Hmmmm....you Kassonnade surely know the numbers better then me and I totally agree that sometimes the "blacks" could be too black, but I never felt this in Empyrion, as I mention while I was reading up on the subject, I found many posts of people complaining for nights to be too dark, it feels to me they "greyed" it out to make it easier for a wider audience, but I might be wrong as Eleon is not really a "catering" company thankfully! In every single survival game I play, nights suddenly become as bright as day following people's demand, yes, the Zirax won't care if at night we are in pitch black, but man it would be exciting, not to mention giving a reason to be to lights and night vision. Playing the hard start in Reforged Eden made me dream of those NV, I never cared about them before;-)
These are 2 different settings, as the "shadow strength" is only the "contrast" effect applied to areas not subject to direct light, while the "night/ day light intensity" is what makes the actual brightness on the whole environment (not just the shadows). I can't blame people who complained for not knowing this but their issue may be caused more by the volumetric "fog effect" we have at night that renders spotlights useless. The "fix" to the shadows colors may yield a bit more "color" to nights but once again if the global lighting is low (playfield seeting, adjustable) then nights will still be dark, but at least spotlights will show more "colors". Too bad this wasn't addressed before because now it's too late to make tests to see the difference - would require installing an older version to see it...
I am confused...what Eleon changed, seemed to me the "blackness" of blacks...or did I get it wrong? I mean that now blacks are a little less black... Obviously my question was already answered, now it's only academical speech
That's right. This has nothing to do with playfield light during night/ day. This means that a character walking in the shadow of a big rock, for example, will not be as "dark-colored" as before, as the "shadow" subtract / lowers the "brigthness" of objects in its path. But for that same character walking in "plain open sky" there should be no difference. I may be wrong, that note from the devs is not very clear and the settings in the playfield yamls show 2 different schemes: "shadow strength" and global "day/ night" light intensity. I can test a "night light intensity" of zero to see what it looks like. Hold on... Edit : ok I made some screenshots... Spoiler: Look at my nebula-free skies... This is the "Night light intensity" of "zero" set in the playfield.yaml : When I use my suit's spotlight : I can actually see "something" through the night fog but it's still very annoying. Here, with shadows on "high", look at the ripples on the sand : That's pitch black. When I look at a rocky wall, lo-quality shadows : And from the same spot, high-quality shadows : Not much difference in the end... That may be because "dynamic" shadows don't apply to terrain uniformly (trees are models - different shading method). That's still very dark, but even with zero "night light" there are still many "colors" to adjust, as they all act on the textures we see : So all these "colors" are tints added/ subtracted from the rendered image we see (calculated each frame) and depending where we look, atmosphere is thicker/ thinner and we see other colors mixed with the underlying textures. So only the "black" is less "black" and may yield more "color saturation" in the end mix (more colorful). .
@Kassonnade yeah, let's not even consider the light, that is a bug/thing to be fix ed an hopefully they will. It looks pretty good, in your first pic those objects in the background are barely visible, in my game I would see them clearly. NightLightIntensity feels wrong at 0, but it does the trick and the colors are still there. I'll see if I can do the same with my limited knowledge, up to a point though, it is pitch black for us, but the Zirax see really well in the dark;-)
Euro, eh? You guys are nice chaps but some of you have the tendency to spread your infinite self-important opinions even when not requested. Now what were you saying about being nice or discouraging new players? The point I was making was that it is necessary to speak up about these kinds of changes, especially when they are changes to things we do not have access to modify, or no one will know this is an issue.
Thanks for the information. I've not played much of late but am about to go into the game now and check this out for myself first-hand. I was last playing regularly a few versions ago and had been loving the dark nights (as I usually do) on the starting planet. So, I was afraid that this experience might be compromised in the future. Generally speaking though, the lighting in Empyrion is a problem. The way I can be in an enclosed space - be it and underground tunnel from mining, or an enclosed, windowless base - the light level is based on the sun strength and time of day. I still long for it to be DARK if I'm in an unlit, enclosed space - I really hope this makes it into the game some day. I admit, I've always assumed that the current lighting was very much a place-holder and would ultimately be made more accurate. Not ray tracing levels of accurate - though that might be nice - but just a bit more real with places that should be dark being actually dark. Of course, being blinded by the sun rise while I'm deep underground, encased in concrete is somewhat off-putting too. I assume Unity can do "proper" (or at least far more accurate) lighting, but it's simply not implemented in Empyrion for some reason. Scoob.
Unity can do that no problem in "normal" games where environment lighting is pre-baked like any other game engine. The problem here is that both terrain and structures/ ships are voxel based and there's a direct relation between the amount of dynamic lighting (limited) and performance. Aaah... watch this : It hurts... .
Unity <> Unreal The Unreal engine has been an absolute beast since it's release with the original Unreal - still a great game, and the original ADSM shot effect is still the absolute best.
I havent noticed much change in the nights. Ill try to pay closer attention. Personally, If we were getting really technical, I think the "darkness" of the night should be dictated by the planet/locale. Often times even the "dark of night" really isnt terribly dark when the stars and moon are out shining. What I >do< think should be certainly "black" are inside locations without light fixtures such as caves or deactivated POIs.
I am so glad these technology did not exist when I was a teenager, life would have taken a really different path!!)
I think this affects Space more than planets, as I'm still trying to figure out how to adjust lighting in space playfields... maybe it's easy and I'm just not looking at the good place !
