Dynamic Surroundings alters the player’s visual and audible experience in Minecraft, and does not alter game mechanics. The player has a high degree of control over their experience, and modpack authors can customize biome and block effects based on their need.

Discussion thread can be found on the Feed the Beast forums.

NOTE: The JARs I build are published only to CurseForge.  I cannot vouch for the JARs found on other sites because I do not know their origin.

So why are there two different versions of Dynamic Surroundings for 1.12.2?

The v3.4.10.x branch is the current RELEASE branch.  It is currently in maintenance and is recommended for players that do not want the turbulence of ongoing development.  No new features are planned for this version.

The v3.5.x branch is the main development branch and is undergoing active development.  Main focus is laying the foundation for the migration to Minecraft 1.13.x whenever a stable Forge release is available.  Though my goal is to keep the builds as stable as possible, bugs will be encountered.  If you are willing to help me with testing and provide feedback this build would be suitable for you.  At this point in the cycle my priority is stability before new features. 

Starting with v3.5.4.0, the HUDs have been moved into a separate mod called Dynamic Surroundings: HUDs.  The HUDs mod will not run with earlier versions of Dynamic Surroundings so make sure you update your mods appropriately.

Credits

• Better Rain mod by Wirsbo
• Aurora Rubealis by MrRube
• Presence Footsteps by Hurricaaane
• Complete list of attributions for sounds, textures, and shaders can be found in CREDITS

Suggested Companions

• Serene Seasons
• Stellar Sky
• Biomes O’Plenty
• Open Terrain Generator/Biome Bundle
• Sound Filters
• TrueType Font Replacement
• Fancy Block Particles
• FoamFix
• Better Foliage
• OpenEye

Installation

Installing the mod is pretty easy!  Just drop the JAR into the "mods" folder in your Minecraft Forge instance and startup your client.

The mod is not needed on the server so you can drop into an existing modpack and play on public servers without problem.  However, if you add the mod to your pack and it is not installed on the server some features will not be available:

• No village sounds
• No player speech bubbles (if enabled)

Videos

Interview with Amaxter!

A very good overview of the features (in French):

Features

Storms

When precipitation occurs Dynamic Surroundings will generate a random storm intensity. This intensity will affect a variety of different things:

• The “density” of the downfall
• Volume of sound
• Background thunder
• Desert/Nether dust storms

Auroras

Auroras trigger at night when a player is standing in a “polar” biome such as Taiga or Ice Field. The size, shape, and coloration can change per Aurora spawned.

Biome Sounds

Biomes can have specific sounds that play while standing in them. The sound played can be different night or day, rain or shine. Forests have birds chirping, beaches have waves, swamps have crickets…

Block Effects

Blocks can have a variety of effects, sound as well as visual. Examples:

• Lava can form lava jets on the surface which spout fire or sparks.
• Bubbles can rise from the bottom of lakes, oceans, and ponds.
• Soul Sand can trigger demonic laughter.
• Wooden planks can squeak when walked upon.
• Dust motes can fall from various blocks.
• Steam will rise from water because of nearby lava.
• Fireflies will spawn at night around various plants in temperate biomes.
• Waterfall splash effects/sounds for flowing water.

Footstep Acoustics

Presence Footsteps is integrated directly within Dynamic Surroundings. This feature generates different footstep sounds as the player walks and jumps. The sounds played are based upon the material that the player is standing on or moving through as well as the armor they are wearing.

Player Effects

Various effects, both sound and visual, can be triggered or suppressed:

• Damage/Heal pop offs. Whenever a mob gets hurt or is healed a pop-off particle will fly off around the mob indicating the amount of change.
• Weapon/tool swoosh. A sound gets played when swinging around a weapon or tool.
• Jump. A “huh” sound will play when jumping.
• Bow pull. A sound gets played when a player pulls back on a bow.
• Crafting sound. Plays when an item is crafted by the player.
• Heartbeat. When a players health drops to 40% or less Steve’s heart begins to beat loudly.
• Hunger. When a players food bar drops to 40% or less the stomach beings to rumble.
• Potion particle swirls. Can be turned off so they don’t interfere with the players field of view.
• Potion HUD. Replaces the Minecraft potion HUD with one that gives names and the effects remaining time.

Miscellaneous

Dynamic Surroundings also adds in other miscellaneous features to assist the player:

• Ability to block any sound from the modpack from playing
• Ability to customize the sound volume of any sound in the modpack when played
• Configuration/resource pack system modpack authors can use to add/change biome, block, item, and dimension effects
• Light level HUD that indicates currrent block light levels
• Compass HUD when a Minecraft compass is held to indicate location and bearing
• Client side command for doing calculations
• Speech bubbles that appear over a player's head when they type in chat (needs to be enabled)
• Random entity chat for entertainment (needs to be enabled)

Screen Captures

Screenshots can be found in the Image tab!

Modpacks

Dynamic Surroundings is licensed MIT.  This means that you are free to include in modpacks and there are no requirements about giving credit or linking pack to any page.  However, if you feel compelled to give credit I won't mind. :)