How do we force darkness on people without shaders?

[Pecon]

On topic, it appears Despair Syndrome achieves to force darkness to people without shaders, with some sort of "sphere of vision", and beyond it pitch black "fog".

Blockland can do this, but it only shows up well if you have at least minimum shaders on. This is why I think the Off setting should be axed by now.

[Ad Bot]

[Lord Tony®]

This is why I think the Off setting should be axed by now.

There is a lot of people with stuffty computers that can at least run in minimum.

If someone can't even run minimum it's time to get a new PC.

[Col. Burton]

the Off setting should be axed by now.

The computer I had before this one didn't even give me the option to turn shaders on minimum, i don't see how this will help any.

[elm]

There is a lot of people with stuffty computers that can at least run in minimum.

If someone can't even run minimum it's time to get a new PC.

My computer isn't stuffty nor is it a super-computer, but from no shaders to minimum, I do lose SOME performance, and that's the main issue here.

[Lord Tony®]

My computer isn't stuffty nor is it a super-computer, but from no shaders to minimum, I do lose SOME performance, and that's the main issue here.

All it does is add fog and the shiny effect.

[The Resonte!]

and that loses performance

truly a tricky situation

[Marios]

If you can just follow the method Despair Syndrome uses (or make something similar), we need not force shaders on.
The aforementioned fog thingamajig actually works pretty well, and the horror aspect of the game "Is the killer going to be stabbing my back tonight" is not at all ruined.

In fact, support for low-ends simply means a wider potential audience. If I can run a game way newer than Blockland, with high settings including medium/high shaders, why should I not be able to run an older game with the lowest shader setting possible?

No offense to Baddy here, he's done a good job maintaining a loyal following which in turn maintains this game for 10+ years, where I would otherwise not be here, but these laggy shaders just don't cut it.

[Lord Tony®]

Speaking of which even when the environment is set to night it's much darker with shadows on than off. It's a significant disadvantage.

I can see in the dark with shadows off in a night map but with them on it's pitch black.

[Pecon]

If you can just follow the method Despair Syndrome uses (or make something similar), we need not force shaders on.
The aforementioned fog thingamajig actually works pretty well, and the horror aspect of the game "Is the killer going to be stabbing my back tonight" is not at all ruined.

I played on there for a little while and was actually really disappointed in how the night looked if you turned off your shaders. It was basically daytime except you limited the draw distance to minimum, which still makes the game objectively favor anyone with shaders off since they can see people close by properly. I would definitely say that ruins the experience a great deal.

The computer I had before this one didn't even give me the option to turn shaders on minimum, i don't see how this will help any.

The solution is to stop trying to cater to people with computers that are 7+ years old. You can't use the same computer you played Blockland on in 2007 today. It's impeding progress.

[Lord Tony®]

The solution is to stop trying to cater to people with computers that are 7+ years old. You can't use the same computer you played Blockland on in 2007 today. It's impeding progress.

I can confirm this.

Actually Blockland killed my old windows XP piece of stuff grandma email checker. That computer couldn't even run shaders on minimum. I was hosting one day and I decided to leave my computer running blockland overnight for people to build. I wake up to find out the stuffty computer can't even run. It over heated so badly the heat sink melted off the thermal glue held together. Had about 512mb of RAM and a radeon graphics card by today's standard is worth 10 dollars.

My new computer can run blockland maxed out with almost no performance issues. It's time to upgrade.

[Blankhead]

From what I recall, the "I'm Scared" gamemode forced players to have shaders enabled to at least minimum. Granted, this was a single-player gamemode and I'm sure people could circumvent it, but it can be done.

I would say the whole spectator-until-shader-check idea would work best. As long as there are validity checks every so often it should be fine.

[Lord Tony®]

I would say the whole spectator-until-shader-check idea would work best. As long as there are validity checks every so often it should be fine.

I don't like these check loops though. Depending on how many people are on the server it could cause lag.

[jes00]

I only lose performance on minimum if there's a decent amount of other players on the server.

[DataProxy]

Though this is generally my preference, since I rarely use shaders:
My comp can run shaders, even on minimum, but if don't even use them, due to my liking of them is rather stuffty, and it was a waste of my time. Though adding shadows was an interesting take, it literally turned the game from something Indie to something Triple A, and some Blockland users don't have the computers neccesary to run high-res games even on minimum. Now, I love quality as much as the next guy, but quality comes in different packages, visual quality being one of them, and I would like to think that most users like to play Blockland simply because of how the ridiculous physics and server-wide shenanigans give us the daily quota of stuffs, giggles and WTFs. But the shaders seemed like a rather large turn off for me in general. It doesn't really do much other than occasionally lag my computer every now and then at the cost of more beautiful graphics, just to burn out a video card every 3 months. I'm not saying my comp does that constantly; just an example.

Point being, the way I see it, if I can see what I am doing in game, and if I look decent enough while doing it, I don't need the extra fluff.

[AutoBahn]

As noted earlier in the thread, forcing shaders on isn't a solution due to bad optimization.
However, there's also another problem: It is completely possible to use Reshade to 'break' shaders so that they don't render properly(thus defeating their purpose). Due to the nature of Reshade, it can only be set up for a particular setting(from what I remember, it only worked properly at max shaders because that's the default) and you had to modify the config to get it 'set up' for a different setting, so it's inherently quite easy to make it so that shaders don't actually do anything.
But that's all just from my conjecture, I don't have evidence on hand to back it up at the moment. Might do it when i get home.