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File Overview

default_district.xtbl controls most things about the graphics' default weather (Clear Skies).
default_global.xtbl seems to contain... sky stuff. Haven't looked into it yet.
weather.xtbl contains weather effects like rain, wind (not sure if this exists anymore) and each weather type (stage)'s chances. See shitface's and ReBorN's mods as a reference. 

weather_time_of_day.xtbl adds "exceptions" to **default_district.xtbl** for each Time of Day (TOD). For example, you just want to add a rain effect; you do it here. 
skybox_effects contain some effects like meteor shower, "heat lightning", and the ... UFO? Does that really exist (especially this version)?

Differences between SRTT and SRTTR 

The more I dig into this the more I see not only crunch, but also a lot of optimizations. 
Example: rain drops are no longer illuminated by car headlights (see: Lighting And Simplifying Saints Row The Third https://www.saintsrowmods.com/forum/threads/useful-reading-and-viewing.21547/). 
Clouds are a static texture, always the same. The tags are still there though, probably an SR2 leftover. 

Some notes on their mods

in 3 and above shitface pretty much eliminated all of the horizon fog. this is achieved by default_district.xtbl. I don't like cussing -that- much (bite me) so I will refer to his mod as "that mod" (probably as a proper noun)

ReborN70's mod uses BoJan's xtbl editor, which causes winmerge to highlight the entire document yellow (as it replaces tab characters with three spaces each). he also uses much longer floating points which I'm not even sure the game supports. with my 1366x768 screen res this made comparing it a chore and I just didn't bother.



Tips for Editing

- It's easiest to start with weather and weather_time_of_day.xtbl, since those are supported by the table file editor.

- If you have a specific style you want to achieve (e.g. making a Spring season-themed mod), start with default_district.xtbl first. This file is the "default" setting of every weather. Other files modify or build upon it as a base. This is why Clear Skies has no entry here by default.

- Do a lot of comparing. a [cow] load of comparing. WinMerge (if looking through shitface's files) and looking between default_district.xtbl once you have a good base is paramount.

For default_district.xtbl:
According to ReborN70, 
10 is night | 
19 is sunrise/morning | 
29 is afternoon | 
42 is sunset/evening. 

Thank you ReborN, this is very useful info.

Editing Colours Within .xtbl

A lot of colours are in LSL format, can be said as LSL-I(ntensity) in .xtbl itself.
https://outworldz.com/colorpicker/
Unfortunately I don't know Javascript or jQuery, so I don't know how to make an offline version of this. 
It does exist on webarchive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20190824220313/https://www.outworldz.com/colorpicker/
(REMOVE THE COMMAS WHEN PASTING)

Say it with me:
Thank you outworldz! Thank you Internet Archive staff! Thank you Internet Archive donors!

Tips to test things FASTER

- spawnpoint: I recommend saving near the Airport as it has blazing quick access to planes, the view of Downtown, towned roads and the ocean. "Ocean, right?" 
You can also use the save editor to set your spawn point there.
- install Sandbox++ for the LBracket + Sprint ( [ + Shift ) shortcut to teleport to the Joe Magarac Statue. 
- delete logo videos (startup_logos.bik, according to PCGW). while we're at it you may as well save space and delete menu_bg.bik, so there's less storage space burden as the game loads. yay, free 283 MB!

- understand the most important regular expression (atleast in Notepad++): .*? - a total wildcard. 
ex: if you wanted to Ctrl + H search for tags containing _color and beginning with / (so you don't get duplicate results), tick regex box and /.*?_color in Find What 

How I made tags glossary

Mark > [tab character]<.*?>. some tags are within 2 tabs. then Copy Marked Text, ctrl + N, paste into this new blanky canvas
regex replace with nothing: \n.*?<time> (and other common terms like value, key, etc)
Line Operations > Remove Blank Lines
finally .*?</.*?> to remove closing versions of tags (redundant) and 
Line Operations > Remove Blank Lines
do again for the ones with 2 tabs

then it is changing default values in the .xtbl and launching the game many many times. thankfully I like staring at my character



To add: 
default_district.xtbl starts with east1 - 4 and west 1 - 4, defined as a <Type>ColorLinear</Type>. I'm not sure how this works, but I assume it's something to do with colour of the sky.
other blank entries I probably update in the future and try things out.

patch the weather and weather_time_of_day files to something table file editor can edit (most volumetric stuff dont exist), and preferably add descriptions as well. 
default_district.xtbl cannot be edited through table_file_editor because it lacks proper <TableDescription> indexing. If you understand the format you could add everything that the table_file_editor can recognize, but don't think it will be easy.