Melt and spread snow in unloaded chunks #578
Description
Overview
Chunks would store the last tick they were loaded, and when they are loaded again, a rough calculation is used to skip-forward the process of melting/forming ice and snow to what it would have been had the chunk been loaded continuously.
Optional: Slowly load and update chunks like this even if they are unloaded, to facilitate LOD mods like Distant Horizons and Voxy.
Why would this feature be useful?
When chunks are unloaded for several seasons, the state of snow is preserved. This leads to annoying cases like leaving your "Christmas hideaway" near the end of winter, and returning during the summer to find that none or very little of the snow has melted. This also makes a limited simulation distance extremely apparent, which is quite jarring.
Several older season mods have added the feature to calculate how long it has been since a chunk was last loaded, and fake ticks to melt or spread snow like it was loaded the whole time. The issue is that these mods are either completely dead, for outdated versions, or simply unusable. Adding this feature to Serene Seasons core would remove the dependency on random helpers (such as "Serene Tweaks") to add this feature that really should be a core feature of any dynamic-temperature mod.