Quake 2 textures

[randi]

Since ZDoom supports light level increments of 1, and also colored lighting, how can the colormaps be of use?

Because there is not a 1:1 relationship between brightness level and colormap. The brightness level controls how quickly light diminishes with distance. The area immediately at the player's location is always fullbright. Low brightness levels make the light drop off very quickly, and high brightness levels make it drop off much more slowly.

[koverhbarc]

Because there is not a 1:1 relationship between brightness level and colormap. The brightness level controls how quickly light diminishes with distance. The area immediately at the player's location is always fullbright. Low brightness levels make the light drop off very quickly, and high brightness levels make it drop off much more slowly.

And ZDoom still does it this way? I suppose it would break many levels to do it the more logical way, but at least fog would work better. I'm looking at v_palette.cpp - are you sure this wouldn't be easier in truecolor?

If this is the case I don't understand why light increments of 1 wouldn't have been supported from the beginning. And why did Id choose this - is Doomguy supposed to have a light on him or what?

[Graf Zahl]

They did it this way because it was cheap to calculate, compared to realistic lighting. Don't forget that Doom had to run on systems that are 200-300 times slower than what we are used to now.

[koverhbarc]

No, I didn't mean Quake-style lighting. The 'more logical way' I meant is ignoring distance and using a fixed colormap for each light level - that should be even faster, and I'm not sure why they did it differently.

[Graf Zahl]

Probably because it'd look too dull.

[Xaser]

Indeed. I love Doom's method of lighting, unrealistic as it may be.

[esselfortium]

The area immediately at the player's location is always fullbright. Low brightness levels make the light drop off very quickly, and high brightness levels make it drop off much more slowly.

Why is this the case in ZDoom, anyway? In vanilla (if you're playing with the maxed-out screen size, at least), things still get brighter when you stand near them, but not nearly as bright as they do in ZDoom. Standing in front of a 0-brightness wall in vanilla will be dark and barely visible at all, as it's supposed to be, while in ZDoom it becomes inexplicably fullbright.

[randi]

Because the lookup tables they used effectively had a minimum distance, but it was different for floors and walls, and not entirely straightforward from a simple 1/z -> light level calculation. I don't remember the specifics, but I do remember that I tried to be similar. In the end, I figured it wasn't worth the trouble or performance hit to get it closer to what Doom produced, since it only becomes obvious when standing very near walls in very dark rooms.

[Amuscaria]

No, I didn't mean Quake-style lighting. The 'more logical way' I meant is ignoring distance and using a fixed colormap for each light level - that should be even faster, and I'm not sure why they did it differently.

The farther you are from something, the darker it looks regardless of how bright it is up close.

[koverhbarc]

The farther you are from something, the darker it looks regardless of how bright it is up close.

This is not correct; surface brightness (which is what corresponds to light level on the screen) is independent of distance (assuming no absorption, which is nearly enough true on the scales we're considering).

[Graf Zahl]

But Doom doesn't work like that.

[Amuscaria]

The farther you are from something, the darker it looks regardless of how bright it is up close.

This is not correct; surface brightness (which is what corresponds to light level on the screen) is independent of distance (assuming no absorption, which is nearly enough true on the scales we're considering).

Uh, no. The farther away you are from something, the dimmer it looks relative to everything else. That's physics. Of course, we're talking about Doom here. While true that an object devoid of light will never be brighter than 0 (as in doom will light it up). I am assuming you're talking about physics here, not the game's rendering which is totally fake.

[koverhbarc]

Uh, no. The farther away you are from something, the dimmer it looks relative to everything else.

LOL. I guess that's why the Sun looks so faint, it's millions of times farther away than anything on Earth. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sour ... istance%22

That's physics. Of course, we're talking about Doom here. While true that an object devoid of light will never be brighter than 0 (as in doom will light it up). I am assuming you're talking about physics here, not the game's rendering which is totally fake.

Doom's rendering is fake, yes, and should be fixed for the future. Moreover using a correct, distance-independent algorithm would be very simple and would allow realistic fog to be implemented using practically the same code as is now used, with the fade distance controlled by an additional parameter rather than the light level.

[InsanityBringer]

Doom's rendering is fake, yes, and should be fixed for the future.

why does it have to be fixed when it works just fine right now

at the same time, why don't we modify the core gameplay to make it completely realistic. Because who wants unrealistic gameplay? Oooh! We should also add in the renderer of a modern realistic game and get things looking really realistic! I bet it would be awesome!

[Enjay]

LOL. I guess that's why the Sun looks so faint, it's millions of times farther away than anything on Earth. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sour ... istance%22

You're right, it does look faint compared to how it would look close up. And the stars, many of which are much brighter than the sun, look fainter than the sun because they are much further away.