grinningman

Yes, that's what I've been trying to say. It's not obvious to me, even after your examples, that this is wrong (here's an invitation to all manner of witty put-downs, obviously). I did think of an example where you're sitting in a lit room - you can look out a window to the night sky and see a silhouette against the stars even thought the star illumination is essentially zero compared to the room lights. So yeah, you're probably right.

What Orbweaver said. I initially thought the idea would be a neat way to bypass having to worry about working out a whole bit of code just for silhouette detection, but given the way the light gem works, it isn't. I'm not persuaded by Zylonbane's and Domarius' examples, but don't have time to get into a debate (until I finish what I'm procrastinating from, anyway). I think Demagogue's example would be closer to shadow detection than silhouette detection. Anyway, as Orbweaver said, much of this is semantic.

I guess I disagree. If you are so far inside the tunnel that you're not lit at all, there won't be enough light for someone else to see your silhouette against. I will check next time I'm in a dark tunnel with a friend That's interesting - how does it do this? Is it ambient light, or does the light spill around corners?

I don't think it's the wrong reasoning - in your example, it is the reflected light from the wall (or whatever) you are silhouetted against that is illuminating you. By definition, you can't be silhouetted unless something is illuminating you from behind. The problem is that the game engine doesn't treat illuminated objects themselves as sources of light. But I guess this is just restating the problem in a different way - instead of finding a way for the guards to detect your silhouette, you have to make every lit object another source of light. This is probably too difficult - there might be too many calculations, and you'd have to work out how reflective each surface/object is.

Sorry for the thread revival, I'm procrastinating. I'm assuming you haven't implemented silhouette detection yet I don't think you should implement it. If someone can see your silhouette, all it means is that you're being lit from behind (i.e. the side of you the observer can see is dark, and the side of you that the observer can't see is lit). There's already a light gem to tell you how much light is falling on you, regardless of the direction. Voila: automatic silhouette detection.