Pupil Dilation?

[Domarius]

jtbalogh, Domarius, you both want waterproof lanterns. the point regarding unlimited fuel is well-founded, the fuel in my lanterns lasts for well over 15 hours on medium brightness. But anything that burns cannot be waterproof. Unless you either make a super-complicated fresh-air-supply old-air-removal system or use oxydizers which allow torches ( a stick with a fuel and a big flame on it) to burn underwater as if on land. But such oxydizers have only been used after the 1950's. I am planning to include tons of chemical factories, advanced chemical technology, and a clan of chemistry fanatics similar to the mechanists with real scientific models and historical facts.

Often we have to resort to "magic" to explain things. I mean, we could wonder what happens to Garret's fire arrows when he dives in the water - do they all get cooled off and become useless? Do the inner workings of the flashbombs become waterlogged and stop it from working?

[pakmannen]

pakmannen - you are stating the truth. after entering an unlit closet in bafford's what was pitch black slowly begins to shape itself out.

Finally! Thank you

[Springheel]

Often we have to resort to "magic" to explain things. I mean, we could wonder what happens to Garret's fire arrows when he dives in the water - do they all get cooled off and become useless? Do the inner workings of the flashbombs become waterlogged and stop it from working?

 

It's not magic, it's just beyond the level of detail we want to deal with in the game. It's not that the thief has a 'magic' bag that holds all his loot, or magic clothes that don't get wet after swimming and drip water. Some things are just too realistic to be practical to code or fun to play.

[SneaksieDave]

pakmannen - you are stating the truth. after entering an unlit closet in bafford's what was pitch black slowly begins to shape itself out.

Finally! Thank you

Eh? Quite sure I'd never seen such a thing, I just broke into Bafford's place again. I went to the first blackened rooms in that long basement hallway where the first two indoor guards have a chat and then separate. From fully bright with red indicator lightgem to full dark lightgem, there is no such thing happening for me. Do you have any specific location where it can be seen? After almost 8 years of playing Thief I'd never seen such a thing. I think the most likely culprits are: eyes, old monitor, some kind of operating system auto-gamma correction feature.

 

How could they expect you to set your gamma manually if it's going to keep changing?

[Springheel]

And how would the engine detect whether you are in a dark place or not? You can't rely on the lightgem, since you might be in a small shadow in a lit room, or vice versa.

[OrbWeaver]

And how would the engine detect whether you are in a dark place or not? You can't rely on the lightgem, since you might be in a small shadow in a lit room, or vice versa.

 

That's what I thought. Thief seems way too primitive to have the sort of semi-advanced image integration code necessary to calculate an overall brightness and adjust for it. Besides, if you're using hardware rendering the game code doesn't even have access to the rendered image without special tricks (*cough* renderpipe *cough*)

 

I reckon they just have monitors with poor voltage regulation.

[sparhawk]

I guess this is more a display thing depending on the monitor or the TFT.

[pakmannen]

After almost 8 years of playing Thief I'd never seen such a thing. I think the most likely culprits are: eyes, old monitor, some kind of operating system auto-gamma correction feature.

 

How could they expect you to set your gamma manually if it's going to keep changing?

It's not the eyes, that's easy to confirm, as I have stated in my previous posts. I really doubt it's the monitor, since I have had three over the last few years. The newest being a TFT. Also three different graphics cards, and four operating systems. There's gotta be another explanation.

 

Also, it's no drastic change or anything, it just gets slightly brighter. I remember seeing it a lot in the Lost City for some reason. I could check it out this weekend.

[Ishtvan]

The 2d HUD graphics definitely change from a lighter one in bright rooms to a darker one in darker rooms. Maybe your eyes just make out the dark area better when the HUD switches to its gentler, darker setting, as opposed to the bright 2d HUD that would be the brightest thing in an otherwise dark room and mess with your eyes.

[SneaksieDave]

C'mon, this is all a prank, right? Today is MARCH first, not APRIL first.

 

I just went back to Bafford's again, took screenshots, and compared the HUD elements (the pic I made looked like crap, so I threw it away) and they were the same. There is no change! What about what the compelling thing Spring said - how would it know if you're in a dark room, or a thin sliver of a shadow in a bright room?

 

I think you guys are batty.

 

Although I did learn one very odd thing I didn't know - F10 screenshots in Thief hide the health shields (that's what I wanted a grab of, but they weren't there...).

 

What's a TFT?

[Domarius]

The HUD does change sometimes - but like I already said, it doesn't always work. Whatever way they use to decide if the screen is too dark overall is flawed. No doubt for performance reasons.

 

I've seen it switch sharply from one to the other right before my very eyes too many times to doubt this.

[Ishtvan]

Yeah, I saw definite HUD changes of the HUD from "light HUD" to "dark HUD" in Trail of Blood, in the Maw caves section, when testing it yesterday, using T2 patch 1.18 "Final." I'm not sure how they determined when you were in the dark to decrease the HUD brightness though, perhaps based on the lightgem? It definitely wasn't perfect, but did change, and it doesn't seem that far fetched that one's eyes could respond to that if the HUD is the brightest thing on your screen and then goes dark to let you see other things easier.

 

I'm still not seeing any change in gamma though, Pakmannen will have to prove it somehow. A video might not do either, since our eyes could respond to that still. You'll have to perform image analysis on the video, integrate the intensity over each pixel and show that intensity increases over time, or something.

