How about making it look like a cave, or something else solid in the distance, rather than seeing clouds and things in the 'sky'?
As it stands, the water effect still being visible in the Nether looks pretty cool, anyway.
Speaking of other dimensions, has the End portal been given any love? I'm going to take a guess and say no, since it's not in the changelog. Also, I don't know what the special sky you did was for it, but I suspect the 1.6.4 version of shaders didn't support dimension-detecting or something, because that's weird.
I can think of a few uses for the lights, but they do sound more trouble than they're worth.
Sorry that I keep making suggestions, but it might be cool if possible to deeply redden things seen through a nether portal, to give the impression that you're looking into the nether itself.
I have no idea how to render 3D caves at runtime. Clouds were a simple case because they're 2D, so I just calculate X/Z coordinates for each pixel, then just calculate noise maps for that position. To generate randomized 3D objects, that would require ray-tracing to test for intersections with stuff. Worse, each time I do a ray trace, that requires re-calculating all the logic behind generating the 3D object. So it's not just drawing them once, it's drawing them as many times as it takes to find something that intersects with the current pixel, which could easily be > 50 attempts.
The shaders mod didn't support other dimensions in 1.7, let alone 1.6. I do have separate per-dimension shaders included with the download, but you'll need to use a later version for them to be loaded. Unless you want to copy-paste the files and reload each time you change dimensions.
I've had ideas for end portal rendering, but haven't gotten around to implementing any of them yet due to the fact that they're not the most common block in the world, so it's a bit low-priority at the moment.
Reddening things through nether portals actually was a feature before the re-write of V1.0.0. Should I re-add that?
It doesn't need to be a 3d object, since it's so distant. You could do something like your clouds, but more solid and rendering behind all geometry.
If the clouds were, say, black and/or red with some random noise, you could create a pretty convincing illusion of caves in the distance! Even more so if their pattern is based on your coordinates, so if you go to a location, it'll always be the same for that location, but they shift and change as you move through the Nether.
Depending on how you do the clouds, you could move the cloud noise map along depending on where the player is.
For example, for the cloud walls along the +X and -X axis, they wouldn't change their map if the player moves along Z, but they would move as if they were real objects, so you're scanning along the cloud map.
If the player moves along the X axis, the map would begin to shift and change, so you don't always have the same cave in the distance as you travel.
Honestly, the almost staticky-ness of the End portal sorta fits in with the End. I would love to see what you come up with, though, but I understand not focusing on a block most people will probably only see once or twice, and others will probably see for a few seconds at a time every now and then.
I had no idea that was a feature, that sounds cool! At least as an option, but I don't know of anyone who uses Nether portals in their decoration, or in ways that the redness would negatively affect.
It doesn't need to be a 3d object, since it's so distant. You could do something like your clouds, but more solid and rendering behind all geometry.
If the clouds were, say, black and/or red with some random noise, you could create a pretty convincing illusion of caves in the distance! Even more so if their pattern is based on your coordinates, so if you go to a location, it'll always be the same for that location, but they shift and change as you move through the Nether.
Depending on how you do the clouds, you could move the cloud noise map along depending on where the player is.
For example, for the cloud walls along the +X and -X axis, they wouldn't change their map if the player moves along Z, but they would move as if they were real objects, so you're scanning along the cloud map.
If the player moves along the X axis, the map would begin to shift and change, so you don't always have the same cave in the distance as you travel.
Honestly, the almost staticky-ness of the End portal sorta fits in with the End. I would love to see what you come up with, though, but I understand not focusing on a block most people will probably only see once or twice, and others will probably see for a few seconds at a time every now and then.
I had no idea that was a feature, that sounds cool! At least as an option, but I don't know of anyone who uses Nether portals in their decoration, or in ways that the redness would negatively affect.
My current implementation of clouds in the overworld is as follows:
Step 1: Map each position in eye-space to cloud-space. This basically means pick a direction, and figure out where you'd end up on the cloud plane. Since the cloud plane is 2D AND aligned with the X/Z plane, there's actually a trick you can use to make this much simpler. This also takes your position into account, so that they have the illusion of being real physical objects rendered in the world, instead of just being a skybox that follows you around, as if it were infinitely far away.
