Ainia wrote:Regarding the love seat photo, I assume the lighting will be fixed in a later post-beta release? It's kinda strange to turn on the lamp and see the room brighten but for me (my avvie) to remain shadowy.
It's planned to be extented in functionality, yes. If you allow, I would like to explain why I don't like the word "fixing" in this case.
If you have a gearing mechanism, one can probably "fix" it by putting some oil into it, or by removing something that blocks it. That's what fixing is: Repairing something that already has everything needed to work properly, but is blocked somehow.
But assume you have an arbor (or bower), which isn't lit by electric bulbs yet. You decide to integrate some; you begin to put a cable from your house to the arbor, make holes through the wall to let the cable through, use cement to fill the holes once the cable is in, then you begin to make electrical connections of the cable to the fuse block in your house, you also mount a light switch in your arbor, you mount a lamp, interconnect everything, and voila, the electric light in the arbor works.
Would you call this "fixing" the light? Would that describe all the work you've done well?
Just to give an impression how lighting of rooms in Relativity works, I would like to explain it more detailed.
Let's take the control room (the one with the round windows) for example. Because this would look ugly, lighting of the walls is not done using dynamic lighting (Plasma doesn't do a good job here); instead, all lighting - except the lighting of the avatar - is made with lightmaps. This means, every level of light (dark because not lit, bright because lit by a lamp or from outside) needs its own lighmap.
There are different levels of light each wall can receive / reflect.
First level is, when it's night outside. In this case, I blend in a quite dark lightmap, because the walls don't receive much light.
Second level is, when the room is lit from outside (daylight). This uses a second, brighter lightmap.
The third level comes into play when you turn on the lamp in the room; this is the brightest lightmap.
So, we have 3 different lightmaps to handle properly. And the light does not switch abruptly, it fades instead softly from one lightmap to another (because I wanted it to work this way). Lot of scripting involved here, not just a boolean switch. And of course each lightmap has to be rendered separately, because not only the brightness varies, but locations where shadows fall as well. Obviously, because the lamps are different in location (bulb and windows).
The Blender file needs different lamps only for this room to get the different light setup renderend. Those lamps are not exported.
Then there's another lamp (which IS exported) - and this lamp serves the purpose of lighting the avatar. If you watch carefully how this lamp behaves in the control room, you will realize that this lamp fades as well softly, like a dimmer, not like a switch. Again some scripting.
And if you really do look closely to everything, you will also note that the reflectiveness of the window glasses change accordingly to the light intensity. When it's dark, the glasses seem nearly unvisible (like real glasses do too, because when the surroundings are dark, glass doesn't have something to reflect), and when there's light, the glasses show a subtle shimmer on the surface. Needless to say that's scripted as well, because I wanted it to appear as realistic as possible. And, of course, inner and outer side of the glass are handled separately.
To carry all this to extremes, there are two versions of the control room - one is used for the "normal" state, when all floor and wall tiles have a beige color tone - the other is used for the red/blue/beige version of the Age. The rooms are visually exchanged accordingly to the proper state. Each of those two versions have 3 different lighmaps attached.
That said, yes, I can make the lamp in the sofa room light the avatar accordlingly to the lightmaps as well. I just need to add another lamp, adjust the parameters, connect it to some scripting and the switch logic, do some testing, and adjust / export again (and again) until I'm pleased. Needs some time to "fix" it. It's just not finished to add all avatar lamps in all rooms yet.
I think it's generally a problem when you build an Age too perfect. People tend to take everything as for granted when it looks too realistic (because nature does it the same way).
Plasma is a really old engine; nearly nothing works automagically.
Even in newer games, with brilliant and absolutely stunning graphics, I often experience that the players don't even realize how wonderful the surroundings look, how smooth it behaves, and how fantastic the lighting is set up. They just play the game, are interested in levelling up, collect items, and cannot imagine the work the developers had. They run through leaves as if the don't see them, and they never take a look at a tree's bark. The newer the game, the most they complain about bugs. I never get this, maybe because I'm a game developer now as well and know what's behind.
Don't get me wrong. I'm really happy that I can build Ages with this old engine, because it's such a good feeling when you create something never seen even with an engine so old, and noone expected it to be possible.
In case I sounded harsh: Not my intention. Really. It's just that I'm not good in finding polite words for conversation; english is not my mother tongue. I'm happy that I can explain at least technical stuff a bit - and that's what I wanted to do. To give everybody some insight in how Relativity lighting works.
So I just took the word "fix" as a hook to start with discussing some technical stuff.