Lighting ideas

Titan6 · February 2015

Toggle interior lights: I don't know about anyone else, but I absolutely love when the lights 'turn off' in the cyclops. I like it so much, that I'd really like a toggle for it. Allow me to turn the lights on and off. I know it's not a huge deal, but it really adds to the immersion to be deep underwater with the lights off.

Controllable spot lights for the cyclops: Being able to either control the lights that are on it now, or add another more focused light that's player controlled.

Personally, I'd love more lights in general. I like the idea of the cyclops illuminating an area while I take the Seamoth out to gather things.

(sorry if any of this is already on the board, or has been discussed.)

aeroripper · February 2015

Agreed! I hope lighting gets some serious work put into it for the cyclops. Some of the cool things that could be done with this:

- The sub runs out of power and everything goes black. Imagine this happening in very deep waters with no exterior lighting coming in, and your sub is filling with water and the red emergency lights have died.
- Lights flicker briefly when attacked by big fishies.
- Lighting begins to flicker off in flooded areas, so your sub gets darker as it fills with water.
- Sub lighting is hooked into the power system that I think the cyclops will eventually have. You can turn off light to different parts of the sub to maintain systems in low-power situations.
- Big floodlights to illuminate the area in front of your sub.
- Running lights along the sub exterior

I don't think most of this will happen (or be possible), but still fun to think about. I'm not even sure if they can do full dynamic lighting for the sub interior areas while using lightmaps for the main world.

Kaiserfront · February 2015

Before working on the Cyclops lighting, there finally should be a (almost) realistic lighting in the ocean. In rl the darkness begins at ca. 60m and it really looks nice when your sub is the only real light source at the ocean floor. So imho the bottom of the Grassy Plateaus should be already dark.

Vahnkiljoy · February 2015

Well sure if you want to go by EARTH standards, we aren't ON EARTH. So really if you want to drag the game down and make this ALIEN planet subject to our planets rules than go ahead. I, myself love the lighting in the game as it works perfectly.

Kaiserfront · February 2015

This has nothing to do with earth standards. It's just the way I would like to see the game. In the end it is an earth-like planet with fishes and coral reefs just like on earth. At some point the coral reefs vanish and thats normally due to less sunlight. It's also obvious that biomes like the Mushroom Forest or the Koosh Zone currently represent our deep sea with all its bioluminescence.
I just wanted to point out that imo it would make no sense to let the lights go out if you have daylight in 200m depth.

LumpN · February 2015

Kaiserfront wrote: »

This has nothing to do with earth standards. It's just the way I would like to see the game. In the end it is an earth-like planet with fishes and coral reefs just like on earth. At some point the coral reefs vanish and thats normally due to less sunlight. It's also obvious that biomes like the Mushroom Forest or the Koosh Zone currently represent our deep sea with all its bioluminescence.
I just wanted to point out that imo it would make no sense to let the lights go out if you have daylight in 200m depth.

We have discussed lighting often and plenty both internally and on the forums. For game-y reasons we are going to have sunlit areas down to a couple of hundred meters. Trust me: it just looks better this way. We also have plenty of darkness already. For one there is the day/night cycle basically turning even Safe Shallows into darkness. On the other hand we already have a lot of dark caves. And we are going to have even more of them. Again: there is plenty of darkness. And there is going to be a lot of gameplay revolving around lighting up the world as part of trailblazing your way down into the abyss.

By the way I love those ideas about Cyclops lights flickering or turning off when losing power. Someone important seems to agree too.

Seldkam · February 2015

Could we also have ways to upgrade the lights OUTSIDE the Cyclops too? they aren't necessarily as strong as I would like

Kaiserfront · February 2015

Ok I believe you when you say that it was tested and this way it works better. So I hope we will have deeper areas soon. I don't know why, but I find large open areas of the sea floor which are pitch black scarier than an underwater cave.

aeroripper · February 2015

LumpN wrote: »

Kaiserfront wrote: »

This has nothing to do with earth standards. It's just the way I would like to see the game. In the end it is an earth-like planet with fishes and coral reefs just like on earth. At some point the coral reefs vanish and thats normally due to less sunlight. It's also obvious that biomes like the Mushroom Forest or the Koosh Zone currently represent our deep sea with all its bioluminescence.
I just wanted to point out that imo it would make no sense to let the lights go out if you have daylight in 200m depth.

We have discussed lighting often and plenty both internally and on the forums. For game-y reasons we are going to have sunlit areas down to a couple of hundred meters. Trust me: it just looks better this way. We also have plenty of darkness already. For one there is the day/night cycle basically turning even Safe Shallows into darkness. On the other hand we already have a lot of dark caves. And we are going to have even more of them. Again: there is plenty of darkness. And there is going to be a lot of gameplay revolving around lighting up the world as part of trailblazing your way down into the abyss.

By the way I love those ideas about Cyclops lights flickering or turning off when losing power. Someone important seems to agree too.

Wow I just discovered the design trello board. Cool! Those ideas listed on the card sound great.

I hope the interior sub lighting is made customizable if the ship eventually is. That sort of interaction helps players feel more attachment to their subs/bases.

Lighting ideas

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