Step 2: Figure out if that position even needs clouds to be rendered there. If the pixel at that location is part of the sky, then this is always true. If there's terrain there, then it will compare the distance to that terrain with the distance of the cloud position, and return true if the clouds are closer. Additionally, there's some extra logic to only render clouds above you if you're below them, and below you if you're above them.
Step 3: Generate noise maps based on the cloud position. This involves picking a new random value every 12 blocks (used for the "square-ish" pattern of clouds), and a 2nd random value every 64 blocks (used for making them "clump" together). Both of these values use parabolic interpolation if you're not looking at an exact multiple of 12 or 64 blocks. Additionally, normals are calculated based on the first noise value, and 2 more noise maps are applied on top of that to make them more rough/varied. The final normals are then compared to how closely they match up with the sun's direction. The more similar they are, the brighter the cloud color at that location.
Step 4: Render the clouds. There are MANY edge-case scenarios here for looking at them through transparent objects like glass, or distorting them when looking at them through water/ice, or making sure they're rendered in the correct order based on what's in front of them and what's behind them, etc… This was the trickiest thing to do, since there's so many special cases for how to render them, but I'm pretty sure I've covered most of them. One case that definitely isn't covered is if there are multiple transparent things at the current pixel; some in front, and some behind. In this case the clouds will render behind all of them. And as usual, this is impossible to fix without changing minecraft's rendering engine. If you have a stained glass house above them and like looking at your other stained glass house below them (or vise versa), I would recommend changing CLOUD_HEIGHT (composite1.fsh) to be above both of them.
Now, here's the problems with applying all of that to the nether:
1: The current system takes your position into account, but if I did this in the nether on the X/Z axes instead of the Y axis, you'd just see a "wall" of clouds at x=0 or z=0 (or some other hard-coded number).
2: If I made them not care about your position and always render X blocks away from you in all directions, then you'd never be able to walk up to them. It would just be an effect that follows you that you'd never be able to interact with. This is why I'm rendering clouds manually in the first place instead of just using a resource pack with a custom skybox.
3: Even if the X clouds changed when you moved along the Z axis, and vise versa for the Z clouds, they wouldn't match up in the corners. This would be very noticeable.
4: Fog, again. Clouds in the overworld use different values for fog calculations than the rest of the terrain. This doesn't usually matter, since there's not usually terrain where the clouds are. In the nether though, if one pixel is entirely foggy from terrain being there, and the pixel right next to it isn't foggy at all, it would look very out of place.
5: There's no sun in the nether, so the clouds would always be the same color everywhere. No variation.
6: Clouds. Do. Not. Look. Like. Caves. Presumably you're not asking me to directly render clouds in the nether, but rather tweaking the noise algorithm to have different rules for what color should be rendered at any given cloud position. If you can define your idea mathematically in a way that lets me give you an X and Y position, and you give me back a color and opacity, I'd love to hear it; but currently I'm having a hard time understanding what you DO want it to look like in the first place.
On the topic of red nether portals, this is what they used to look like in the pre-1.0.0 days. I liked the effect, but wasn't happy with the colors, which is why they haven't been re-added yet. Plus, like many things in those days, performance wasn't really something I was focusing on, so it was quite laggy and un-organized. I could probably improve that system today, but like I said, I'm in no rush. Additionally, the goal of this shader pack is to look reasonably vanilla while still making things prettier, and that effect looks like it came straight out of another game. Maybe I'll come up with a better effect that fits in with vanilla in the future, but only time will tell.
V1.7.2 released. And you'll be happy to know that I did something with the nether background. It's not much, and it's certainly not 3D caves, but at least it's something. Also updated the imgur album to reflect some of the more recent features, since many of those screenshots are a bit outdated.
