Living Skies

The whole sky, alive: real sunsets, galaxy nights with a glowing moon, an ocean that mirrors it all, fog that wears the colour of the horizon, and grey rolling storms with rain, lightning and thunder.

Which mod do I need?

• This one. Living Skies is the complete package: the full HTF Day and Night cycle is built in, plus the weather on top.
• Never install both - this mod already contains Day and Night, and the separate HTF Day and Night is no longer updated.

What it does

• Storms park over the island. A grey ceiling of rolling cloud seals the sky, fog swallows the horizon, the light goes flat and dead, and slanted rain comes down in squalls. Sail out from under it and the storm lets you go - and stays sitting on the island behind you.
• Lightning you can see. Jagged bolts crack from the cloud deck to the sea, sometimes striking twice down the same channel, with thunder rolling in late like it crossed real distance. Distant sheet lightning blinks on the horizon before the storm arrives.
• Storms wait for the light to fail. Under a high sun a storm spell rolls as heavy rain; the real storm breaks from late afternoon through the night. Weather and hour always agree.
• Everyone shares one sky. The forecast is computed from synced server time - the same storm rolls over the whole crew at the same moment, with zero extra network traffic. Storms last about 3 minutes, rain about 3 and a half, with long clear spells between.
• The fog is the horizon. Distance fog wears the colour of the sky where the sea meets it: blue at noon, warm towards a low sun and cool away from it, dark at night. Far islands and far water fade into the sky instead of into a flat grey. It is clear at noon so distant islands stay readable, thickens a little at dawn and dusk, and more at night.
• The night sky is alive. Stars twinkle the way they really do - each on its own rhythm, hardest down near the horizon where you are looking through the most air, almost still overhead. The moon and sun hold steady, because discs do not scintillate.
• Shooting stars. Meteors cross on their own clocks: mostly faint scratches you half-catch, occasionally a slow bright fireball that flares as it breaks up. They burn at different heights, so some sweep fast and close while others creep across the top of the sky.
• Sunsets you can see in the water. The sky is warm on the sun's side and cool on the other, and anything that reflects the sky, the sea above all, sees that.
• Day and night included: real sunsets, a galaxy night with a glowing moon, an ocean that mirrors the sky, co-op synced time, F9 resync, and arrow-key time shifting (your personal view only).

Best with Better Oceans

The sea is lit by the game's own light, so everything this sky does arrives on the water by itself: the sunset lays a path across the swell, the storm turns it grey and hard, and the moon rides it at night. Better Oceans 2.0.2 and up reads the same fog this mod sets, so sea, islands and sky all fade into one horizon.

Get it here: Better Oceans

Installation

With a mod manager (easiest)

1. Install r2modman or the Thunderstore Mod Manager.
2. Select How to Fish, search for LivingSkies, click Install (BepInEx is installed automatically as a dependency).
3. If you have HTFDayNight installed as a separate mod, disable or uninstall it - Living Skies already contains it.
4. Press Start modded.

Manual

1. Install BepInEx 5 x64 into the game folder - the one with How to Fish.exe (Steam: right-click the game, Manage, Browse local files).
2. Run the game once and quit, so BepInEx creates its folders.
3. Copy HTFWeather.dll, HTFDayNight.dll, htfsky.bundle and the sound files into How to Fish/BepInEx/plugins/ - everything side by side.
4. If an older copy of HTFDayNight is already in there from the separate mod, delete it first.

Then just play. You spawn under a living sky; the first weather rolls in on its own (storms hold until the light starts to fail). Nothing needs enabling in-game.

Your own weather sounds (optional)

Create BepInEx/plugins/HTFWeatherAudio/ and drop in recordings - the mod picks them up automatically, and synthesises anything missing:

Config

Weather: Volume (yoxi.htf.weather.cfg), also adjustable from the F7 menu in game. The weather itself is deliberately not configurable - one tuned storm for everybody, so the whole crew lives under the same sky.

Sky (yoxi.htf.daynight.cfg): MinutesPerDay, the moonlight colour and strength, the night fog colour and density, Day > FogDensityMultiplier (0.7 by default; 1 is the game's own thickness) and FogFollowsTheView, which is the warm-towards-the-sun fog. Turn it off for one horizon colour all round.

