About Ambient Light and Immersion

[Filizitas]

Hello,

Recently while doing some stuff with light i asked myself a questions:

For the sake of immersion, should dark caves with 0 light sources be pitchblack?

You can ask this question multiple games: We see Ambient light in Skyrim in nearly all caves/dungeons-
I cant remember a single moment in thief [1,2,3] where there was full darkness.
Amnesia has ambient light in only a few levels, the rest is completly dark.
Splinter cell uses full darkness in only a few spots.

What do we do here, TDM doesnt use full darkness either.

Can we talk about why we use ambient light?
And why cant dark caves not be fully dark?
Should we have a setting for ambient light?

Please tell me what your experiences are i cant decide on what looks/is better.

I like this light more: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/72594

[New Horizon]

In this instance, I thing playability takes presidence over absolute realism.  It simply looks better if there is some ambient in these situations.

[STiFU]

Mappers can disable ambient locally, if they want. However, I am of the same oppinion as New Horizon.

That being said, you can disable ambient via r_skipAmbient 2. Please note that it also disables SSAO, as that effect only applies to ambient.

[STRUNK]

@Sotha has a very nice solution to this, I think; he binds a light he calls "nightvision" to the player here, so it will only light up a bit the direct area:

 

 

 

Edited March 29, 2020 by STRUNK

[Filizitas]

I originally threw that idea out of the window, but now that you/sotha show me this.
I mean if that is ok?

Lets see what the others say

[Anderson]

Well, Doom 3 had pitch black darkness to force people to use the flashlight. But it breaks people's eyes to strain them at the monitor so I'm against it. A little ambient light never hurts to know where you're going.

[HMart]

1 hour ago, Anderson said:

Well, Doom 3 had pitch black darkness to force people to use the flashlight. But it breaks people's eyes to strain them at the monitor so I'm against it. A little ambient light never hurts to know where you're going.

I think idsoftware also made pitch black shadows for performance reasons and not only to force people to use the flashlight but I agree, ambient light should always be present, pitch black scenes IMO artistically just look bad and like you said they just strain the eyes more, imagine traveling on a all pitch black level, where the only thing you saw was within the radius of your flashlight cone, in real life light bounces around, so a single flashlight or candle can light a entire room, but in games especially those using real time per-pixel lighting like idtech 4, you will just see a circle of light surrounded by pitch black.

Edited March 29, 2020 by HMart

[VanishedOne]

One of the mysteries of Doom 3's development is the shadowDraw keyword. In D3 it exists in shaderdemos/shadowDrawLight in shaderDemo.mtr but the code to recognise it seems to have been stripped out at some point.

shaderdemos/shadowDrawLight {
	// this would default the same if not specified
	lightFalloffImage	makeintensity( lights/squarelight1a.tga )

	{
	// this stage will be drawn normally
		map lights/squarelight1.tga
		colored
		zeroClamp
	}

	{
	// this stage will be drawn on the shadows, still modulated by the lightFalloffImage
		shadowDraw
		map		lights/squarelight1.tga
		rgb		0.5
		blend	GL_ZERO, GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_COLOR

	}
}

The leaked Doom 3 E3 demo comes with a variant of this material and will accept the keyword, but doesn't do anything with it that my eyes could discover. My guess is that id was experimenting with it as a way of reducing the black shadow effect on some lights.

I've only played through D3BFG, which apparently brightened some scenes, and when I played the leaked E3 demo I was struck by how oppressive its darkness was atmospherically. There is no flashlight in the demo; instead you can spawn light grenades from the console that work similarly to T2's flares. Constantine would have approved.

[HMart]

4 hours ago, Filizitas said:

I originally threw that idea out of the window, but now that you/sotha show me this.
I mean if that is ok?

Lets see what the others say

That trick is used in many AAA games so is something the pros also do.