Added alternate blending method for stained glass which looks much more realistic
Made nether fog/sky get brighter every now and then
sp614x had stated that He'll be adding Shaders in OptiFine 1.7.10 (which means you won't be needing the ShadersModCore anymore)
Don't believe me?
It's listed on the preview versions (if i'm not mistaken)
If you read the read me, you'll see that this is only one of the things it helps with. The other being a general overview of how I handle things internally, so that anyone who wants to make modifications can do so more quickly/easily. Additionally, that version of optifine hasn't been released yet, so I still see it as being useful to have that information there until it is. Plus, there could be someone out there who still plays on even older MC versions, and if there is, this would be beneficial to them as well. Especially considering that some options (like dynamic lights and nether vision) need to be changed in 18 different places (6 per dimension).
Added ender nebulae/stars. I hope I can apply this effect to ender portals in the future, but currently that's waiting on a bug fix in optifine.
Tweaked water fog: now green-ish at close range, and blue-ish at far range. Also applies more strongly now so water isn't quite so invisible when used in fountains anymore.
It's beautiful! I already have plans to build a tower to 'stargaze' from once I make it to the End.
I did a little testing to preview it, and it's so incredibly frightening and pretty to see it just drop off to infinity below.
However, it almost seemed to move slightly too slowly. When I saw the 'Arcing Plasma' option, I thought it would be small electric sparks jumping through the nebulae (maybe lighting them up around the sparks, here's something to demonstrate the effect I'm talking about)
(I'd like to make that just a link instead of an embedded video, but I don't know how. Pay attention to the walls of the Time Vortex.) every now and then, but this is still pretty amazing. In fact, you're the first shader pack I've ever seen that so much as touches the end, and I can't be more grateful for it.
Also, I don't know if this is something you can fix or just an issue with shaders in general, but the in-world enchantment visual is completely frozen. I've noticed it on every shader pack I've tried, so I think it could be a problem with the implementation of the shaders mod. The lighting on enchanted equipment also seems a little off, though not for first-person held items.
Another issue, but one that's only an issue in versions of Minecraft prior to Release 1.9, is that blocking looks super-weird with hand-waving turned on.
I've attached some pictures showing what's going on.
One last thing: I've noticed that you sorta tilt the rain and snow a bit, which usually looks alright. The problems arise when it gets tilted through a building. I don't mean just blowing through a window or anything, but going through a roof next to an uncovered balcony. I know you can't easily fix that, but just an option to turn it off would be nice, or choose the direction/intensity of the tilting. There's another picture demonstrating it.
(Speaking of rain, would it be possible for you to add an option enabling the old way rain/snow used to render? It was in a flat grid of sheets, rather than being rounded around your player. I honestly quite liked it, and am disappointed that I've not found anything to turn it back. I certainly think it's better for it to be consistent rather than constantly rotating and cutting off in places. It's displayed here: youtube.com/watch?v=qy882ILYJMM)
It's beautiful! I already have plans to build a tower to 'stargaze' from once I make it to the End.
I did a little testing to preview it, and it's so incredibly frightening and pretty to see it just drop off to infinity below.
However, it almost seemed to move slightly too slowly. When I saw the 'Arcing Plasma' option, I thought it would be small electric sparks jumping through the nebulae (maybe lighting them up around the sparks, here's something to demonstrate the effect I'm talking about)
(I'd like to make that just a link instead of an embedded video, but I don't know how. Pay attention to the walls of the Time Vortex.) every now and then, but this is still pretty amazing. In fact, you're the first shader pack I've ever seen that so much as touches the end, and I can't be more grateful for it.
Also, I don't know if this is something you can fix or just an issue with shaders in general, but the in-world enchantment visual is completely frozen. I've noticed it on every shader pack I've tried, so I think it could be a problem with the implementation of the shaders mod. The lighting on enchanted equipment also seems a little off, though not for first-person held items.
Another issue, but one that's only an issue in versions of Minecraft prior to Release 1.9, is that blocking looks super-weird with hand-waving turned on.
I've attached some pictures showing what's going on.
