Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Scuddie on May 27, 2003, 03:34:32 am

Title: System lighting
Post by: Scuddie on May 27, 2003, 03:34:32 am

I was thinking...  Imagine you were fighting a battle in deep space.  Now imagine again a battle fairly close to a star.  The lighting conditions will definately be different.  For example, in deep space, there would be little to no ambient lighting.  Likewise, if you are close to a star, ambient lighting will be much higher than normal.  I was also thinking, if there were two stars in the area, the lighting would be a mixture of the two colors.  What I am thinking is to have an RGB valueset so that the color can be defined by the level designer.  For example, if I wanted to be far away from a blue sun I could say 40-40-60.  I would imagine it's easy to do, as you already have it implemented for the color of the system's star.  50-50-50 would be considered normal, 0-0-0 would be total blackness, 100-100-100 would be total whiteness.  Obviously, the creator shouldn't go below 20 or above 80.  What do you think?  It could be very usefull in nebula missions.

Title: System lighting
Post by: RandomTiger on May 28, 2003, 06:52:54 am

Sounds like a good idea, keep pushing

Title: System lighting
Post by: Fury on May 28, 2003, 06:59:40 am

I think FS2 already does this, it is not too visible in original FS2 but use TBP stars.tbl as an example. Ambient lightning has been tweaked. Of course it is not very sophisticated.

Title: System lighting
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on May 28, 2003, 07:03:09 am

I think this is an excellent idea, and it would make glow maps and points all the more important, becuase if there was little ambient light, glows would be th only way to identify ships visually.

Title: System lighting
Post by: TrashMan on May 28, 2003, 08:18:56 am

OH YES...YES!  A helluva idea!:yes: :yes: :yes: :yes:

Title: System lighting
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on May 28, 2003, 08:24:02 am

Calm down. It's not healthy to get so excited!:D

Title: System lighting
Post by: TrashMan on May 28, 2003, 08:42:06 am

What do you......AAAAAAAARGH!
* drops dead from a heart attack*

Title: System lighting
Post by: SadisticSid on May 28, 2003, 05:50:01 pm

I like this idea. Especially since stars.tbl can be a bit anal sometimes. :yes:

Title: System lighting
Post by: Knight Templar on May 28, 2003, 11:13:10 pm

Just for refrence, Ice did this with BWO too IIRC.

Title: System lighting
Post by: phreak on May 29, 2003, 07:53:41 am

couldn't you just use the negative suns?

Title: System lighting
Post by: TrashMan on May 30, 2003, 03:28:26 am

BUMP.....

Title: System lighting
Post by: Scuddie on May 30, 2003, 10:23:01 am

The best part about this is you'd be able to set the attitude of the mission.  You could set the ambience level overall of the mission, then you can apply light sources and attach them to stars.  For example, to make things more realistic, the global ambience would be maybe 20-20-20 to better simulate shadow.  Now you can get a white star that's close to you emit a 80-80-80 modifier from that direction to show off that one, and a blue star in the distance would emit a 50-50-60 for a nice hint of blue from that direction.  So you could have a bright reflection from one star and a hint of flavor from another.

BTW, has fred/fs2 been modified to allow missions without a star?

Title: System lighting
Post by: CP5670 on May 30, 2003, 12:45:48 pm

I have this sort of thing for one or two missions in PI; what I did was to add in an extra sun entry into stars.tbl with the intensity level bumped to 15 or so, which works fairly well.

Title: System lighting
Post by: pyro-manic on June 12, 2003, 03:47:21 pm

Me wants!!! :yes: