The WIP Thread

[ImpieTwo]

If retards are so important to you then perhaps I shouldn't make a point about using flashlights to light up a larger area through light reflection as opposed to decreasing your night vision through too strong a light that also happens to be in a far smaller area than the diffused light would be.

User was warned for this post. -Lud

Damn, if only I could think of the word that describes someone who thinks it's reasonable to get extremely confrontational over things that don't matter.

[Rachael]

Melodramatic?

Nevertheless, it's not worth discussing that here. As clearly stated in that post he was already warned for it so I think it's best if we just move on and ignore it.

[NeuralStunner]

Hell, now that it's been brought up, I'm halfway inclined to do just that and add an "aimed" toggle for the flashlight or something so the player can use both.

Look at this, though:

---

Standard police & military hold when using a flashlight with a firearm. Obviously a weapon-mounted light is also going to point where the weapon does. It really makes less sense for the light to be aiming anywhere else.

Often, you would want to aim the light along the ground - In these cases you'd likely also have your weapon in rest position. I don't know if that's something you'd want to do with your mod, though. (I did always consider it a cool idea for something more HD-like. You could cover ground more quickly with your weapon at rest, sort of the inverse of the lower-weapon-while-sprinting thing newer games do.)

[Captain J]

Can you express your thoughts directly without being needlessly offensive?

I'll be honest, and nothing personal, that's what i really and honestly wanted to say about blox for whole days. Maybe he's not being serious but informative, however this is still questionable.

I like him already. But i want to like him even more without seeing these.

[Nash]

It's ironic how so much drama always revolves around flashlights (self-deprecating poke there), maybe the engine does need such a feature after all. :V XD

(emoticons to denote "I'm not too serious")

[Galaxy_Stranger]

It's ironic how so much drama always revolves around flashlights (self-deprecating poke there), maybe the engine does need such a feature after all. :V XD

(emoticons to denote "I'm not too serious")

Implementing your own seems fine to me and it's easy enough to do; I don't see anything that's missing. A directional light would be nice, though.

[Caligari87]

There's several issues with each possible method:

1. Spawn a light where the player is looking. The most common and (IMO) worst looking flashlight. Basically looks like what it is: An invisible ball of light floating in space. Not to mention most implementations don't scale size/brightness with distance, so it ends up behaving more like a wide-beam laser. With shadowcasting turned on, it looks even worse.

2. Static line of several lights spawned ahead of the player. The so-called "beam" flashlight. This is better, but still never looks quite right because again it's a series of omnidirectional light spheres. In addition, visual artifacts occur when lights pop into or out of walls, making the beam endpoint appear to pulse or throb weirdly. If more lights are spawned to counter-act these issues, performance problems quickly crop up. Again looks very strange with shadowcasting, not much like a real flashlight at all.

3. Darkened overlays. These accurately simulate a "cone" of projected light, and when used in conjunction with a wide-radius light stuck to the player (as I did above), create a rather convincing effect, even with shadows turned on. Unfortunately this has the side-effect of breaking/nullifying every other bit of lighting in the level (including dynlights, brightmaps, and fullbright sprites), so it's suitable only for situations where the environment and all effects are expected to be 100% pitch black, illuminated solely by the player's flashlight.

In short: We really need spot/cone dynamic lights.

[leileilol]

It's ironic how so much drama always revolves around flashlights (self-deprecating poke there), maybe the engine does need such a feature after all. :V XD

(emoticons to denote "I'm not too serious")

If your flashlight has additive planes in a row, you must credit me because I am the inventor and patent holder of volumetric lighting

[Nash]

What I interpret from leileilol's point, and one that I was trying to say in my last post, is IMO fundamental graphics features are best if they're part of the engine, rather than user-hacked. Imagine if GZDoom couldn't do SSAO, and then some modder finds a way to hack it in and labels the effect (C) ME!!!!!! DONT Not STEAL. On the other hand, because the engine could already natively do SSAO, any potential for bragging and pioneer-ship claims would be lost. ;)

To be even more specific - if the engine could do proper directional (cubemapped) spotlights, the novelty will be lost because then EVERYONE can have it in their project, the technological "big deal" is gone, so finally what's most important can be focused on - actually making your project's gameplay fun/innovative!

[Kinsie]

Leilei was referencing and making fun of an old piece of drama where someone faked volumetric lighting coming through a window and got very upset when asked how they did it (and when people figured it out for themselves).

[Nash]

But that's my point... if light shafts were natively supported by the engine, no one would have felt special that they hacked it with linedefs, when everyone has access to said graphical feature. There'd be no opportunity for MUH CLOSED Guarded SEKRITS.

[leileilol]

From what I gather in the recent posts i've seen with Doom4 models shoved in Doom2, shaded model normals are the current awey phasey whoopedoo graphical trend now?

I'm glad the paletted renderer stuff got included before any silly novelty "retro" mod exploit opportunities were had. My project was a proof-of-concept with the intent of sharing an idea and knowledge and I don't intend for the prestige. What ended up in gzd isn't related to my code anyhow lol and i'm sincerely happy that my thread's locked and tossed into abandoned.

Anyway WIP double plane pyramid trees trade mark patented (R)2017 me Alright Reserved!

[Fused]

If retards are so important to you then perhaps I shouldn't make a point about using flashlights to light up a larger area through light reflection as opposed to decreasing your night vision through too strong a light that also happens to be in a far smaller area than the diffused light would be.

User was warned for this post. -Lud

Not to jump on the bandwagon, but who the hell cares, really? Let the guy do what he wants and give it feetback rather than... this. I think it looks great honestly, better than the flashlights that I have seen so far, which were just some different sized dynamic lights that spawn in front.

[Accensus]

If retards are so important to you then perhaps I shouldn't make a point about using flashlights to light up a larger area through light reflection as opposed to decreasing your night vision through too strong a light that also happens to be in a far smaller area than the diffused light would be.

User was warned for this post. -Lud

Not to jump on the bandwagon, but who the hell cares, really? Let the guy do what he wants and give it feetback rather than... this. I think it looks great honestly, better than the flashlights that I have seen so far, which were just some different sized dynamic lights that spawn in front.

We've been over this.

[DoomKrakken]

I'm still curious about what both of you mean by your flashlight methods. As far as I can tell, Lud's flashlight looked very realistic, especially considering the limitations of the Doom Engine. But what is it Blox would have done, and would it have been possible to implement in the Doom Engine? It wasn't very clear...