One last thing: I've noticed that you sorta tilt the rain and snow a bit, which usually looks alright. The problems arise when it gets tilted through a building. I don't mean just blowing through a window or anything, but going through a roof next to an uncovered balcony. I know you can't easily fix that, but just an option to turn it off would be nice, or choose the direction/intensity of the tilting. There's another picture demonstrating it.
(Speaking of rain, would it be possible for you to add an option enabling the old way rain/snow used to render? It was in a flat grid of sheets, rather than being rounded around your player. I honestly quite liked it, and am disappointed that I've not found anything to turn it back. I certainly think it's better for it to be consistent rather than constantly rotating and cutting off in places. It's displayed here: youtube.com/watch?v=qy882ILYJMM)
Fun fact: the "infinite pit" below you was accidental. It's a visual artifact caused by the math I use to "wrap" the sky around the player (basically translating a 3D direction into a 2D position usable for noise maps, similar to cloud-space calculations in the overworld). I originally planned on putting something else un-inviting below you, but never decided on what that should be. Then I came across that infinite pit while messing with numbers and said "that'll do!".
Anyway, the arcing plasma in this case is generated via noise map, where the "density" of the nebulae is determined based on how close that noise map value is to 0 (it ranges from -1 to +1, so 0 is the "middle" value). If it's close enough, plasma gets rendered there too (all this does is make the nebulae whiter at those locations). This also gives the illusion that the plasma is illuminating the nebulae. The effects in that video on the other hand are most likely done completely differently, and while it is pretty cool looking, I have no idea how to replicate it with shaders. I have always wanted to have random lightning show up in the overworld clouds during thunderstorms though, so if I ever get that to work maybe I can apply it to the end as well.
Enchantments are broken in at least 10 different ways. In fact, I'm currently not even using gbuffers_armor_glint (the program which handles all enchantment rendering) because if I do it renders even MORE brokenly. A consequence of this is that it doesn't render at all on first person held items because the item itself technically renders on top of the enchantment glint. (At least in modern MC versions, not entirely sure how it's handled in 1.7)
Blocking issues are caused by 2 things. 1: Hand sway makes each hand move in the opposite direction (like they do in 3rd person), and 2: I determine which hand is currently rendering based on which half of the screen it's on. So far, it's the only method I've found that works at all. When blocking, part of your sword is now on the left half of your screen, so it gets confused. Another side effect is that it can also look odd when eating/drinking. Especially if you have an "effect block" in your other hand (ice, stained glass, etc…) I can probably add a temporary fix for 1.7 users, since there's no offhand in 1.7, but it's definitely on my todo list to try to find a better solution for this.
I can make slanted rain a config option too. I've been meaning to make it offset by a random-ish direction that changes with time for a while as well, but never got around to it. Will probably implement that and the config option at the same time. And no, I can't make it not circle around you. You'd need a dedicated mod for that. I agree it looks nicer, but I don't control the base position it renders at. All I can do is add a hard-coded position offset.
Rain has been overhauled to more accurately simulate wind too. It's also now configurable for those of you who build houses without overhangs on your roofs
Some rain effects now no longer apply above cloud height
Fixed circular entity shadows only applying to spiders and endermen. Also made this configurable too.
Added config option that fixes hand sway issues when blocking/eating in old MC versions
Huh.... y'know, I was wondering why Endermen and spiders' shadows looked weird! Apparently, they weren't working at all in the last version, since the shadows glowed again and were still pixel-y. I can definitely see shadows of perfect round-ness now, though! (Spiders' shadows still glow, though. I haven't found an Enderman to test, yet)
That blocking fix is awesome! It was pretty distracting when the sword started to quantumly disassemble itself when held in front of my face, glad I won't need to call fourth-dimensional blacksmiths anymore!
I love how the wind effect on crops is less than grass, but can't help notice that it's not fully applied yet. It's on things like wheat and tall grass, but not carrots or potatoes. Stems shouldn't sway at all, so that part's fine.
