🌦️ Weather / Wildlife

Change the sky on your server, live. Rain, storms, snow, fog, wind, lightning and even earthquakes - and every player sees it with the normal game. No download for players, no server patch, no restart. The Wildlife page makes the TAC mod's sharks hunt.

The one thing you need first

WolfRAT has to be running on the same PC as the game server. The weather works by changing numbers inside the running server, and that can only be done from the same machine. If you connect to a server somewhere else, the Weather tab stays greyed out - everything else in WolfRAT still works.

The line at the top of the tab tells you where you stand. Green dot and "Game server found on this PC" means you are good to go. Underneath it, "Sky right now" shows what the server's weather is actually doing at this moment.

Manual page - weather on demand

Weather now

One click each: Storm, Rain, Drizzle, Fog, Blizzard, Snow, Overcast. The weather fades in over about half a minute, the same way the game does it - it does not just snap on.

• Keep it for - how many minutes the weather stays. When the time is up WolfRAT clears it for you. Set it to the lowest value and it reads "until I clear it".
• Clear the weather - hands the sky back to the map. You get the map's own weather back, exactly as it was, not just a blank blue sky.

Make your own

Sliders for Rain / snow amount, Overcast (how dark the cloud is), Fog at (how far players can see, in metres) and Fade over (how many seconds the change takes). Tick as snow to get snow instead of rain, then press Apply.

Wind (2.8.1)

Tick Wind and use its slider (0 to 255) - the number is shown with a word next to it: still, light, breezy, windy or gale. In Joint Ops, wind is how fast the clouds race across the sky; the game has no wind direction it can show players, so there is nothing to set for that. The Storm and Blizzard buttons now bring strong wind with them. When WolfRAT's weather clears, the map gets its own wind back - some maps, like Villa Valley TAC, already have plenty.

Earthquake and lightning

• Shake - an earthquake for the number of seconds you choose. It really does nudge players and vehicles about a little, so use it for fun, not mid-firefight.
• Lightning - a flash overhead with a crack of thunder. Distant - a far-off flash and rumble.

The lightning add-on

Lightning needs one tiny script file in your server folder. You do not have to make it: press Install lightning add-on and WolfRAT puts it there for you. It switches on at the next map change (the game only reads its scripts when a map loads). The sentence under the buttons always tells you which state you are in: needs the add-on, installed and waiting for a map change, or ready.

In-game commands

• Let mods change the weather from chat - off by default. Tick it and the people on your Mods list can use the weather commands below.
• Announce weather changes in chat - WolfRAT tells the server when weather is on its way.

Dynamic page - weather that changes on its own

Tick Let the weather change on its own and the server gets real weather: a clear spell, then a front rolls in - the sky clouds over, it builds to its peak, holds, then eases off again - then another clear spell. Every front is a different strength and length, so no two rounds feel the same.

How often

What can roll in

Tick the kinds of weather you want and give each a number - a bigger number means it turns up more often. The line underneath works it out for you in plain terms ("out of 100 fronts: rain 28, storm 17..."). You can also set how thick the fog may get, let storms flash with lightning at their peak, and allow the odd rare earthquake (off by default).

Fronts bring wind (2.8.1) - on by default. Each front picks its own wind between the two numbers you set (60 to 220 to begin with): storms and blizzards blow hardest, rain and snow less, and fog comes with still air.

Rain or snow, map by map

On Auto, WolfRAT looks at the map that is loaded and decides for itself: snow maps get snow and blizzards, everything else gets rain and storms. You will see its reasoning in the "Now:" line. If it gets one wrong, select the map in the list and press Rain, Snow or No weather to take over. Auto hands the decision back.

• The map list fills in once WolfRAT has fetched your maps (Missions tab). Until then you can type a map name and press a button - close spellings are understood.
• Snow terrains is the list of terrain names WolfRAT treats as snowy. You can add to it.

Things it does to stay out of the way

• Maps with their own weather are respected. Some maps script their own rain or fog. WolfRAT only touches the sky while one of its own fronts is showing, and afterwards puts the sky back exactly as it found it. A map set to No weather is never touched.
• Manual always wins. Press a button on the Manual page, or have a mod type !storm, and the dynamic weather waits until that is over.
• Fronts keep their own clock. If a storm has five minutes left when the map changes, the next map opens with five minutes of storm.
• Nothing is written while a map is loading.

Wildlife page - hunting sharks (TAC mod only)

This page is for the TAC mod only. The sharks were made by OscarMike247 for the TAC mod (the Revx02 pack). No other mod has them, so on any other mod the page finds nothing and does nothing.

Out of the box the sharks are placed as a neutral team with a 100 m attack distance, which is why they ignore swimmers until you stab one - and then lunge from far away and miss. Tick Hunting sharks and WolfRAT makes every shark on the server berserk (it attacks anyone, the same as a map maker's Berserk tick) with a short attack distance, so they circle, charge and bite. The sharks keep their own team, so players who join later see them swim normally. It is a change inside the running server: players download nothing, and the map files are untouched.

• Green dot. The line at the top of the page reads "🟢 4 sharks hooked on hookah1 - hunting" when WolfRAT has them. Any other state is spelled out: no server on this PC, no sharks on this map, hunting switched off, or WolfRAT could not write to the server.
• Attack distance. 10 m is the tested sweet spot - the bite lands a few metres into the lunge. At 25 m sharks lunge and miss; at 4 to 6 m you have to be right on top of one.
• Map loads and respawns put the map's own numbers back. WolfRAT re-applies yours within a few seconds for as long as the box is ticked, and the top line counts how often it had to.
• Sharks ignore each other. A berserk creature normally attacks its own kind too, so before the first shark goes berserk WolfRAT adds a small fix to the running server: sharks hunt players, never each other. It stays until the server restarts (a map load keeps it). On a server WolfRAT does not recognise, the sharks are not set to hunt at all, and the top line says so.
• Chasing swimmers from range also needs the shark fix in the server exe: jo-server-patches patch 16. With it, sharks turn and come for you in deep water and never follow you onto land. Without it they patrol and only act once you are inside the attack distance. WolfRAT also gives them a 4 m 'start chasing' distance where the map left none, which the game needs before any chase.