It's annoying how I need to continuously adjust my shader settings whenever I join a different server.
You need to remember that if your buildings have no light, people without shaders on cannot see in them.
If your entire minigame is inside that building, and it's supposed to be dark for everyone, there's environment settings for that.
If everyone is supposed to see with ease, but you want the build to be an interior build, there's also environment settings for that.
There's three of them.
Direct light, ambient light, and shadow color.
Direct light affects faces (object polygons, not human faces) and more so if the face is flat against the sun.
Shader settings don't affect direct light much at all, aside from adding reflections heavily based on the direct light color. This means when shaders are minimum or off, objects behind bricks will not be darkened. Thus, when the direct light is a bright color in a room that's supposed to be dark, players can see very well with shaders off/minimum.
Ambient light is applied in different ways depending on shader settings. It will always be visible in direct light, aside from the 'reflective' parts of it when shaders are on. When shaders are off, ambient light is visible and direct light is absent, in place of where faces are not being exposed to the sun's direction.
It also seems that point lights make the ambient light less intense, making the direct light more visible.
Shadow color is not visible with shaders off. On minimum, it represents the color of the faces that are not in contact with the sun, and is not affected by ambient light once shaders are no longer off. However, if shaders are only on minimum, the only things with the shadow color are the sides of objects not facing the sun, completely ignoring any other objects that could be blocking the sun. So even on minimum shader settings, players will still be able to see fine inside dark buildings, so long as they have the bright direct light. With shaders on, this does the obvious effect of objects casting shadows.
In the following images, direct light is red (255 0 0), ambient light is green (0 255 0), and shadow color is blue (0 0 255).
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13108367/shaders/Blockland_00265.pngShaders on High.
Faces in contact with the sun appear yellow, which is the red and green mixed.
The shadows are blue.
The sun reflections are red.
The faces not flat against the sun appear more green than yellow.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13108367/shaders/Blockland_00266.pngShaders off.
No blue or red is present. Just green/yellow.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13108367/shaders/Blockland_00271.pngShaders on minimum.
The shadow color is visible on the side of the object away from the sun. But no shadow is being casted.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13108367/shaders/Blockland_00272.pnghttps://dl.dropbox.com/u/13108367/shaders/Blockland_00273.pngWhen shaders are on, the smaller cube is completely covered in shadow color.
But when the shaders are on minimum or off, faces towards the sun are still easily visible.
So do you want to make a minigame take place in the dark?Instead of just making an interior based minigame and expecting everyone to use shaders, turn down the direct/ambient lights.
Didn't want the minigame to be dark but you forgot people want the game to look nice?Make the shadow color brighter.
These kinds of things DO affect gameplay, and it's often a negative experience for the people with higher settings.
And no, I'm not asking Badspot to change the way shaders work because they work fine, and I'm not expecting everyone to turn their shaders on because that's not fair to them. I'm expecting hosts to change their environment settings. It's not that hard.
For example, this build here isn't supposed to be very dark, nor is it supposed to be bright. I still need to adjust it a little though.
Exterior
Shaders off:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13108367/shaders/Blockland_00259.pngA bit dark, as intended. Still easy to see everything in.
Shaders minimum:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13108367/shaders/Blockland_00260.pngMap is still a bit dark, however, as you can see I made the ambient color too dark and the shadow color too bright, causing the wrong sides of things to be too bright.
Shaders max:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13108367/shaders/Blockland_00261.pngMap is yet still a bit dark, as intended. The shadowed areas are darker than the rest of the build, but, not impossible to see in. Vision is barely impaired, causing it to look nice while not making the player blind.
Interior
Shaders off:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13108367/shaders/Blockland_00262.pngStill kind of dark like the rest of the map.
Shaders minimum:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13108367/shaders/Blockland_00263.pngStill has fair visibility.
Shaders max:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13108367/shaders/Blockland_00264.pngEven with the same environment as above, it's still easy to see in this cave. Players get the feeling it's darker in here than it is outside, but can still see just fine. They wont feel as if they need to turn off shaders just to be able to beat other players in this cave. If I were to make this cave any deeper, I could use the negative light pack to make the deeper parts darker regardless of shader settings.