I do appreciate the option to restore uni-directional rain/snowfall, but the windy-ness seems slightly... off in places.
I made a quick video taking a look at some of the changes, so here you go!
One thing I'm not all that fond of is how opaque the clouds are now. I can't even see my tower through them more than a few inches!
XP Orbs also seem to be black squares, but I'm sure you're aware of that... Unless it's a 1.7.10-specific issue? Items look too bright as they're being picked up, which is a pretty small, but distracting, issue. Some mod blocks are invisible (Specifically Stacks on Stacks in my testing), but that's usually fine. I did lose my diamonds for a while, though...
On a sidenote, would you perhaps consider an option for clear water without overwriting the light values? Basically just the clear texture; It looks really nice, especially for small streams and fountains!
Huh.... y'know, I was wondering why Endermen and spiders' shadows looked weird! Apparently, they weren't working at all in the last version, since the shadows glowed again and were still pixel-y. I can definitely see shadows of perfect round-ness now, though! (Spiders' shadows still glow, though. I haven't found an Enderman to test, yet)
That blocking fix is awesome! It was pretty distracting when the sword started to quantumly disassemble itself when held in front of my face, glad I won't need to call fourth-dimensional blacksmiths anymore!
I love how the wind effect on crops is less than grass, but can't help notice that it's not fully applied yet. It's on things like wheat and tall grass, but not carrots or potatoes. Stems shouldn't sway at all, so that part's fine.
I do appreciate the option to restore uni-directional rain/snowfall, but the windy-ness seems slightly... off in places.
I made a quick video taking a look at some of the changes, so here you go!
One thing I'm not all that fond of is how opaque the clouds are now. I can't even see my tower through them more than a few inches!
XP Orbs also seem to be black squares, but I'm sure you're aware of that... Unless it's a 1.7.10-specific issue? Items look too bright as they're being picked up, which is a pretty small, but distracting, issue. Some mod blocks are invisible (Specifically Stacks on Stacks in my testing), but that's usually fine. I did lose my diamonds for a while, though...
On a sidenote, would you perhaps consider an option for clear water without overwriting the light values? Basically just the clear texture; It looks really nice, especially for small streams and fountains!
*sigh* I'll take a look at glowing shadows again.
It actually is applied to other crops, that just requires later versions of optifine since I use its block alias system. Also, it's not applied less to crops; it's applied less to things that aren't exposed to skylight. (since it's assumed to be indoors, and not affected by wind)
I used simpler wind calculations for rain/snow compared to tall grass. I think it looks alright personally. Grass is biased towards east/west movement (since that's the direction clouds move), and waves back and forth slowly because that's how real objects act when fixed in place with a wind force applied. The wind first applies fully, until it bends away from it, at which point there's less surface area for the wind to affect, so it goes back to its starting position and the cycle repeats. Rain on the other hand has very little mass and isn't fixed in place, so it doesn't have this effect. As such, I make it wave more rapidly, without the back and forth cycle, and with no bias in its direction.
I didn't change cloud opacity in this version, but I did in 1.9.0. I'll reduce it a bit.
I'll take a look at XP orbs and item pickups too.
I don't control how other mods choose to render things. So unless it's setting its own opacity to 0 and then ignoring opacity when shaders are disabled, it should work fine. I'll test it anyway though just to see what I can find.
And yes, I can separate clear water from bright water.
Possibly fixed entity shadows being too bright again. Maybe. They worked fine already on my client in both 1.11 and 1.7, so we'll see if this actually fixes stuff or not.
Improved opacity of clouds: denser areas are now more opaque than less dense areas, the overall opacity has been reduced, and it no longer gets more opaque when raining.
Fixed z-fighting with clouds on water/ice
Fixed circular shadows thinking that XP orbs were made entirely out of shadows
Made clear water and bright water separate config options
Also, I tested item picking up, and items apparently don't get passed through gbuffers_entities at all when being picked up, so there's not much I can do about that sadly. As for the stacks on stacks mod, it appears to be pitch black on my client even with shaders disabled entirely. Odd that it's black for me and invisible for you, but either way it's on their end, not mine.
