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Salutations once again I am in need of help. I've been fiddling around with triggers for my map in regards to weather creation and a system where weather is dynamic, as in, it changes randomly or on a set schedule depending on time passing. But no matter what I've tried nothing has worked.
Additionally, I'd like to add buffs the weather causes like for example a blizzard causing units to move and attack slower or perhaps lose mana/hp faster etc but I can't figure that out either. If anyone could draft me up a visual example with the triggers menu, it'd assist me a lot with my map.
Never really fiddled with weather but it should go like this
Rain
Events
Time - Elapsed game time is 0.00 seconds
Conditions
Actions
Environment - Create at (Playable map area) the weather effect Ashenvale Rain (Heavy)
Set VariableSet WeatherEffect = (Last created weather effect)
Environment - Turn WeatherEffect On
Here you've created and enabled your weather. Then it's up to you to decide if you want to use waits or timers in order to make it stop and create the next one
Environment - Turn WeatherEffect Off
Environment - Create at (Playable map area) the weather effect Northrend Snow (Heavy)
Set VariableSet WeatherEffect = (Last created weather effect)
Environment - Turn WeatherEffect On
Etc. About the buffs, you can create a dummy caster for the neutral hostile player and give it e.g. a negative endurance aura with a radius of 99999, then remove it when the snow weather is changed
I would advise using "Slow Aura (Tornado)" instead of endurance aura. Functionally it is the same thing (both auras affect atk and mov speed), but the slow aura is offensive aura by default
---- @WolfChalk for applying effects you will need to do basically what Chaosium wrote - try to leverage aura skill effects with large 'area of effect' range so that a single aura affects entire map. Then just use an invisible/invulnerable dummy unit owned by Neutral Passive that will have this aura so that it is applied to everyone on the map.
For effects that cannot be applied via auras, you will need to get a bit creative. E.g.:
1) Adding and removing item abilities from all units on map and using a custom aura that does nothing just to see a buff
2) Create a active spell that applies (de)buffs and have a dummy unit cast it on everyone on the map. This second approach has an important disadvantage: such effects can be dispelled by skills like Abolish Magic, Dispel Magic, etc.
For a generic weather system, I would try something like below (note that I have not tested the triggers, so I may have some bugs there).
How it works:
Have a bunch of triggers, each for different weather. Each such trigger has two parts: For enabling and for disabling that weather
On map initialization, populate array variables: assign to array each weather trigger and that weather's weight. Weight impacts the chance that the given weather will be selected.
Have an initial trigger that starts a countdown timer.
Finally, have a trigger that fires when the countdown timer expires. It will first disable currently active weather (if any is active) and then select new weather and enables it.
Weather Initialization
Events
Map initialization
Conditions
Actions
Set VariableSet WeatherEffectDummy = Weather Effect Dummy 0002 <gen>
If (All Conditions are True) then do (Then Actions) else do (Else Actions)
If - Conditions
WeatherPickedIndex Greater than 0
Then - Actions
Trigger - Run WeatherOptions[WeatherPickedIndex] (checking conditions)
Else - Actions
Weather Rain
Events
Conditions
Actions
If (All Conditions are True) then do (Then Actions) else do (Else Actions)
If - Conditions
WeatherEnable Equal to True
Then - Actions
Environment - Create at (Playable map area) the weather effect Ashenvale Rain (Heavy)
Set VariableSet CurrentWeather = (Last created weather effect)
Environment - Turn CurrentWeather On
Unit - Add Rain Weather Slow Effect to WeatherEffectDummy
Countdown Timer - Start WeatherTimer as a One-shot timer that will expire in (((Real((Random integer number between 6 and 10))) x 2.00) + 15.00) seconds
Else - Actions
Environment - Turn CurrentWeather Off
Environment - Remove CurrentWeather
Unit - Remove Rain Weather Slow Effect (Tornado) from WeatherEffectDummy
The "WeatherEffectDummy" is a pre-placed dummy unit.
The "Weather Slow Effect" ability is an aura-like ability based off "Slow Aura (Tornado)"
How this would work during gameplay would be:
After 5 second since map start, the 'Start' trigger fires and starts the countdown timer with 10.0 seconds left.
After 10 seconds the timer expires and fires the 'Change' trigger.
Change trigger skips disabling current weather - there is none
Next, it uses weights and random number to determine 'WeatherPickedIndex', which is the index of picked weather (matching indices 1-6 as set up in Map Initialization trigger)
Let's say WeatherPickedIndex is 2, that matches the index of 'Weather Rain' trigger.
WeatherEnabled boolean var is configured to 'True', meaning we want to enable weather
The Change trigger finally fires trigger assigned to WeatherOptions[2], which is the 'Weather Rain <gen>' trigger.
Weather Rain trigger checks boolean value of 'WeatherEnabled' variable. It is set to 'True', so it will create the rain weather effect, add a slowing aura to dummy unit so that the 'Rain Slow' effect is applied globally to all units, and finally it starts again the WeatherTimer countdown timer again to expire between 27-35 seconds.
After time expires, it will trigger 'Change' trigger again, which will first set 'WeatherEnabled' bool to 'FALSE' and run 'Weather Rain' trigger again.
In 'Weather Rain' trigger the boolean is False this time, so the rain weather is disabled and the slowing aura is also removed.
After this, the 'Change' trigger resumes, once again determining random weather, which it would enable.
This approach is a bit complicated, but it has the following advantanges:
You can affect probability of a weather by just adjusting its weights
You can easily add new weather: Create a trigger like 'Weather Rain' and in Map Initialization trigger add that trigger to the WeatherOptions array, assign it a weight and increase the WeatherMaxIndex.
You can also do some additional stuff easily - for example "Weather Rain" trigger may start another periodic trigger that will also create lightning storm effects on the map, etc.
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I am in need of help. I've been fiddling around with triggers for my map in regards to weather creation and a system where weather is dynamic, as in, it changes randomly or on a set schedule depending on time passing. But no matter what I've tried nothing has worked. 
