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The environment represents every aspect that affects the colony globally like time or weather.
In Beyond, the time is represented as a date starting from year 0. Years have 365 days & 12 months (leap years are ignored). Each day is 24 hours long.
There are 4 seasons of 91 days (Autumn, Winter & Spring) or 92 days (Summer)
The Location is represented by a Latitude and a Köppen climate zone.
At any given moment, the day, time, latitude and climate zone will determine the following:
- Temperature
- Wind
- Precipitation: Clear, Overcast, Cloudy, Rain, heavy Rain, Snow, heavy Snow, Fog
- Sunlight (in percentage)
Each of those environment variables exist within a probability range, which means there will not be an actual climate/weather simulation, but rather a percentage of chance for each of these conditions to apply. A change of weather per hour rather than per minute or per day might be the best balance between realism and complexity.
Getting this model right can be a challenge, so it's important to strike a balance between what is perfect and what is good enough.
Many resources are available online to get the correct balance for Beyond:
- See this Stackexchange thread
- This seems promising as well
- WRF: has been flagged as usable for games on a forum thread I read. Runs on Linux.
In turn, each of those environment variables will have a impact on various elements of the game:
- Sunlight
- How lit-up is a room
- Output of solar panels
- Crop growth
- Temperature
- How much heating or cooling a room needs
- Wind
- Wind turbine electricity production
- Chance of damage to buildings, vegetation, & crops