The lantern

[Briareos H]

Okay, here's a topic about the Dark Mod lantern. I want to make clear that the point is first to see whether I'm alone and dysfunctional in thinking that the lantern is irritating or if it is a general but silent sentiment, and then whether people have ideas to make it better. It is in no way a petition to change things at this point or a cheap jab at the Dark Mod team.

 

So, I dislike the lantern a lot. Considering that the mod is very 'dark', its inclusion is a logical move. It serves two purposes:

• Navigating rooms which are too dark to go through otherwise ;
  
• Locating hidden loot.
  

I think it fails at least for the former. When turned on in the middle of a pitch black room, even a small one, only the light at your feet can be seen when I would expect at least to be able to see the walls. As it is, players have to run blindly with the lantern on around to visualise the room layout, when holding a simple candle works much better.

 

Maybe someone from the team can provide info on whether it was intentional to have such a short falloff distance, because I think that's the heart of the problem.

Now, if its falloff is fixed and won't be changed, I was wondering if it was technically possible to tweak it so that the dynamic ambient value is affected by it being turned on? I do not have DarkRadiant installed on this machine at this time, but if someone tells me that tweaking the lantern is possible within the editor I'll have a go at it.

 

So, what are your feelings about the lantern and what do you use it for?

[Diego]

I always considered the lantern to be as good as it can be. But you have a good point! I support the idea of increasing its radius (it will probably need some other adjustments to make this work though)

[Bikerdude]

Yeah, the radious of the lantern light has never been that helpfull. If the lantern has args it can be edited by the mapper, eg change the light shader to falloff_exp2 and then change or add the following arg to increase the radious - "set light_radius on light" "150 150 150" just increase the 3 numbers for X, Y, Z etc as required etc

[New Horizon]

The lantern isn't very big physically though, it's meant to be small enough to fit on the players belt without being cumbersome. Pretty sure we had a reference pic of what it might look like at some point.

[Springheel]

Maybe someone from the team can provide info on whether it was intentional to have such a short falloff distance,

 

The short radius was intentional...it's supposed to be a very small, mostly covered light, after all. If there's strong feelings about it, I wouldn't be opposed to increasing the radius a bit as long as the brightness was decreased at the same time.

[GameDevGoro]

Is it possible to make it flicker like the candles? That could add a lot of atmosphere in certain contexts, make it look less rigid. The light, I mean.

 

Edit: Used a weird word, tired braaain. :I

Edited April 21, 2012 by GameDevGoro

[Baddcog]

Yes the light can be made to flicker.

 

I also have always felt the radius is a bit small, it really isn't all that useful. Making it larger radius (at least 2x) imo would be great, and making it dimmer would be fine too, in fact probably better. The player really doesn't need a super bright light, just soemthing that is lighter than not using it. But the radius is so small unless you are on top of something it's useless, it's not like a flash light were you can shine it around the room to see.

[Springheel]

Is it possible to make it flicker like the candles?

 

We specifically didn't want it to flicker, because it looks ridiculous when the player crouches right next to something and causes a giant shadow that bounces around half the screen.

[New Horizon]

We specifically didn't want it to flicker, because it looks ridiculous when the player crouches right next to something and causes a giant shadow that bounces around half the screen.

 

That wouldn't be flickering, that would be more like our lights that physically move to create active shadows. I think what folks are after is just a flicker...like an old fluorescent bulb that's about to fail.

[Springheel]

There's flickering, where the light actually oscillates (like our fireplace flames), and there's pulsing, where the light brightens and dims (like our candles).

 

The lantern used to flicker, but we turned it off. Does it not pulse?

[Diego]

The additional twekings I've mentioned has to do with decay, by the way.

[GameDevGoro]

Does it not pulse?

 

I haven't seen it pulse, unless you've(not you specifically, but the dev team in general?) changed it just recently.

 

And yeah, I was talking about having it shimmer in brightness so that the lit area isn't constant. Having it move around isn't necessary.

Does the flickering and strobe of existent light effects work within the confines of the light's radius or does any one of them change the radius at all?

(Maybe altering the range isn't such a good idea....)

Edited April 22, 2012 by GameDevGoro

[Xarg]

For a mostly covered light it sure does spill light out in a nice big circle... maybe it can be covered and made into a (modern, battery powered) torch sorta light projection, with a bit longer range?

[GameDevGoro]

maybe it can be covered and made into a (modern, battery powered) torch sorta light projection, with a bit longer range?

 

You know what though? There are those specially built lanterns that have like the back covered in a reflector plate thing that allows the light to be reflected in one direction? Maybe one could make such a lantern as variation or something?

