I wanted to demonstrate the weather engine to some individuals, but for whatever reason a single frame with the new weather engine in took up 25mb (FWIW the game is about 120mb with everything). But whatever Trevor. I hobbled together a video inbetween breaks whilst chipping off bathroom tiles (if you haven't done this before then you have no idea how fun it actually is!).
But I digest.
The new weather engine is set along a percentage scale for each effect, so it can be drizzling or torrential and everything it can control is effected. The volume of the sound effect, the frequency and panning and the environment settings. And that's for all the effects I demonstrated in the vid. Lightning even has a parameter that sets the distance of the lightning so the brightness of the flash and time delay of the sound is affected.
And as for optimisation... Towards the end of the vid I switched on every effect to their max level and it stays a constant 60 FPS (minus some for the recording process) on my paltry 3 year old 2ghz C2D.
This is without HWA :3, though I am planning a HWA version for slower computers, and you can turn down the quality settings too.
There are 3 effects I didn't show too.
And this isn't a trailer, it's a rolling demonstration
Very polished and well made, and each weather condition seems to have a very well suited atmosphere, which were also very well made. However the transisition from no weather to rain (or vice versa) bugged me. It seemed like it went from one to the other too quickly. On a note, I did like the lightning effect a great deal. It looked almost exactly like real lightning. All in all, a great deal of coding was put into it, I assume, and it's all very polished and neat. But the rain effect annoyed me a tad.
That might be down to the values and how the effect is set. 0 means an effect is off, 1 is max, 100 is lowest. Sliding the values around will get that effect quick effect but when they're triggered in the game they're set differently and have a smoother transition.
What I was doing in that vid was setting them to from 0 to 1 and back again.
They're quite hard to see, the other effects are 1-4px thick, whereas the embers are just 1-2x thick, are spawned over objects and they fade out quickly. I guess it's just the poor compression, they're much more noticeable ingame.
"...and through it all, the little flame on the pole survived."
That's how the video should've ended.
Anyway, looks great! That was some crazy weather at the end. Lightning and snow isn't something you see every day. I quite liked it actually. I'd also like to see snow and ash. No reason why you can't combine them for some parts of the game.
Just a couple of things: I think the rain should be more of a "line" sprite than a circle - it'd give a better impression of speed and also distinguish it from the snow effect. How about a raindrop "splash" effect too, and a more squelchy footstep sound when walking in grass during (and after?) rain. Also, if there are ANY COWS in the game, they should totally lie down before it rains.
I like that everything is effected by the wind. Except, not everything. The tree in the background and the foreground grass look pretty stubborn. Are the enemies going to be pushed around by the wind too? Hopefully that won't cause problems with things getting stuck in walls. And the flame on the left keeps burning with the same intensity regardless of the weather.
p.s. The wee rabbit guy sure likes running left and right on top of boxes! (he also seems to flicker for no reason at 1:34)
Hah! funny you should say that, before I even added obstacle enemies I added cows. And I have made alterations since watching that vid back. The overlay colour effect now fades to its destination much slower, heavy rain extinguishes fires. That pole thingy is a save area and that fire never goes out :3 ... unless its overlapping water
Rabbit flickers when he's teleported back to the player.
Sunny day... underground? wait... I guess you don't normally get lightning underground either.
Nim makes some great points about the rain; checking against weather conditions before playing samples for various actions like walking would really help make the weather effects more believable.
Thanks for the recommendations guys, just added in footstep splash sounds (which get louder depending how heavy it has been raining)! Also forgot that I added in a parameter to adjust how thick the snowfall is, doh . Snow gets thicker if its windy to give the impression of a blizzard, but the size is also adjustable willy nilly.
And working on this has inspired me to make a game where you control the weather. might get onto that someday.
Otherwise, evry awesome effects. The lighting trick is a nice one becuase you don't have to worry about trails and such. Although background effect ligthing wouldn't hurt, I just have one problem with it. It seems kinda too intense at some points. With the flashing obscuring player view.
By the way. Since this won't be out for a long while, why don't you right an article on that weather system? You shouldn't have to get real technical and stuff, just some of the basics. Mostly because the articles we have on weather right now are a bit old and dated. Plus it'd be neat to see how you aproach things differently then other people.
Agree with all of the above, and i think it'd be cool if the wind effects the bombs too - would add some more strategy if the wind carries it when you're throwing it!
I was using the Worms train of thought in that thrown items shouldn't be affected by wind. But I think they shouldn't be really, I want something to move the player around but to still have the opportunity to attack.
Also decreased the weather overlay transparency. I figured that during very heavy rain or snow your vision is narrowed, so the layer the player is on is the only one in focus... as it were.
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Dr. James MD 
That's better than I've ever had. 
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