More from Yoxi

• Better Oceans - a real sea: waves that break on the shore, water you can see into, a wake behind the boat. Pairs with this one
• Minimap - a live top-down minimap in the corner of the screen
• Torch - a real torch item: fire in your fist, light and moving shadows
• Better Islands - three of the five islands rebuilt by hand
• CustomIslands Loader - the mod that runs custom islands
• CustomIslands Mapmaker Kit - build your own islands

A note on AI

I used AI to help with parts of this mod, which is why it has the AI-generated tag. But let me be straight about it: AI did not make this mod, I did. Every idea in here is mine. I decided what the sky should look like at every hour, I built the sky itself in Unity, the sun, the moon, the stars and the storm decks, I sat in the game night after night watching sunsets and storms roll through, and I threw out and redid anything that was not right, over and over, until it was. AI helped me write some of the code faster. There is only so much AI can do, and the rest, which is most of it, is me.

Built by Yoxi.

Changelog

1.0.7

• The fog wears the horizon. Distance fog now takes the colour of the sky where the sea meets it: blue at noon, warm towards a low sun and cool away from it (it follows the direction you look, eased as you turn), dark at night. Far islands and far water fade into the sky instead of into a flat grey. Config: FogFollowsTheView.
• Clearer days. Daytime fog is 70% of the game's own so distant islands stay readable, thickening a little at dawn and dusk and more at night. Config: Day > FogDensityMultiplier.
• The sky holds. The game quietly resets its fog and reflections every time a player dips under the surface and comes back up, which with real waves can happen every few seconds near the waterline. The sky is now re-asserted at the moment each camera renders, so the game can no longer put a pale blue horizon back for a frame or a minute. It stands down only when you are genuinely underwater.
• The daytime fog is read from the game's own scene settings rather than remembered from the title screen, which runs a different fog.
• Sunsets in the reflections. The sky the sea mirrors is warm on the side of a low sun and cool on the other, instead of one colour all round.
• Pairs with Better Oceans 2.0.2, which reads this fog onto the sea.

1.0.6

• NEW: shooting stars. Meteors cross the night on their own clocks - mostly faint quick scratches, rarely a slow bright fireball that flares as it breaks up. They burn at different heights, so near ones sweep fast and wide while high ones creep, and they come in blue-white, iron-yellow, orange and the occasional green.
• NEW: the stars twinkle. Every star scintillates on its own phase and rate - strongest low in the sky where you look through the most air, almost still overhead. The moon and sun hold steady, as discs do, and the milky band holds steady too.
• Both are authored into the sky itself, so they cost no extra work in game and never fire during a storm.

1.0.5

• FIXED: the shipped rain and thunder recordings were silent for mod-manager installs - the installer flattens the package and strips the HTFWeatherAudio folder, leaving the sounds beside the dll where the mod never looked. It looks there now.

1.0.4

• Moonlight is colourblind now, like real night vision: the green is bitten out of the night light and ambient, so pine trees and grass read as silver-dark shapes under the moon instead of glowing green.

1.0.3

• Storm clock: a small top-right countdown shows how long until the rain or storm clears, synced for the whole crew.
• If a forced test state is left on from the menu, the clock says so plainly - no more mystery endless storms.

1.0.2

• REAL RAIN PHYSICS: drops collide with the world - they stop on roofs, docks and canopies (stand under cover and stay dry), and every drop spatters at its own exact impact point.
• Splash rings ride the game's actual wave surface, land on sand, decks and rooftops at their true height, and the sea visibly boils with impact rings and spray in a downpour.
• Distant rain veils: grey curtains of falling rain hang in the middle distance around the storm.
• Punchier pacing: storms last about 2 minutes, rain about 2.5, with the same long guaranteed-clear stretches between - and every day rolls a fresh forecast (it used to repeat the same schedule every session).
• Calmer lightning: strikes and sheet flashes are rarer, and thunder sits in the mix instead of stomping on it.
• New in-game menu (F7): volume plus thunder and lightning on/off switches, saved automatically.
• Fixed the shipped rain and thunder recordings not loading for mod manager installs.
• Fixed doubled wind (the rain recording already carries its own).

1.0.1

• Clearer mod page: which-mod-do-I-need guide and full manual/mod-manager install steps.

1.0.0

First release.

• Shared-forecast weather: clear spells, rain (~3.5 min) and storms (~3 min) computed from synced server time - the whole crew lives under one sky.
• Storms anchor over the island: sealed grey cloud ceiling, counter-rotating authored cloud decks, fog to the horizon, flat dead light, slanted squall rain. Sail out from under it and the storm stays parked behind you.
• Lightning: drawn bolts with branches, double strikes, distance-delayed thunder, distant sheet lightning before the storm arrives.
• Storms wait for failing light - under a high sun a storm spell rolls as heavy rain and breaks properly from late afternoon onward.
• Drop-in audio: put rain/storm/wind/thunder recordings in BepInEx/plugins/HTFWeatherAudio and they replace the built-in synthesiser.
• Includes HTF Day and Night 1.1.x (sunsets, galaxy night, mirror ocean, co-op time sync, F9 resync).