Options for auto-scene light adjustments

[Major Cooke]

When the bloom effect came out, there also came with it that auto-light scaler for how bright or how dark the scene comes. I suggested it before but it was over in DRD team and now that it's closed, I feel it should be brought up again.

I think there should be switches for the exposure and things, I can't remember what it is. It's for the mechanic that darkens the screen when too bright, and lightens the screen when too dark.

Ultimately I'd very much appreciate a kill switch that resets the exposure to its base and never changes again when the kill switch is on.

Specifically, in the menu. While it's useful, dpJudas, sometimes there are maps where you just can't have it getting in the way. Ghoul's Forest 3 in particular is one that affects the difficulty and makes it easier.

[Rachael]

That's Tonemap you're referring to.

And the "killswitch" is simply turning it off. It brightening your screen when it's dark is something that's by design. So I really don't know what you're asking for, here.

[Major Cooke]

Just turning it off won't reset the current tonemap brightness back to normal.

Mainly what I'm asking for is to expose the options via the menu, using sliders.

[Rachael]

If this is done, all the related options should be moved to its own submenu "Postprocessing Effects" or something similar, imo. And that means the palette tonemap options can go in there, too.

[dpJudas]

About the tonemaps: I actually somewhat regret adding those to GZDoom partly because I'm not sure what I did there is correct. My theoretical foundation isn't good enough to say for sure if I'm supposed to pass in overbright values directly into the tonemap operators, or if I first need to divide them by the bloom expose (like I'm doing right now). As it is right now I'm not using any of the tonemaps myself as I don't like what it is doing.

So if it were up to me, I'd remove the tonemaps except the palette one.

About the exposure settings: I would have made sliders if I knew a proper way of doing so. The current values are a bit voodoo where I tweaked them until they got a somewhat acceptable result, but making a slider going between Less Bloom and More Bloom is not so easy without somehow changing the current cvars and the math behind it.

About shadows and difficulty: please know that people like me will get the brightness level we desire no matter what you do as a game designer. Usually in games I get what I want by cranking up the gamma settings until the game is no longer dark. I've been doing that in Doom, Quake, Unreal Tournament, Battlefied Bad Company 2 and countless other games. Generally speaking, if you meet me in an online game and think you can use shadows to hide in you're wrong.

All that said, I agree that the current tonemaps just ruin the light - hence why I don't enable them myself.

[Nash]

I would have loved to see the tonemaps available as a scripting tool for mod authors, for cutscenes and to set moods for certain scenes and things like that.

That said, I also don't use the tonemaps when playing regular Doom. :D

[dpJudas]

Such a feature I'd personally want to just be generalized postprocess shaders in the GLDEFS file. Custom uniforms you can control from script along with an on/off switch. The shader could then do anything you'd like, including what the current tonemaps are doing or anything else really, including stuff like today's invulnerability effect and such.

[Major Cooke]

If I could have some sliders for the exposure, along with a button that says "Reset exposure to normal" when pushed so I can prevent it from scaling at all, that'd be perfect. I don't even have bloom enabled right now -- it's simply the exposure that I wish to control a bit more thoroughly.

I like the tonemaps as they are.

[Caligari87]

I'd say exercise caution when asking for too many sliders and adjustments. There was that issue with ambient light levels and dynamic light size/intensity being user-size controlled, leading to situations where modders couldn't expect users to have a consistent experience, or worse, mods designed around non-default settings looking wholly unlike the creator intended them. Even now I think we have too many light modes. If post-process shaders/bloom/exposure/tonemaps ever become a modding feature instead of just a user setting, too much user-side customization could prove to be the death of any sort of consistency.

[Graf Zahl]

Even now I think we have too many light modes.

What do you expect? There's 6 light modes - 3 of which are the recommended defaults based on hardware capabilities, the rest just for backwards compatibility. I'm not pleased with this situation myself but the main issue is that some maps need to have this changeable.

Concerning the postprocessing effects, I still assume that the default is to have them completely turned off, especially SSAO. They may need some configurability but I am not planning to give mods any means to enforce or control them.

[Kinsie]

If this is done, all the related options should be moved to its own submenu "Postprocessing Effects" or something similar, imo. And that means the palette tonemap options can go in there, too.

I do feel like moving several of the post-processing features that started getting added when dpJudas came into the picture to their own submenu would be a good idea no matter what - the submenu they're currently in (OpenGL Options, I think) is currently pretty lengthy.