Making Light a more important game mechanic
Sling_Blade
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 3412Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 3412Members, Reinforced - Shadow
After seeing some marines going around with their flashlights on I hope that the developers really take advantage of the great gameplay mechanic they have to play with here. I've never played another multiplayer game that has full dynamic lighting, and the effect can be really cool. Given that the aliens are mostly melee, it synergies with their needs as well, as long as the developers take advantage of it.
Right now the power node idea does a great job of showing this off, but it doesn't give aliens as much of an advantage because they can't see any better in the dark than the marines can. It also isn't really dark enough to make it too hard for marines to see.
Some other ideas:
Maybe you could make an alien structure that "sucks" in light. I have no idea how your engine works but perhaps you can make the structure add a modifier to all lighting in a radius around it, making it darker closer to the structure and lighter further away. In other words... the opposite of a light source. Might work out to be too weird but it could be cool.
Giving marines flares might be cool. Especially if they have to choose between that or a flashlight. Flares you throw on the ground would be better for defense but not good for offense. Plus the marines with flares would be dependent on the marines with flashlights when they are on the move.
Maybe you could have an alien ability that is like a slimy goo they can spit on lights that will turn them off, but it will fall off over time. The main goal is just to give the aliens a way of turning out the lights temporarily but quickly.
Right now the power node idea does a great job of showing this off, but it doesn't give aliens as much of an advantage because they can't see any better in the dark than the marines can. It also isn't really dark enough to make it too hard for marines to see.
Some other ideas:
Maybe you could make an alien structure that "sucks" in light. I have no idea how your engine works but perhaps you can make the structure add a modifier to all lighting in a radius around it, making it darker closer to the structure and lighter further away. In other words... the opposite of a light source. Might work out to be too weird but it could be cool.
Giving marines flares might be cool. Especially if they have to choose between that or a flashlight. Flares you throw on the ground would be better for defense but not good for offense. Plus the marines with flares would be dependent on the marines with flashlights when they are on the move.
Maybe you could have an alien ability that is like a slimy goo they can spit on lights that will turn them off, but it will fall off over time. The main goal is just to give the aliens a way of turning out the lights temporarily but quickly.
Comments
The flare idea is good too.
My brother remarked to me that he thought alien's should be able to see clearly (like in AvP) when the lights are out.
Perhaps when the lights are out, marine's find it hard to see until they drop flares or use their flashlights; where-as alien's can see clearly in the dark.
However, if alien's look too long at a light source (flare/flashlight) they can be temporarily blinded/blurry vision from too much light exposure (having been in the dark for so long).
Not sure if that would just be annoying in-game; but I agree some more lighting effects would be nice - it really adds to the atmosphere of the game so far.
If you make a light with negative values it subtracts luminosity, the downside is this can sort of mess with colour values. You can see it in the fade blink if you look, that's why the colours near the effect sort of look heavily filtered.
So it might need a bit of work to retain colour values, but a darkness structure would certainly be possible.
However, I don't know whether it would be a good mechanic, unless you can guarantee uniform visuals it's generally a bad idea to rely on visuals for gameplay.
You could try it though, just use an existing model as a standin and add the negative light effect, if it doesn't work it can be taken out. That's the point of lua right?
The most amazing <b>true stealth</b> multiplayer ever.
You slink along the rafters in a sea of black and a flashlight sweeps the area underneath you. A heavily armed Merc slowly walks into the room and begins searching the dark corners for you. You hear from across the map a burst of gunfire and your headset crackles to life. "Ah s**t he saw me f*** f*** f*** QUICK HACK TH-" and it's silent. Your teammate is no more.
The merc under you seems to have given up his search and turns to leave. You slip from your perch, move behind him, and as you draw closer, you can overhear the dim tones of his own buddy remarking on his latest trophy. You move quickly, pinning the merc with your body. Before you break his neck, you quietly whisper to him... "sweet dreams...".
Suddenly you're struck from behind and sent sprawling. Recovering from the impact, you turn to see the second merc ready to unleash a hail of bullets. You quickly pop a smoke grenade and run to escape, when you hear the familiar 'oooh-haaah' of a gas mask as the merc quickly pulls it on. Leaping to a higher level, cutting left, you once again blend into the darkness, invisible to the naked eye - but what's this? The merc's visor shifts to red - he's entered motion tracking mode. You freeze in position, as the slightest movement will cause you to be highlighted clear as day but put a nice bright box around you for the merc - you will be impossible to miss. Very slowly, you pull another grenade, this time pitching it away from you. The motion tracking springs to life, the merc opens up into the grenade, allowing you to dive in the other direction...
Yes, that was the game. Your voice comm was always on, and would cut out the second you died. You could overhear enemies and even talk to them. You had loads of visual cues from what vision modes were being used to where players were looking. Everything had a relationship with everything else - spies using night vision would show up on merc's electromagnetic vision. Spies could shoot out lights and tap into merc communications, use special map features, and mess with their heads.
It was... utterly sublime. NS could learn a thing or two.
Darkness is an element that still can't be managed consistently. Hardware, drivers and settings don't provide any consistent way of balancing out the actual visual the players get. Most gamma altering programs have macros to adjust them on the fly. Many players can't completely control the lighting in their gaming space, so sunlight and all that starts to affect the gaming enjoyment.
