Testers Wanted: Seasons Atmospheric Lighting Tweak

I absolutely love the seasonal lighting that they introduced as part of Seasons, but I found the exact settings for the defaults were not exactly to my liking. Therefore, I tweaked things a little bit to make things more like how I want them.

The changes I have made are VERY subtle (as is the lighting to begin with, honestly) so rather than viewing my comparison picture which is attached, please see these individual pics so you can flip back and forth and see the difference:

Default-Spring / Tweaked-Spring
Default-Summer / Tweaked-Summer
Default-Autumn / Tweaked-Autumn
Default-Winter / Tweaked-Winter

My changes are intended to lessen the over-saturated golden yellow of spring and make it a bit more green, but still quite warm and bright. Summer has been taken from, well, what looks like default lighting to a warmer pale orangey yellow, to give a sense of heat. Autumn looked like sunset all the time to me before, so it has been given a nice golden tint with a touch of grey, which goes nicely with the leaves but still feels cool. Winter I've left the colouration roughly the same, just darkened things a smidge so it feels a little more dreary.

I have not changed the sky tint whatsoever - my changes that I tried to make to the skies didn't seem to work. I will continue fiddling with that. I also am trying to change the storm effects for darker storms, and I'll post an updated version when/if I can figure out how to make that work. I'd also like to make nights darker and less blue. Consider this version 1, to "fix" the effects for more atmospheric gameplay, pending more fiddling and tweaking and many many in-game tests. I will likely be doing several flavors for different preferences and styles, so watch this space.

Radiance Lighting: This version is not meant to work with Radiance Lighting, as Radiance is not fully compatible with Seasons (just check out a lot with heavy snow at sunset and you'll see what I mean) - however, it SHOULD still work even if you have Radiance installed. I just advise against using Radiance with Seasons right now as it looks, well, weird.

You will likely need your Lighting settings turned up to high to see the seasonal change effects, and a decent enough graphics card to handle it. If you can see the seasonal lighting without this modification, you'll be able to see it with it.

TO INSTALL:

1. Go to Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Seasons\TSData\Res\Lights
2. Copy the file Lighting.txt
3. Paste the "Copy of Lighting.txt" file into the Lights folder.
4. Rename that file to LightingBackup.txt
5. Now from my rar file, copy Lighting.txt and OriginalLighting.txt to Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Seasons\TSData\Res\Lights
6. When it asks if you would like to overwrite Lighting.txt say YES.
7. Run the game. Your seasonal lighting effects should now be tweaked.

TO UNINSTALL:

1. Go to Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Seasons\TSData\Res\Lights
2. Delete the file Lighting.txt
3. Rename your LightingBackup.txt file to Lighting.txt
4. Run the game. The original seasonal lighting effects should be back.

WHAT THE ORIGINALLIGHTING.TXT FILE IS FOR:

I have included my copy of my original lighting file (OriginalLighting.txt) just in case you either forget to make a backup (by the way, MAKE A BACKUP!!) of your own file - you should be able to use it instead of your LightingBackup.txt file if you want to restore the original lighting. But seriously, back up yours. It's just better that way.


Please note that this mod is QUITE experimental. I make pretty dresses and hair - I just wanted prettier seasonal effects for my game, so I'm sharing my tweaks for my personal use with ya'll. I realize that the exact tweaks are personal preference. If you would like to tweak the seasonal lighting to your own liking, it's VERY easy, and I have basic instructions on doing so posted here.

Additional Credits:
The folks in S2C's Sims 2 Chat, for offering opinions on the seasonal lighting.