I was thinking it’d be interesting to do something like a Nuclear Winter challenge or such. This would probably be part of the world as opposed to the character. How hard would it be to implement a feature like allowing you to lower temperature and light levels from the sun in game?
Very easy.
Look in regional_map_settings.json
and the associated docs in docs/REGION_SETTINGS.md for how to use it.
You can specify global temperatures, air pressure, precipitation, wind, and prevalance of flora, fauna and terrain types, and river frequency etc.
This is what I used for the Desert Mod.
For things like radiation and other nuclear winter type situations, you can make use of the map extra system, which already has things that add craters, radiation and so on.
If you make a nuclear winter mod, with those two JSON-only tools , you could make it probably exactly as you wanted ( also can add specific new monsters, buildings and so on )
I’m fine with not really adding in a bunch of radiation as there are already craters and such in game. How about a function to change all trees to dead trees and all lesser plants to withered plants. One good side effect of this would be killing off Triffids and Fungus.
Are you saying the desert mod almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter? ehhh? eeeehhhhhhh?
I think you can also use those regional settings to specify what groundcover, trees, etc spawn as terrain.
If the eternal season option has been fixed you could use that and pick a winter start day, I had an idea for something like this a while ago but couldn’t get it to work at the time.