable sim to a sub-hood with completely different weather yet so I don't know what happens.  I'd be curious too.

[Kralore]

When this happens i.e. having your sim whose 'home' hood is experiencing say summer, visits a sub-hood experiencing winter, does the sim change into the appropriate clothing when they arrive on that lot?  Or are they forced to freeze?  Although that is somewhat more realistic I suppose... I don't imagine there is a way for us to find out what season a sub-hood happens to be in, without visiting it before hand that is.

From my playtesting so far, sims have no knowledge of what season they will be going into. They won't change to appropriate clothing, But from what I can see, overheating and freezing on a community lot has no negative effects. If a sim overheats I don't think they will spontaniously combust. 

You can sort of know what season it will be in a subhood before you get there.  As an example,  If home hood is season 2 summer and sub hood is season 2 winter, it will be winter when you arrive at the sub hood community lot. This is for an unowned community lot. When you visit an unowned community lot in a different neighborhood then your home hood, The season # (1-4) will always match up.

 I will hopefully be posting the guide I promised very soon. It's turning out to be alot of information though.  There are a few variables that affect what the season/weather will be on a community lot when you visit.  Is the lot in your home hood or a different hood, Is the lot unowned, or is it owned as a business by a sim etc. There is other information I would like to include in the guide as well such as how to control the weather on a lot.

[Kralore]

Originally I had alot more information about seasons and community lots. It had to do with the fact that you can/could control the seasons and weather on an owned business lot.  If you've been to the offical bbs lately, you will see a faq sticky in the seasons forum expaining that this is actually a bug in the game.  Patch 1 for seasons is currently in testing and I assume this bug will most likely be fixed in that patch.

This is how seasons and weather works when visiting a community lot in any neighborhood.

Season # (1-4) and Season type (summer, fall, winter, spring) are two separate things.

When sending a sim to visit a community lot, the season # of the community lot will be the same season # as the lot the sim is leaving from.

Example 1. Sim is at home, season 2 summer,  the community lot he wants to go to is in a sub neighborhood that has season 2 as winter. When the sim arrives at the community lot, it will be season 2 winter.

Example 2. Sim is at home, season 2 summer,  the community lot is in the same neighborhood, season 2 will be summer. When the sim arrives at the community lot it will of course be season 2 summer.


Weather on a community lot also works different then a home lot.  Using the ffs lot debugger I kept an eye on temperatures on community lots. A community lot always wants to be at a normal outside temperature of 0 degrees. The weather and temperature you currently have on your home lot when you leave for the community lot can carry over to the community lot when you arrive there.
For summer, fall and spring, temperatures tend to be close to 0 so when you arrive at the community lot, things won't be much different. Rain can occur at 0 degrees, so you will see rain and thunderstorms on community lots.

Winter is very different.  Temperatures can drop to -99, snow will be falling, and there can be deep snow on the ground. If you are coming from a lot with -99, snowing and deep snow on the ground, and arrive at a community lot that is also in winter season, you will see the same conditions on the community lot. It will be snowing, there will be deep snow on the ground and you will also see sims auto changing in and out of outerwear when they go inside and outside. But the game will force the temperature back to 0 degrees . So after about 5 hours or more, the temperature will be back to 0 degrees and because it can't/won't snow at that temperature, the snow will stop falling and the snow on the ground will disappear. Once the temperature gets to the normal 0 degrees you will never see snow on a winter community lot.


There is currently a "bug" in seasons.  If a community lot is a player owned business, when you have the sim owner leave the lot (which saves the lot), the current season and weather it has will be saved as well.

In one way this was a good thing and I had big plans for this bug LOL.   If you saved the lot in winter with snow falling and deep snow on the ground, anytime a sim visited this lot it would have that season and weather when you arrived on the lot.  This was nice because you could have a community lot that was always winter, had snow falling, had deep snow on the ground and had freezing temperatures (It would still go back to 0 degrees after 5 hours or more though).   I almost want them to leave this broken. But I realize this needs to be fixed. It works perfectly fine if you want to leave that lot as a plain community lot that you only use with visiting playable sims. But if you want to actually play the sim owner of that business, the season and weather would be stuck at the current settings everytime you left the lot.