Big Sky

Welcome to the beta of a gentle, atmospheric, perhaps deeply unnecessary alteration to backdrop of our walking.

The sun sets with fresh twilight. An actual moon rises. New stars come out. Clouds drift by. Sometimes it rains. Sometimes it thunders. Where did all these ambient cricket sounds come from?

Of course, you can be a dark trickster god with an F11 menu. The world turns whatever shade and tint you want. The time of day is your decision. How many stars, how many clouds, how much rain? Micromanage the heck out of that atmosphere.

The F11 menu has four tabs: General (time of day), Sky (sun, moon, stars, clouds), Weather (rain, thunder, sound) and Grading (colour).

But how?

1. Install BepInEx 6 (IL2CPP build) for Big Walk and run the game once.
2. Drop the mod folder into BepInEx/plugins/.
3. Start the game. That's it.

Want to fiddle? Press F11. Sliders either apply instantly or don't actually do much yet, depending on how the game felt about the attempt of a hostile takeover of the heavens.

What you get

• Sky: a procedural sky that tracks the time of day, with a nice blue-to-pale-horizon gradient.
• Sunsets and sunrises: a glow band hugging the horizon on the sun's side, plus the whole world getting tinted by the moment. Most dusks should be golden orange, most dawns should be yellowish. Occasionally you roll pink or crimson. You can compel the one you like.
• A moon with actual phases. Full moons should be brighter than new moons.
• Stars, with twinkling, for the nights when you wanted to feel small.
• Clouds: low, puffy, procedurally generated, and drifting with the wind. They tint at dusk and go dark at night.
• Rain, with a proper build-up and clear-up instead of popping on, plus sometimes a bit of fog, dimmer light, and a cooler colour grade.
• Lightning, which is a flash of light, and thunder, which is a sound if you give it one (see below).
• Colour grading through the game's own URP post-processing, so you can nudge temperature, contrast, saturation and exposure, and turn off bloom, vignette and other things to make your walk look like a mid 90s music video fever dream.
• An in-game F11 settings menu, because nobody wants to edit a .cfg file while a thunderstorm is happening.

But what do the buttons do?

Key / Input	Action
F4	Reload the config file from disk
F5	Toggle the custom sky on and off, for A/B comparison
F6	Toggle the colour grade on and off, same idea
F10	Start or stop rain right now
F11	Open or close the settings menu (Esc also closes it)

F10 F11 can be changed in the config. F4, F5 and F6 are hardcoded right now because I got tired and don't use other things that take the buttons.

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But the game already has a fine day and night cycle

It does. By default the mod reads the hour from the game's own SkyManager and decorates around it. The game still owns the sun and the lighting. The mod adds the sky, moon, stars, clouds, weather and colour on top.

If you would rather the mod be in charge of the clock:

• Clock mode 1 makes the mod push its own cycle into the game. Set Cycle minutes to decide how long a full day takes. 60 means a day per real hour. 1440 means it follows your actual clock, so walking at 3 AM gets you an actual 3 AM.
• Hold time of day freezes the clock. Set Time to hold to whatever hour you like: 12 is noon, 18 is sunset, 0 is midnight. Turn it off and time resumes from where the game had it.

If you want the mod to also rotate and dim the sun light directly, turn on Drive sun light directly. Be warned: the game may disagree with you about where the sun is, and they will fight about it in public.

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But the moon is out at the wrong time / the sunset is at noon

The mod assumes hour 12 is noon and hour 0 is midnight. If the game's idea of dusk is a little off from that, use Visual hour offset (General tab) to slide the mod's sunsets, moon and stars earlier or later until they line up with the game's lighting.

We'll maybe work on this drift in a later version.

But I want it to rain forever

Always raining in the Weather tab. Stopping the rain by hand with F10 or the button will turn that off again, because otherwise you'd be fighting the switch for two seconds while it turns the rain straight back on.

Want it drier? Rain chance is roughly the share of time it rains. 0.2 means about one hour in five is wet. Shower length is set separately, and the dry stretch between showers is worked out from the two, so the slider means what it says.

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But what's with the sound?

