Broken lighting in Blockland?

[Teneksi]

sarcasm meter broken?

sarcasm meter overacting?

I'm sorry, aren't those green things lights?

flare textures, not lights.

[Ad Bot]

[Nymethus]

oic

[Wedge]

OpenGL is an API that takes instructions from a program and turns it into a format that your display can understand: there is no bound on the number of lights it can support. It's an industry standard. As an example, Pixar used OpenGL to render their movies and I'm sure we can agree that they used more than 8 lights in their scenes. I mean, there's a lot of complaints about opengl in this thread but what would you prefer? Direct3D? Is it really any better? Do you know anything about D3D or OpenGL because I don't, and I'd appreciate if you would share.

The lights behave the way they do because it's the way Badspot decided they should work for now. It's definitely not optimal or particularly pretty but that's just how it works. I think it's a totally valid complaint, but broken isn't really an accurate description. Unfortunately I doubt it's as simple as buying the torque lighting kit (is it even available anymore?) and throwing it in the game.

I think things like lighting, shadows, and effects like motion blur, sharpening, bloom, film grain, colorization, night vision, etc, are things that could have a great effect on the game even if they were only marginally improved. If nothing else, opening up screen effects to modders could lead to a lot of really cool mods.

[Pentium]

-snip-

Just wondering, how hard would it be to port Blockland to Torque3D? Would it make any difference at all?

[Awdax]

4x-8x is sufficient.

Actually I was joking, but this is good to know. I hate lighting on large baseplates.

[otto-san]

Just wondering, how hard would it be to port Blockland to Torque3D? Would it make any difference at all?

It's a lot different with a lot of things.

[Reactor Worker]

OpenGL is an API that takes instructions from a program and turns it into a format that your display can understand: there is no bound on the number of lights it can support. It's an industry standard. As an example, Pixar used OpenGL to render their movies and I'm sure we can agree that they used more than 8 lights in their scenes. I mean, there's a lot of complaints about opengl in this thread but what would you prefer? Direct3D? Is it really any better? Do you know anything about D3D or OpenGL because I don't, and I'd appreciate if you would share.

The lights behave the way they do because it's the way Badspot decided they should work for now. It's definitely not optimal or particularly pretty but that's just how it works. I think it's a totally valid complaint, but broken isn't really an accurate description. Unfortunately I doubt it's as simple as buying the torque lighting kit (is it even available anymore?) and throwing it in the game.

I think things like lighting, shadows, and effects like motion blur, sharpening, bloom, film grain, colorization, night vision, etc, are things that could have a great effect on the game even if they were only marginally improved. If nothing else, opening up screen effects to modders could lead to a lot of really cool mods.

It seems reasonable to me that lights don't have a hard limit at the API level and perhaps even at the engine level.

I do like the suggestion you make in the last paragraph of your post but it goes back to old problem of trusting the users; If you give them too much control over the visual quality of the game are they going to complain about poor performance? Judging by Badspot's decision to limit the view-distance, I assume he feels the benefits of more control for the end user isn't worth the support headaches it raises.

Also worth considering: how long would it take to add those features to the game? Time is money when you're running a business and setting aside hundreds of hours to work on updating visuals may not be cost effective.

[argentinosaurus]

Sorry about that

[stuntman021]

Just wondering, how hard would it be to port Blockland to Torque3D? Would it make any difference at all?

it would be worse than opengl and not worth it

[Pentium]

it would be worse than opengl and not worth it

No, it wouldn't. Blockland currently uses the original Torque Game Engine, which is 10 years old by now. Torque3D is the latest release by GarageGames and would be a lot better. Also, OpenGL is a rendering technique used not only by TGE and Torque3D, but a whole slew of games and game engines.

I do like the suggestion you make in the last paragraph of your post but it goes back to old problem of trusting the users; If you give them too much control over the visual quality of the game are they going to complain about poor performance? Judging by Badspot's decision to limit the view-distance, I assume he feels the benefits of more control for the end user isn't worth the support headaches it raises.

Easy solution: force-disable certain settings on graphics chipsets that are too old or are made by Intel.

Also worth considering: how long would it take to add those features to the game? Time is money when you're running a business and setting aside hundreds of hours to work on updating visuals may not be cost effective.

True, but the end result will probably attract even more buyers. I consider visuals to be quite important in a creative sandbox game where the point is to build things and admire them afterwards. Besides, Torque3D is a lot more than just shiny graphics; for instance, it has better vehicle physics and also supports ragdoll physics.