Doesn't have to be modern.

Edited April 22, 2012 by GameDevGoro

[Xarg]

That's what I meant, I probably explained it poorly. MSPaint explanatory image incoming!

 

It's probably hard to tell from my incredibly poor Paint skills, but the left is the current lantern, which from a top down and side on perspective both throw out a "huge" (not really) circle of light..

 

The lantern on the right projects a longer beam that's much more focused, somewhat like a torch.

Edited April 22, 2012 by Xarg

[AluminumHaste]

The short radius was intentional...it's supposed to be a very small, mostly covered light, after all. If there's strong feelings about it, I wouldn't be opposed to increasing the radius a bit as long as the brightness was decreased at the same time.

 

How about this, instead of an omni-directional light source, how about just a slice that just lights up in front of you.

 

EDIT: Nevermind I see that's already been pointed out. The only problem I can see is that with an small slice of light, the player is no longer exposed to light, therefore the light gem will show darkness. Therefore it's no longer an issue to use the lantern in the presence of enemy AI.

[New Horizon]

How about this, instead of an omni-directional light source, how about just a slice that just lights up in front of you.

 

EDIT: Nevermind I see that's already been pointed out. The only problem I can see is that with an small slice of light, the player is no longer exposed to light, therefore the light gem will show darkness. Therefore it's no longer an issue to use the lantern in the presence of enemy AI.

 

I believe that the lantern uses a lightgem modifier to expose the player as the light does not properly hit the rendergem.

[ungoliant]

larger radius would be great. A much larger radius, with a falloff that is much less sharp. I believe the lantern is the only thing holding mappers back from creating really dark and/or scary places. It can only be used for short-range viewing.

Also, I think that the brightness levels should be lowered quite a bit, but keep the lightgem modifier the same so the AI can easily identify the player. A much softer, and much wider illumination would be really good.

Edited April 22, 2012 by ungoliant

[Melan]

I would support a decision to increase the light radius - but not radically, 1.5x maximum. Let the player stumble around that dark room, realistic or not.

[Sotha]

Yep, I've always thought the lantern radius is too small. I even postdd about it long ago IIRC. More radius, slightly dimmer.

[Xarg]

I wonder if there's any way to make the lantern being active project an alert level increase, even if the player isn't necessarily being exposed to the light (though this thought may have already been covered by NH's post regarding the lightgem modifier). My reasoning is, that kind of light is pretty suspicious. If I were patrolling a warehouse, for example, and saw a little projected light sitting somewhere (that wasn't a ceiling/wall light like electric/gas/flame torches, ie "normal" lighting for the area), I'd want to go and check it out. Perhaps even have the lit lantern raise threat level even higher if discovered, so even if a mapper enabled the lantern to be dropped and manipulated to say, sit on a table while you lockpick a noiseless safe with only the twisting tumbler in view, and the player outside of the light "reaching" in to pick the lock, the AI would come and investigate the light, somewhat similar to the current AI reaction to finding an arrow/sword lying around in the street/hall.

 

This could even have some amazing potential for diversion setups, sacrifice a lantern to tie a suspicious AI into investigating an area while you sneak past, lanternless, though this should have a higher threat level placed on the AI than a noisemaker, as a noisemaker, to the AI, could be anything, while a lit covert style lantern is quite clearly someone messing around.

[Baddcog]

I think the problem making it suspicious is from a players perspective you might not ever know when an ai can see it. So you wouldn't use it, then it becomes totally worthless.

 

The player is already lit by it, so using it is already a risk. I don't think we need to make it even more of a risk.

[Xarg]

I understand where you're coming from, I'm just putting out some possibilities I've been thinking of while mapping. Perhaps it's possible to already do this via a brush network with a boolean NOT for an object being in the brush? Sounds like experimentation time!

[jysk]

I was playing some maps the last weeks and needed the lantern badly because it was day and i couldnt see much in the dark. But the lantern was basically useless, so i always grabbed a candle which has far more light. So if even a small candle has a much larger light radius, why cant the lantern have one to make it more useable?

Edited April 22, 2012 by jysk

[OrbWeaver]

larger radius would be great. A much larger radius, with a falloff that is much less sharp.

 

That could apply to a lot of lights used in the mod in fact. Having bright lights with a small radius and a sharp falloff is actually a performance optimisation, to reduce the amount of lights that hit surfaces. In real life all lights have a quadratic falloff (similar to the "expfalloff" light texture), which means they stretch a long way but are much dimmer at long distances.

 

Since the lantern is a single light which is rarely used, there probably would be no performance issues with having a large radius and the expfalloff texture to increase realism.