Rain sound is generated in-game. Unity is generating the noise, mostly for me to learn a new thing. You can drop the volume in the white noise effect isn't to your liking.

For everything else, there's an audio folder next to the mod's DLL.

File	What it does
day_bed	A looping bed that fades in around noon. Cicadas and so on.
night_bed	A looping bed that fades in at deep night. Crickets, frogs, regret.
thunder	Played when lightning strikes, only in heavy rain.

It accepts (.ogg, .wav or .mp3).

If a file isn't there, that sound simply doesn't exist. No errors, no drama. Volumes are in the config, and everything ducks during rain so you don't get conflicting layers.

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Compatibility

• Needs BepInEx 6 IL2CPP
• Works alongside other mods that leave the sky alone.
• Big Typing of the Hive: both mods can talk to the game's clock. With the default Clock mode 0 and Hold time of day off, this mod only reads the time and they get along great. If you turn on Clock mode 1 or Hold time, the two will argue about what hour it is. Night wins the argument, historically.
• If you run a mod that changes the skybox, the camera or the post-processing volume, this one will fight it. This mod wins most fights because it re-asserts the sky right before the camera renders. Apologies in advance.

Something is weird

• The sky doesn't change. Check that Replace skybox is on and Force camera to render skybox is on. Clicking them on and off sometimes help.
• The colour grade does nothing. Post-processing needs to be enabled on the game's renderer. The mod turns it on for the camera every second, but it can't turn on what the renderer itself disables.
• No moon, no stars, no clouds. Open the BepInEx log and look for the CELESTIALS and SKYSYNC lines. They print every ten seconds while Debug logging is on, and they tell you exactly what the mod thinks is happening.
• The clouds are too low, too high, too many. Sky tab: Cloud altitude, Cloud count, Cloud scale.

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Config options

local.bigwalk.dayandnight.cfg in the BepInEx config folder. Everything below is also in the F11 menu except the ones marked (file only).

Day cycle

Config Option	Default Value	Description
Enabled	true	Master switch for time-of-day effects.
Clock mode	0	0 = follow the game's own clock. 1 = the mod's cycle drives the game's clock.
Drive sun light directly	false	Mod rotates and dims the sun light itself instead of leaving it to the game.
Visual hour offset	0	-12 to 12. Shifts when the mod's sunsets, moon and stars happen relative to the game's hour.
Debug logging	true	Periodic SKYSYNC and CELESTIALS lines in the log. Turn off once happy.
Cycle minutes	60	Real minutes per full day (5-1440). Clock mode 1 only. 1440 follows the real-world clock.
Noon at minute	0	Minute of the hour that counts as noon. Only for cycles under 12 hours.
Hold time of day	false	Freezes time at the hour below.
Time to hold	18	0-24. 12 is noon, 18 sunset, 0 and 24 midnight, 6 sunrise.
Max sun elevation	70	-Bugged- Height of the noon sun in degrees (20-80). Only matters when driving the light.
Sun azimuth	330	-Bugged- Compass direction of the sun path. Only matters when driving the light.
Night brightness	0.5	0-1. Moonlight strength compared to daylight.
Minimum night light	0.3	-Bugged- 0.15-0.7. Floor for the main light so nights stay walkable.
Shadow strength	0.8	0-1. How dark sun shadows are.
Ambient multiplier	1	Multiplier on ambient light.
Twilight width	18	Degrees either side of the horizon that a twilight reaches. Larger means longer sunsets.
Twilight falloff	3	Higher pushes the colour into the last few degrees before the horizon.
Twilight world tint	0.5	0-4. How much the whole frame takes on the sunset colour.
Pink twilight chance	0.05	0-1. Chance any given twilight rolls pink. Dawns roll at less than half of this.
Crimson twilight chance	0.03	0-1. Chance of a deep crimson twilight. Dawns roll at 30%.
Force twilight colour	0	0 random, 1 golden, 2 yellow dawn, 3 pink, 4 crimson.
Inactive scenes	(empty)	Comma-separated scene names where effects hide. (file only)