Btw the problem with Sotha script is that when the player gets low the light doesn't follow the character, so it will stay higher than the player in that case: 

Perhaps something like this is better, but have not tested it. 

player_light_system {
	vector player_view_origin_bone_pos = '0 0 0';
	float player_view_origin_bone_handle = 0;
	vector eyesOffset = '0 0 15'; //tweek eye pos value has nedded

	player_view_origin_bone_handle = $player1.getJointHandle( "origin" );

	eachFrame {
        player_view_origin_bone_pos = $player1.getJointPos(player_view_origin_bone_handle);
        if( player_view_origin_bone_pos ){
        	$playerLight.setOrigin(player_view_origin_bone_pos + eyesOffset); 
        }
	}
}

 

Edited March 29, 2020 by HMart

[STRUNK]

In my turret script I use getEyePos https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/19601-the-trap-workshop/

 

vector head = $player1.getEyePos();			//Defines that vector (3 numbers) "head" wil be the position of the eyes of the player.

 

 

 

[HMart]

51 minutes ago, STRUNK said:

In my turret script I use getEyePos https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/19601-the-trap-workshop/

 

vector head = $player1.getEyePos();			//Defines that vector (3 numbers) "head" wil be the position of the eyes of the player.

 

 

 

Yes that is certainly better, the script code I suggested was because I don't work with TDM, so when suggesting script code, I use Doom 3 original script functions, in that way I'm more or less sure every idtech 4 based engine supports those original functions in some capacity, in the case of that particular script function, original Doom 3 has no such thing, it exists in c++ but was not exposed to the script code for some reason but is a easy fix.  

[nbohr1more]

The ai_see spawnarg for lights allows mappers to attach a light to the player without affecting the lightgem.

I don't recall seeing mention of that in the video.

[HMart]

9 minutes ago, nbohr1more said:

The ai_see spawnarg for lights allows mappers to attach a light to the player without affecting the lightgem.

I don't recall seeing mention of that in the video.

Ho yes that is definitely important such light should not affect the lightgem at all. 

Edited March 29, 2020 by HMart

[STRUNK]

The nightvision light is so low (as is ambient light) that it doesn't affect the light gem, I understand ...

[Filizitas]

Can we go back to the original questions!

Can we talk about why we use ambient light?
And why cant dark caves not be fully dark?
Should we have a setting for ambient light?

[Springheel]

3 minutes ago, Filizitas said:

Can we go back to the original questions!

Can we talk about why we use ambient light?
And why cant dark caves not be fully dark?
Should we have a setting for ambient light?

1.  We use ambient light because it's not fun or entertaining to stare at a black monitor.
2.  They can be.
3.  We do.

[OrbWeaver]

To slightly expand on Springheel's (entirely correct) answers:

We have ambient light in dark areas because the object of this game is to hide in shadows, which means it is not feasible for the player to have to rely on a light source like the D3 flashlight. Although the Dark Mod player does have a hooded lantern, if you take this out you become extremely visible to all AI, so you can only use it when you are alone. While there are games which avoid ambient light and make caves completely dark, these are not typically stealth games in which the player needs to avoid emitting any kind of light.

If Dark Mod missions were completely dark, then you'd either be looking at a completely black monitor (as Springheel says), which would be pointless and entirely un-fun, or you'd have to carry around a light source and alert every enemy you see, which defeats the object of a stealth game and turns it into a (clunky and hopeless imbalanced) hack-and-slash adventure.

[HMart]

27 minutes ago, Filizitas said:

Can we go back to the original questions!

Can we talk about why we use ambient light?
And why cant dark caves not be fully dark?
Should we have a setting for ambient light?

Calm my young padawan. We are trying to help you. 

 

Now others and me already said why ambient lights are preferable than no light. 

Caves in TDM can be has dark has you want then to be, you decide but know that the main complaint that people add about Doom 3, was that it was pitch black.

If you bring a light into a cave in real life they light up fine, why because they are closed spaces where light can bounce around very well. TDM light system has no bouncing light, so if you bring a flashlight into a unlighted cave then in TDM the cave will be pitch black minus the place the flashlight cone shines.   

case in point:

 

Edited March 29, 2020 by HMart

[Oktokolo]

On 3/29/2020 at 5:49 PM, HMart said:

Btw the problem with Sotha script is that when the player gets low the light doesn't follow the character, so it will stay higher than the player in that case:

Isn't it possible to actually bind the light source to the eye or head of the player's body - like it is done for a purse that is bound to the belt of an AI?

[HMart]

We are doing essentially what bind does but yes is possible the first person hands have no "head" or "eye" but you can bind the light to the camera joint (bone) or to the origin joint if the TDM first person rig is similar to the Doom 3 fp rig.