The Mana World Forums

Crush wrote:A light engine should not be used as a feature which obstructs the player. When a player is annoyed by it he will just switch it off. Making it impossible to switch the light engine off is out of discussion because, as I said, the engine would be a big performance killer for low-end systems. And even when we wouldn't make it possible to disable it people would just patch their clients.

The only we can do is to recognize it server-side only only send beings the client should be able to see given the current lighting.

oh thanks for moveing it

I didn't mean to obstruct a players movement, they can still move around the cave but just won't be able to see monsters, drops, or basically anything without something to give off a light source to help them see. As most caves actually would be completely dark when venturing into them. Unless there are torches on the wall or something to light the way either magically or a natural light source. Just a brief idea.

Maybe it would be better just to have them not be able to enter the cave like the cat ears quest. Pushing the player back outside and saying something like "You run outside in fear after feeling something move past you in the darkness. Better find something to light your way" etc. Unless a torch or some light giving item is equipped at the time when entering"

Then after being able to enter maybe use some sort of particle effect like the sandstorm but make it seem like torch light flickering on screen.

Anyways just a couple ideas to throw out. Maybe if I find some time I'll see if I can play around with them and come up with something.

Sorry to get off topic Meway.

Balthazaar wrote:I didn't mean to obstruct a players movement, they can still move around the cave but just won't be able to see monsters, drops, or basically anything without something to give off a light source to help them see. As most caves actually would be completely dark when venturing into them. Unless there are torches on the wall or something to light the way either magically or a natural light source. Just a brief idea.

Maybe it would be better just to have them not be able to enter the cave like the cat ears quest. Pushing the player back outside and saying something like "You run outside in fear after feeling something move past you in the darkness. Better find something to light your way" etc. Unless a torch or some light giving item is equipped at the time when entering"

Then after being able to enter maybe use some sort of particle effect like the sandstorm but make it seem like torch light flickering on screen.

Anyways just a couple ideas to throw out. Maybe if I find some time I'll see if I can play around with them and come up with something.

Sorry to get off topic Meway.

Yeah, I guess the whole issue of how the cave is lit just ... Ugh. As it stands the caves are lit by "mystery" lighting. Generally: not an issue with most players. I've yet to see anyone scream out in a cave: "This is all wrong! This cave should be black and I should have no way of finding my way around." Those who enter the caves just move from point A to B without much thought.

The spider/yellowSlime/ShortSword cave enjoys some oil-based lamps. I suggest we remove the flashlight from the miner's hat and put these lamps in the caves.

thats ok the topic is now changed and your idea is perfect for one of those upper level char people have ben having. for instance i relly like this part. minus crushes black layer theory this would be great.

Balthazaar wrote: As most caves actually would be completely dark when venturing into them. Unless there are torches on the wall or something to light the way either magically or a natural light source. Just a brief idea.
Maybe it would be better just to have them not be able to enter the cave like the cat ears quest. Pushing the player back outside and saying something like "You run outside in fear after feeling something move past you in the darkness. Better find something to light your way" etc. Unless a torch or some light giving item is equipped at the time when entering" Then after being able to enter maybe use some sort of particle effect like the sandstorm but make it seem like torch light flickering on screen.


Sorry to get off topic Meway.

meway: the thought of having something els light the cave and an equippedable lighting item like a oil lamp or something

and btw i agree take the lamp off the minors helmet there are no batteries in TMW

Crush wrote:A light engine should not be used as a feature which obstructs the player. When a player is annoyed by it he will just switch it off. Making it impossible to switch the light engine off is out of discussion because, as I said, the engine would be a big performance killer for low-end systems. And even when we wouldn't make it possible to disable it people would just patch their clients.

I was not thinking of the light engine to be obstructive. More like a enhancement to the game. It would be option in the video setting, and ideally could tie into the particle engine. Would most likely replace overhead.

We can also have varying degrees detail, from off, to simple night/day (or dark caves), to source lights.

I did some examples of the idea I am thinking of, I did them in gimp with layers. Ill upload the .xcf files with it so you can play with adjusting the strength of the lights and stuff

I zipped at: http://filebin.ca/ydywae/examples.zip

The light sources look more like colored fogs than light sources in these examples. The player can see even less in the lighted areas than in the dark ones.

How about instead of an extra "flashlight" layer, we use the current cave over layer for a lighted cave, and instead we have another layer which is entirely black so the player cannot see at all.
So that the player doesn't get stuck in the black, we could change the cave entrance/exit to be on a layer above the black layer. (It would require making an extra entrance that appears as if blended into the black.)
However, if the player has the minor hat the black layer is disabled and the player can see as we have it set now.
In fact we could have a quest go along with this; so that the player does not need to have the minor's hat equipped at all times in the cave, there could be a quest to acquire a candle and then the player can equip whatever hat.

i like kages darkening the map Vs pitch black tile set idea. //dont like the visibility less// but can i suggest and ora around the character himself that kind of moves as he walks that cuts off a layer?

Superkoop wrote:How about instead of an extra "flashlight" layer, we use the current cave over layer for a lighted cave, and instead we have another layer which is entirely black so the player cannot see at all.
So that the player doesn't get stuck in the black, we could change the cave entrance/exit to be on a layer above the black layer. (It would require making an extra entrance that appears as if blended into the black.)
However, if the player has the minor hat the black layer is disabled and the player can see as we have it set now.
In fact we could have a quest go along with this; so that the player does not need to have the minor's hat equipped at all times in the cave, there could be a quest to acquire a candle and then the player can equip whatever hat.

Except that would be easy to hack out. You can't trust that the client will work as you expect. We could reduce the visible being range the server uses for that player based on how dark the cave should be and whether they have lighting/night vision/etc. THat way, it doesn't matter what the client does, they still get the effects.

Crush wrote:The light sources look more like colored fogs than light sources in these examples. The player can see even less in the lighted areas than in the dark ones.

We could increase the alpha on the global layer in areas where lights are maybe?

This would at lest work for white light.

That's essentially what I was suggesting on page 1.

Crush wrote:That's essentially what I was suggesting on page 1.

Ill do a example of using that in a bit.

Doing darkness and white lights are easy, what about colored lights? Unless we actually add color directly to the tiles that are being drawn, Im not sure how we could do it

Well, we could also use the good old lightmap system. When you multiply the RGB color values of the second image with those from the first you get the third image: Problem: this means 800x600x3 = 1.44 million multiplications for every frame drawn. Could be a real fps killer.