[Gildoran]

Does gamma affect screenshots? If so, you could take a screenshot before and after and then use subtraction blending in photoship/gimp to see if they're the same.

[jtbalogh]

If the hud changes, then then hide the health bars so it is not a factor in testing (edit dark.cfg). Unselect weapons and inventory. Only the lightgem and the game should be visible. I went back to baffords too and still did not see any gamma changes when moving from a light to dark room.

Edited March 2, 2006 by jtbalogh

[sparhawk]

I'm still inclinced to think that this is more an (unintended) adjustment of the monmitor itself. Are you using a CRT or TFT display? Don't know about TFTs, but at least on CRTs I can easily see such an effect if there is a sharp difference in contrast between very bright and very dark areas. So it can be that your display can't keep up to switch to the required brightness so fast, and thus the HUD will become darker if the contrast is to strong.

 

It can also be an optical illusion, because the eye can see colours which don't even exist, under special circumstances. A similar effect can be here as well.

[bob_arctor]

All I know is in the library of Casing the Joint in TII the HUD goes really bright when you see the ghost (or that's how I notice it).

[Ishtvan]

Me I'm using a CRT, and am looking specifically at the HUD and watching it change. It's pretty obvious because it doesn't work perfectly. I'll go into a dark space and stand there, and whatever system tells T2 to change the HUD doesn't change it yet, and I'll be unable to see the features of the dark area because I'm blinded by the bright HUD, and I'll walk around a little more into the darkness and then see the sudden change to dark HUD.

 

For testing purposes: I don't think just removing the shields would do it, because the outline around the lightgem also seems to change. You'd have to remove the entire HUD to decouple any HUD-darkening effect (i.e., removing the contrast with the very bright HUD to let your eyes desaturate and pick up finer contrast) from a supposed gamma-increasing effect.

[OrbWeaver]

Me I'm using a CRT, and am looking specifically at the HUD and watching it change. It's pretty obvious because it doesn't work perfectly. I'll go into a dark space and stand there, and whatever system tells T2 to change the HUD doesn't change it yet, and I'll be unable to see the features of the dark area because I'm blinded by the bright HUD, and I'll walk around a little more into the darkness and then see the sudden change to dark HUD.

 

That sounds like it's linked to the lightgem. It wouldn't be a lot of effort to link the code that brightens or darkens the lightgem to the modify the entire hud as well.

[jtbalogh]

You'd have to remove the entire HUD ...

... nothing is stopping us from eliminating/shrinking the health bars AND light gem AND weapons/inventory. (dark.cfg: vismeter_zoom 1000, hpbar_zoom 1000, inv_obj_height 1, inv_obj_width 1).

 

...darkens the lightgem to the modify the entire hud ...

That is a good compromise.

 

IMHO, we can still live without the feature. I will use the dark mod user configuration files to shrink my hud so its not distracting. Playing with smaller huds is all I need because why stare at them all the time. I can count pixels to see remaining health. The gem does not have to be too small because it already gets darker. I can see smaller weapons/inventory, if selected during the game. Just a thought.

Edited March 2, 2006 by jtbalogh

[SneaksieDave]

Since everyone seems to be missing it, a repeat: the F10 key seems to remove the health shields for a snapshot. At least in T1. No idea why. And, I took a shot of both pitch black and full bright, cropped out the room, blocked out the gem and the red light, and the gem "ring" was identical.

 

I have never, not once, ever seen a change across at least four CRTs at multiple houses, and nearly 8 years of play. I can see this shall not rest without proof! New Horizon! Thy contacts, sir!

[Springheel]

I will use the dark mod user configuration files to shrink my hud so its not distracting.

 

Our HUD will already be quite small.

[jtbalogh]

Small hud like this?

 

Edited March 2, 2006 by jtbalogh

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

I've seen it switch sharply from one to the other right before my very eyes too many times to doubt this.

 

Sounds like we're a bunch of servants discussing a haunt or a ghost.

 

I never was referring to the HUD - I was talking about the rendered screen. Here it is in detail: you are in a bright hallway. You enter a pitch black room, look at the dark wall. You will see black (color 000000) with a few brown (giant) pixels on it. As a few seconds passes more pixels become visible and become lighter. It is very subtle. I am not saying it's a special code, an old monitor, or eyes adjusting - fact is it happens. However, since the background was identical pitch black no matter how you tweak gamma with +/- and then everything becomes slightly more visible suggests it's not the eyes. I doubt it's the monitor because monitors have only the basics of digital circuits. It could be the video card. I doubt it's the OS because that's not something they would program in. It could be the game - I don't think it's that hard to add the color values of each pixel on the screen together once a second and if that value becomes too low, ie black room, adjust the rendering to virtually increase ambient light.

[Springheel]

Small hud like this?

 

Something like that.

[Ishtvan]

That sounds like it's linked to the lightgem. It wouldn't be a lot of effort to link the code that brightens or darkens the lightgem to the modify the entire hud as well.

 

Except that would be wrong in some cases, because your back could be lit, bumping up the lightgem, but very little light could be reaching your eyes if you're facing a dark area. [EDIT: Don't know if you were suggesting we do that or suggesting that's what LGS did.]