For the strategical part of the game consistent and reliable factors are a must. You can't base your decisions on guessing how many people actually can operate in an area and it's not tactically interesting to fight in a room where you have absolutely no visuals to help your decisionmaking. Also, not being able to wander outside powered areas makes it an extremely bad map control game, since you're forced to progress slowly instead of poking around on strategical locations whenever you see it purposeful. Flares might offer some tactical value, but I highly doubt anything is going to really make up for all the issues darkness creates for strategy.
Everyone does this?
Actually using flashlights can make it harder to see aliens in the dark. When I turn the flashlight off I can much more easily see their silhouettes.
I haven't got anything else except the gamma maxed out in NS settings. Veil and Tanith are really comfortable, but on Lost I sometimes lose a target if I haven't been playing playing actively. Lost and too much sunlight in the room is already notably annoying if not even unplayable on some areas. Dark areas in co_angst clearly affect my aiming a lot, no matter whether I've been active or not.
I like the Flares idea :) It may costs with the same as medpacks
Especially Green ,Blue and Red ones would be nice. This is very easy for UWE like an ammo pack.
But it makes a bit hard on the CPU and GPU side when 16 marines throw more than 3 flares which means there are more than 48 lights will be displayed :) But in comparision with number of lights in ns2_tram which has more than 1700 lights, 48 is nothing :)
On the alien side it may be thermal view or something like this.
By those flares rines can play a map which has no lights. That would be also interesting.
Yeah, I referred to NS1. I don't think too many people are adjusting their brightness in NS2 yet, it's not in a point where winning rounds or being able to see and hit targets is expected.
When you want to apply this gameplay mechanic, provide zero lighting, so even if the brightness was maxed, you still see nothing because there are no light sources. You have to turn your flash light on. There you go, complete darkness, flash light is the only source of light. No one can cheat this way, w'll all be in the same boat.
Oh and aliens view shouldn't be affected by lighting, so they can still see in pitch darkness.
What do you guys think.
About the argument that people cheat by upping their gamma, well I dont, and I assume other ppl doesnt. And even if they do cheat, why dont they just change their clientside files to create clientside lamps if you make it pitchblack?
I do agree that the emergency lighting is way to bright though, it should just be enough to make the commander able to see what is going on, and the marines not have any problems navigating. not so light that it is easy to see a skulk even when it hides in the shadows.
Of course a limited amount in a certain area and they last perhaps a 30s - 1min and have to be researched, but i like the idea.
that will look kinda bad in a lot of scenarios. For example if you have your brightness set to something higher than default, and things on your screen don't look that dark at all yet you can't see the skulk that's standing there because the engine is hiding it ? It just wouldn't make sense. The suggestion below would work better imo.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->There's an easy way in which you can use lighting as a gameplay mechanic without having to worry about people playing around with their brightness (cheating).
When you want to apply this gameplay mechanic, provide zero lighting, so even if the brightness was maxed, you still see nothing because there are no light sources. You have to turn your flash light on. There you go, complete darkness, flash light is the only source of light. No one can cheat this way, w'll all be in the same boat.
Oh and aliens view shouldn't be affected by lighting, so they can still see in pitch darkness.
What do you guys think.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
- on the alien side I wonder if it would be posible to have a low lighting vision that simulates having vision in the UV (think avatar) or Infrared range (think predator). Basically for the aliens their own buildings would emit a colorful glow in lower lighting conditions also. This way areas with infestation would be very bright and comfortable for aliens but very dark and foggy for marines.
- technical question here: Could fog effects (like the ink cloud or umbra) be used to the aliens benefit rather than straight up darkness? I mention this because of the gamma settings argument. I think the crag already is supposed to have a umbra-type healing-cloud effect. Right? Maybe the very same crag or some other alien build could emit a cloud of ink much like the fade's that would only mess heavily with marine's sight.
- Since lighting has several layers, some cool stuff could be done for cloaking aliens where only a special light would visibly (for humans) bounce off them. This special light would come from marine flashlight/flares (upgrade required?) and certain marines building (like the sentries).
- Regarding cloaking visuals and lighting maybe allow aliens being able to cloak 100% if in low enough lighting (without having upgrades). The cloak could be a fading effect so it doesn't look too weird but still reach 100% so the gamma cannot be abused.
I gtg, might review this later.
The most amazing <b>true stealth</b> multiplayer ever.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Until spies learn to break necks and then it just turns into a slaughter. Once we figured that out no thanks to the terrible controls all we had to do was flashbang and it was over.
Not too sure that would work and they'd have to either rework the atmosphere pass or remove it just to get that gameplay feature in. The idea that the aliens would not be rendered at all would also look incredibly odd with the current atmosphere fog. What would happen if there was a lightsource behind an area of complete darkness? Shouldn't you still be able to see the silhouette, or should he just "pop" into existence once he leaves the darkness?
Honestly it's a dead discussion to consider using darkness in that way, it would have to be an unofficial mod at some point or a single-player thing.
However they could very well introduce flares to make it easier to see at least, that would be a great addition.