I'm interested of creating a lighting system for my map that changes based on the time of day, and that vary depending on the different game zones. I also need to be able to manipulate the light in certain regions to be either darker or brighter. I've not yet started working with this system, and i'm not entierly sure how to start, therefor i ask for your advice so i can get some ideas of possible solutions and systems.
1) Time of Day: My current goal is to create 4 different phases of a day; Dawn, Day, Dusk and Night.
Each one of these day phases will have a different light, which is global and affects all players. However, the light generated by the time phase of a day should not affect in-door enviorment like caves or buildings.
2) Zones: I want the lighting of each zone to be manipulated individually, even if some zones may have the same or similar lighting. This gives me an oppertunity to create both a "Dark and spooky forest" and a "Sunny wasteland" in the same map. The time of day influences on all out-door zones, but the effect may diversify when the lighting of the time phase is mixed with the zones original lighting.
3) In-door regions I've created buildings and caves that you can enter and explore, but for these areas i wish to have another type of lighting.
I want the caves to be dark, and also reduce the units sight vision: the units vision will reveal a small circular area around the unit, but the rest of the cave should be almost completly black. Additional vision can be provided with items (such as torches or flash lights) which lights up the circular vision radius around the unit. But these effects should also slightly reduce the surrounding darkness that appears outside the units "circular vision radius".
Buildings will either have it's own lighting or function as a cave. Assuming that the buildings are lighted if people lives in it, and cave-like if it's abandoned.
I'm not very experienced with lighting, and this is my first project where i want to add more than the lightning of a titleset. But i suspect that i may need an advanced lighting system to create what i'm trying to achieve, since the titleset lighting is global and can't be set on a individual player level.
I've considered using doodad combined with fog and weather effects to create a unique zone feeling. And creating the "time of day" phases with a global titleset lighting. But i believe that the global time phases will affect indoor areas as well.
Any suggestions or advice is appreciated. Thanks for reading :)
Regarding time of day, you can have multiple lights and interpolate between them with triggers. For some obscure reason, the interpolation timer seems to use "real" seconds instead of game seconds, watch out for that... The built-in "time of day" functions ( and associated time-based lights ) don't work at all as far as I can tell.
As far as I know, lighting is global for the whole map, and there's no way to have local lighting except by having doodads that contain local lights.
Reducing sight vision for units in an area is quite possible, applying some behaviors to said units.
Last note : if trying to edit the lights through the built-in lighting editor proves a frustrating experience ( it's not keeping values, modifying wrong light, etc. ), just edit your lights in the XML files directly. The lighting editor was really buggy and, unless it was fixed with 1.2.1, it probably still is.
Regarding time of day, you can have multiple lights and interpolate between them with triggers. For some obscure reason, the interpolation timer seems to use "real" seconds instead of game seconds, watch out for that.
I will look into that tomorrow. If the timer uses real time seconds, then it's just a plus in my case, since i'm planning to base the time of day on real time.
Reducing sight vision for units in an area is quite possible, applying some behaviors to said units.
I'm planning to modify the vision radius either via behaivors or through catalogs, i'm not yet sure which one. Catalogs would allow me to make more interesting calculations like % reduction, but behaivors takes less time to create. I've also though of creating the light radius of a unit as a Omi light doodad, that are attached to the unit, that may also allow me to increase the light radius by increasing the size via triggers (I've not tried it, but that's how the object work in the editor).
Thanks for your reply :)
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I'm interested of creating a lighting system for my map that changes based on the time of day, and that vary depending on the different game zones. I also need to be able to manipulate the light in certain regions to be either darker or brighter. I've not yet started working with this system, and i'm not entierly sure how to start, therefor i ask for your advice so i can get some ideas of possible solutions and systems.
1) Time of Day: My current goal is to create 4 different phases of a day; Dawn, Day, Dusk and Night.
Each one of these day phases will have a different light, which is global and affects all players. However, the light generated by the time phase of a day should not affect in-door enviorment like caves or buildings.
2) Zones: I want the lighting of each zone to be manipulated individually, even if some zones may have the same or similar lighting. This gives me an oppertunity to create both a "Dark and spooky forest" and a "Sunny wasteland" in the same map. The time of day influences on all out-door zones, but the effect may diversify when the lighting of the time phase is mixed with the zones original lighting.
3) In-door regions I've created buildings and caves that you can enter and explore, but for these areas i wish to have another type of lighting.
I want the caves to be dark, and also reduce the units sight vision: the units vision will reveal a small circular area around the unit, but the rest of the cave should be almost completly black. Additional vision can be provided with items (such as torches or flash lights) which lights up the circular vision radius around the unit. But these effects should also slightly reduce the surrounding darkness that appears outside the units "circular vision radius".
Buildings will either have it's own lighting or function as a cave. Assuming that the buildings are lighted if people lives in it, and cave-like if it's abandoned.
I'm not very experienced with lighting, and this is my first project where i want to add more than the lightning of a titleset. But i suspect that i may need an advanced lighting system to create what i'm trying to achieve, since the titleset lighting is global and can't be set on a individual player level.
I've considered using doodad combined with fog and weather effects to create a unique zone feeling. And creating the "time of day" phases with a global titleset lighting. But i believe that the global time phases will affect indoor areas as well.
Any suggestions or advice is appreciated. Thanks for reading :)
Regards, Infernium
If anything is unclear or needs a closer explanation please let me know.
I'll keep checking this topic for at least a week from now, so feel free to post a reply even if it's a few days old :)
Regarding time of day, you can have multiple lights and interpolate between them with triggers. For some obscure reason, the interpolation timer seems to use "real" seconds instead of game seconds, watch out for that... The built-in "time of day" functions ( and associated time-based lights ) don't work at all as far as I can tell.
As far as I know, lighting is global for the whole map, and there's no way to have local lighting except by having doodads that contain local lights.
Reducing sight vision for units in an area is quite possible, applying some behaviors to said units.
Last note : if trying to edit the lights through the built-in lighting editor proves a frustrating experience ( it's not keeping values, modifying wrong light, etc. ), just edit your lights in the XML files directly. The lighting editor was really buggy and, unless it was fixed with 1.2.1, it probably still is.
I will look into that tomorrow. If the timer uses real time seconds, then it's just a plus in my case, since i'm planning to base the time of day on real time.
That's the conclusion i came up with as well, it's to bad that it can't be modified separately for each player, that would solve all my problems. :(
I'm planning to modify the vision radius either via behaivors or through catalogs, i'm not yet sure which one. Catalogs would allow me to make more interesting calculations like % reduction, but behaivors takes less time to create. I've also though of creating the light radius of a unit as a Omi light doodad, that are attached to the unit, that may also allow me to increase the light radius by increasing the size via triggers (I've not tried it, but that's how the object work in the editor).
Thanks for your reply :)