I played a lot with the atmosphere trigger. I've found you can trigger it if the player is idle by setting the player character offstage and instantly onstage again after you make the change to the trigger as long as the player is standing in the trigger. It worked kind of sporadically, but I think it was a step in the right direction.
My other idea was to teleport the player off the map and into a waiting trigger, then back to his current location instantly. I never tested it, I don't know how jarring it would be or if it would even be noticed due to the speed of the script execution. (This wouldn't work I'm guessing because the player wouldn't remain inside the trigger)
I actually read a lot of your post regarding the subject when I was working on it.
The issue I did run into (and eventually moved away from working on for the time being) is my atmosphere trigger kept becoming corrupt when I used the script to change the atmosphere settings of it - but this was likely due to my own mistake. I didn't work too long on it.
Edit:
The day night cycle I did end up using is present in my mod "Zombie Time". It's a short little mod that was an experiment in scripting and its not super high quality mapping-wise. It makes heavy use of timers and CharacterVariables to run the Day night cycle and the hunger system.
Last edited by Burgee; 18/12/14 04:09 PM.