Debug weather

XRF weather is managed by WeatherManager. A level’s weathers field in game_maps_single.ltx names either a weather cycle, played as it is, or dynamic, which plays the hourly weather graphs in environment\\dynamic_weather_graphs.ltx.

Runtime weather flow

On actor network spawn, the manager:

1. reads the current level’s weathers field, defaulting to dynamic, and parses it as a condlist;
2. picks the weather section: the named cycle, or the dynamic_<period> graph of the current good or bad period;
3. plays a w_<state> cycle of that graph, or the named cycle, immediately;
4. resumes the weather FX the game was saved during, after its cycle is set, so the level returns to that cycle once the effect ends.

Once every game hour, it:

• switches between the good and bad periods when the current one has lasted its duration, playing the dynamic_transition graph for that hour;
• plays the dynamic_pre_blowout graph and holds the period for the two hours before a surge and while one plays;
• picks a new state from the graph and blends into its cycle.

A playing weather FX is never cut into: the engine records the new cycle and returns to it when the effect ends.

Use the debug panel general section to dump Lua state when you need to inspect the live WeatherManager fields. The dump is written to _appdata_\\dumps\\lua_data.json.

Change weather from scripts

Script effects can set a weather cycle through xr_effects.set_weather, which calls level.set_weather:

on_info = %+some_info =set_weather(w_clear:true)%

The first argument is the weather cycle. The optional second argument controls whether the change is forced. On levels with dynamic weather, the manager plays its own cycle again on the next game hour.

From Lua/TypeScript runtime code, the underlying engine call is:

level.set_weather(weatherName, isForced);

For weather effects, the engine exposes:

level.set_weather_fx("fx_surge_day_3");
level.start_weather_fx_from_time("fx_surge_day_3", time);

Debug weather editor issues

OpenXRay includes a weather editor project and editor documentation. Use it for visual tuning of weather sections and effects, then confirm the resulting section names and graph entries in XRF configs.

If a weather change does not appear:

• verify the level weathers field resolves to the expected section or condlist branch;
• verify the weather graph exists in dynamic_weather_graphs.ltx and each of its states has a w_<state> cycle;
• check the engine log for ! Invalid weather name, printed for a cycle that does not exist;
• check whether a weather FX is currently playing;
• dump Lua state and inspect weatherSection, weatherState, weatherPeriod, and savedWeatherFx.

References

• OpenXRay weather editor article