Season Manager (add-on) – 12 Stage Seasonal Visuals and Environment v1.0
Season Manager (add-on): The 12-Stage Seasonal Visuals & Environment is an add-on that controls the game’s graphics and visual effects.
The mod’s core visual base is built strictly on Vanilla Visuals, ensuring maximum stability and a look that feels native to the game. A single “master” file is used as a template to generate 12 unique visual profiles. Over 225 different graphical parameters are dynamically tuned for each stage, so the look and feel of the world perfectly matches the time of year.
Key Features
Here are some of the features of 12 Stage Seasonal Visuals and Environment you will see change as you progress through the stages:
Atmosphere & Lighting
The very quality of the light changes to match the time of year.
– Sun Intensity: The sun is no longer a static light source. It’s at its weakest and lowest in the sky during the middle of winter and at its most intense and blazing in the middle of summer.
– Seasonal Day/Night Length: Day and night lengths are now dynamic. The sun rises earliest in summer (6:00 AM) and latest in winter (7:00 AM). All related lighting, including streetlights, house lights, and vehicle lights, adjusts to this new cycle automatically.
– Night Sky: The night sky adapts to the atmosphere. On a hazy midsummer night, the moon and stars are fainter. On a clear, cold mid-winter night, the moon is brighter, and the stars and galaxies are significantly more brilliant and intense.
Lighting & Shadows
Artificial lights and shadows are now tied to the seasonal environment.
– Light Realism: Street lamps and train lights burn visibly brighter in the cold, clear winter air. Because there is less haze, these lights will appear as smaller, sharper points of light rather than the large, hazy blooms you see in summer.
– Shadow Quality: Shadows are no longer static. The high, direct sun of midsummer produces crisp, dark, and defined shadows. The low-angled middle of winter sun creates softer, longer, and more diffused shadows.
Environment Dynamics
The physical world adapts its behavior to the season.
– Drying Speed: The world’s “drying speed” is tied to temperature. Get wet in the middle of a summer heatwave, and you’ll dry almost instantly. Get wet in the middle of winter, and you will stay damp for a very long time.
– Puddles & Mud: The ground changes with the season. Puddles are at their deepest and mud is thickest in the wet middle of the autumn stage. In the dry middle of summer, puddles are shallow and infrequent.
– Frozen World: In the depths of winter, puddle animations stop, assuming them to freeze over!
– Vehicle Dirt: Vehicle wheels will get caked in thick mud in the wet seasons, but will barely pick up any in the dry summer. In winter, all mud logic is replaced by snow.
Peds & Animals (Reactions & Rendering)
Characters, animals, and the player now truly live in the world.
– Sweat Mechanics: You will no longer see Arthur sweating while galloping in a blizzard. In the middle of summer, peds and horses will start sweating at a realistic 20°C. In the middle of winter, the sweat threshold is raised to an impossible 35°C, effectively disabling it.
– Seasonal Fur: Animals will grow visibly thicker, fuller, and more detailed fur coats to survive the cold. The maximum fur layers are doubled in winter.
– Dirt Accumulation: You will get dirty at different rates. You’ll get caked in mud much faster in the wet spring and autumn months than in the dry, dusty summer.
Vegetation, Wind, & Water
Foliage and water physics respond to the time of year.
– Wind Speed: The wind is no longer static. It is at its most active in the volatile spring and autumn seasons, causing grass to sway more intensely. Summer days are calmer.
– Water Physics: River and water foam are most intense during the spring melt and much calmer during the summer.
– Reflections: Water reflections are tied to the atmosphere. Reflections in the middle of winter are sharp and clear. In the middle of summer, they are softer to blend with the hazy air.
Post-Processing
A final post-processing layer acts as a 12-stage “camera filter.”
– Sharpness: The image is automatically sharpened in the crisp winter air for a clear, defined picture.
– Bloom: The image is softened, and the “glow” of light (bloom) is increased in the hazy, hot days of summer for a dreamier, more oppressive feel.
Installation
Ensure you have the Main Mod installed. Open the downloaded archive. Place the lml folder into your main RDR2 folder (the same spot as RDR2.exe).
Uninstallation
To remove this specific module, simply delete the following folders from your lml directory:
lml\SeasonManager\time
lml\SeasonManager\visualsettings