Sky

Config Option	Default Value	Description
Replace skybox	true	Use the procedural sky. F5 toggles.
Force camera to render skybox	true	Sets the camera to draw a sky if the game set a solid colour.
Exposure	1.2	Sky brightness.
Atmosphere thickness	0.7	0.5-2. Higher is deeper blue but a whiter horizon. Buggy.
Sun size	0.028	Apparent size of the sun. Buggy.
Stars	true	Starfield at night.
Star count	200	40-800.
Moon phases	true	Draw the fake moon, with phases.
Moon size	0.075	Apparent size of the moon.
Lunar cycle game days	8	Game days per full moon cycle.
Sunset glow	true	Glow band along the horizon at dawn and dusk. Buggy.
Sunset glow strength	1	0-2. Buggy.
Clouds	true	Drifting procedural clouds.
Cloud count	24	1-40.
Cloud speed	0.8	Drift speed in meters per second.
Cloud direction	25	Compass direction the clouds drift toward.
Cloud altitude	90	World units. Lower this for low-hanging clouds, raise it if you want them way up there.
Cloud scale	1	0.3-3.

Grading

Config Option	Default Value	Description
Enabled	true	Colour grade on or off. F6 toggles.
Temperature	0	-100 to 100. Negative is colder, positive is warmer.
Tint	0	-100 to 100. Green to magenta.
Post exposure	0	Exposure in EV.
Contrast	10	-100 to 100.
Saturation	3	-100 to 100.
Night exposure dip	-0.12	Extra darkening at deep night, in EV.
Override bloom off	false	Forces the game's bloom to zero. Buggy
Override vignette off	false	Forces vignette to zero. Buggy
Override film grain off	false	Forces film grain to zero. Buggy
Override depth of field off	false	Turns depth of field off. Buggy
Override motion blur off	false	Turns motion blur off. Buggy

Weather

Config Option	Default Value	Description
Enabled	true	Master switch for rain, storm, lightning and thunder.
Random rain	true	It starts and stops on its own.
Always raining	false	Holds the rain on.
Rain chance	0.2	0.02-0.9. Roughly the share of time it rains.
Rain minutes min	2.5	Shortest shower, in minutes. (cfg file only)
Rain minutes max	5.5	Longest shower, in minutes. (cfg file only)
Transition seconds	14	How long the storm takes to build and clear.
Rain light multiplier	0.58	0.2-1. How much light is left under full rain.
Rain exposure dip	-0.18	Extra darkening in rain, in EV. (cfg file only)
Rain volume	0.5	0-1.
Thunder per minute	0.06	Average chance per minute of a lightning flash. 0 turns lightning off entirely.
Rain density	1.4	0.5-2. More rain, slightly more work for your GPU.
Rain drop size	0.6	0.4-1.4.
Toggle rain key	F10	Key for starting and stopping rain. (cfg file only)

Audio

Config Option	Default Value	Description
Enabled	true	Master switch for the mod's sound.
Day bed volume	0.05	0-1. Only used if day_bed exists.
Night bed volume	0.06	0-1. Only used if night_bed exists.
Fade seconds	12	How long the beds take to fade in and out.
Bed volume in rain	0.2	0-1. How much of the beds remain in the rain.

Interface

Config Option	Default Value	Description
Enable menu	true	Enables the F11 menu.
Menu key	F11	Key that opens the menu. (cfg file only)

To Do, Maybe

• Rain splashes on the ground. Currently the rain is a hand-moved mesh. Splashes will need to be too.
• Wind gusts, swaying trees, blown leaves. Possibly autumn. Possibly all of it at once, to see what happens.
• Real moon lighting. The moon is currently a very convincing sticker.
• Optimize, optimize, optimize.

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Digital Tip Jar

If you enjoy the moon and the stars and the rain, consider supporting on Ko-fi.

Shoutout

Inspried by Day and Night by Kozu0822 for On Together, a cute pomodoro productivity game. Everything had to be thrown out and rewritten for Big Walk's particular needs and my processing. Percentile` chances to further alter the environment wouldn't have occured to me and it got the rain's inconsistency consistent.

License

CC BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial). Reach out if you do something cool with this.

^{_{this must be, once again, a cry for help. the sky was fine, right?}}