Making the muzzleflash visible in pitch darkness.

[Ceeb]

I was playing Doom 64 earlier and I noticed that, when firing in pitch darkness, only the muzzle flash would appear. (IE, the blue flame on the muzzle of the chaingun). So, I went ahead and tried to make that effect for my Prototype Shotgun weapon. I took the firing sprite, trimmed it so only the fire on the end of the barrel remained, and put it back in with a new name. I then used that sprite for the gun's Flash state, and made only those bright, not the frames in the firing state. Well the whole gun was lit up.

So I removed bright from the flash state too, thinking that'd solve it. No dice, now the gun isn't lit up at all. Is this impossible to achieve without brightmaps? (Which my card should, but don't, support.)

[DoomRater]

What was weird is that I was told this effect was achievable by using the flash states, although I've never seen it. And as a result I've treated the Flash states as nothing more than a set of redundant parallel frames that can run code in the background for me.

[Enjay]

Are you using GZdoom with lights.pk3 loaded? If so, perhaps the dynamic light from the player is lighting up the sprite.

I *think* that without the flash state, the player flash sprite does not get used and, therefore, the dynamic light attached to that frame also does not get used, which would explain why removing the state made the weapon not light up.

[phi108]

In ZDoom, only the flash state sprite is bright, and the normal weapon frame is dark, but in GZDoom, if there is a bright flash sprite drawn over the weapon, the whole weapon image is brightened. I don't know if this is intentional, but I'd like to see the ZDoom behavior.

[Enjay]

Is it definitely the whole sprite going bright itself or is it just being illuminted by the dynamic light generated by the player? (I can't check this ATM.)

[DoomRater]

In ZDoom, only the flash state sprite is bright, and the normal weapon frame is dark,

You sure? I've attempted this in ZDoom and not gotten these results.

There is a reason this would be awesome- to draw HUD elements with the Flash states without lighting up the sprite.

[Enjay]

You sure? I've attempted this in ZDoom and not gotten these results.

It should work. It's always been that way since doom.exe If the flash is bright and the weapon is not, it will look something like this:



However, there does seem to be a problem in GZdoom. As Phi108 said, the whole weapon is drawn bright with or without dynamic lights:

Dynamic lights


No dynamic lights


[edit] Reported in case it's a bug http://forum.drdteam.org/viewtopic.php?p=34630 [/edit]

[DoomRater]

Well, perhaps I use GZDoom too often or was using a really old ZDoom. I tested in ZDoom just a second ago and it worked fine. Now to see GZdoom fix it...

[Ceeb]

Well, huh. My mod is for GZDoom only (I need the dynamic lighting and 3D floors) so I guess I'll just have to deal with it.

[DoomRater]

Graf confirmed it's a bug and is surprised it still exists.