Originally posted by StratComm
Lightspeed, I couldn't disagree more with the "blink on/off looks extremely crappy". It's all in how they are done. If you didn't like the Arcadia, then that's fine, but the lights were carefully set up as to not need a fade in/out effect. (I don't like the "Christmas Tree" comment because I went out of my way to not have lights everywhere, but that's beside the point)
Well, i know glowpoints are done like this atm -- i'm not critisizing that one, and certainly, there's lights which look good if they blink on and off but normally, fading in & out (even if they have really short fade times) looks far more realistic and better (don't ask me why, it just feels right
). And that christmas tree comment was more about the blinking thingy... I dont think there are too much lights on the arcadia. I don't even think theyre placed on wrong spots.
All i think is that switching from 0-100% transparency you don't really feel it as a light source, it looks like an opaque sphere appearing and disappearing, a fading effect however would solve that problem.
And besides, you've flipped a light switch countless times before no doubt, there's no reason to make a glowpoint fade in and out in reality anyway (well there is on things like signal towers, but it has more to do with the way the lights are built than what they are supposed to do). It's just a visual flare that is added in by certain game designers anyway, so it isn't something to be demanded.[/B]
see above, and (especially on the arcadia), i think those lights should act like signals, so ...
And about the last thing... Yes of course you can use the current glowpoint system for some details. But making it fadeable and more configurable you could add a whole new dimension of placing them, which in turn would result in some really awe inspiring ship models (especially on capships). What would be really cool too, would be if the light would actually lighten the surrounding areas
Also, unless this has been changed recently, you can specify any bitmap you want for a glow (round works better). I used engine glows and beam glows for mine so something's wrong if all you're getting is a white circle, but technically any bitmap will work just as well.[/B]
I know! The only thing is that nobody has done a better map yet than the one used on the models there are so far. And IMHO it isnt very suited for making the points look like they'd actually
glow. Also, it'd be really hard to get a texture which would look glowy despite the lack of any light effects (with only ON, or OFF
)
I do think the current glow point models have potential. All that needs to be done is some improvement on the bitmaps and the way of handling glow points