Hey, as long as you're interested in getting nightvision working, perhaps you could take a look at this shader pack?
It seems to work just fine with nightvision, so maybe it's either doing something special or refraining from using some part of the shaders mod that breaks it.
EDIT: Even enchantments seem to work with it somehow!
Also, just to let you know, you did seem to fix the glowing shadows, and I'm happy to report that my tower is once again visible in all its glory!
It's a shame about items being picked up, but it's just for a second, so it's not that big a deal. I've never encountered a Stacks on Stacks block being black, and a lot of the time they do show up anyway (Usually after updating them).
Hey, as long as you're interested in getting nightvision working, perhaps you could take a look at this shader pack?
It seems to work just fine with nightvision, so maybe it's either doing something special or refraining from using some part of the shaders mod that breaks it.
EDIT: Even enchantments seem to work with it somehow!
Also, just to let you know, you did seem to fix the glowing shadows, and I'm happy to report that my tower is once again visible in all its glory!
It's a shame about items being picked up, but it's just for a second, so it's not that big a deal. I've never encountered a Stacks on Stacks block being black, and a lot of the time they do show up anyway (Usually after updating them).
Are you referring to the normal pack, or enhanced default? Enhanced default works because it restricts itself to only applying certain "friendly" effects. In particular, it uses the vanilla light maps. I'm handling light completely differently for several reasons, including bright water and varying light colors (like when you stand in the dark for a while block lights become more yellow). Another consequence of how I'm handling lighting is that everything transparent has to be rendered separately from the opaque stuff, which includes your hand when holding things like stained glass. This is why enchantments are broken for me as well, since enchantments are rendered with the rest of the opaque stuff, and therefore your hand is on top of them.
On the topic of glowing shadows, glad to hear they work for you… because they seem to be broken on my end now.
And in other news: I've started playing modded survival again, and I've noticed that a LOT of modded stuff renders very brokenly in the current version of my shaders. As such, there may be a complete re-write coming up with the goal of maintaining compatibility with as many things as possible. Some features (like better stained glass and bright water) definitely won't work under the new system, but on the plus side, night vision will be doable now. No ETA, but it is being worked on.
Modded version released! Main differences from the standard version:
Additions:
Grass and dirt can now get wet when raining (which just means they get darker). Additionally, wetness also affects the humidity offset of grass patches, so it's greener when raining now. Don't worry, this will be included in the main pack too next time I update it.
Enchantment glint finally renders properly.
Changes:
Completely different rendering system: no longer using external color buffers for rendering; everything now writes directly to gcolor. This means that mods which use non-standard blending methods should work better than in the main pack.
Changed how I'm using optifine's block alias system with the hope of improving framerate. If you notice that plants don't sway in the wind or water doesn't refract things behind it, you'll need to enable ID_FIX to revert to the old system.
No longer using multiple depth buffers either, which means even more framerate!*
*results may vary.
Removals:
Many features of water are incompatible with the new rendering system. In particular, bright water is no longer a thing, and fog colors are completely messed up. so... just like vanilla.
Better stained glass is also incompatible with the new system.
Hand sway has been removed, as it caused more problems than it was worth. This would be far better implemented as a mod than a shader.
Rain blur has been removed since rain is already laggy enough even before applying blur basically everywhere.
For one, dirt doesn't get darker (Wet), but grass does, so moderately-steep hills look ugly with the brightness difference. I haven't gone out of my way to look at humidity patches, but I don't see why they wouldn't be fine (That might be all the more reason to check, though...)
It seems that paper-thin objects... don't render properly. They're all staticky, and it reminds me of a similar rendering bug from the Coloured Lights mod. It seems that static objects are fine (Blocks like mushrooms), but entities have issues.
Speaking of lights, do you think we could have an option to use Optifine's inbuilt dynamic lighting for held objects? The colours are cool and all, but it's got the same problem I've seen with all pure-shader dynamic lights, which is them looking like a flashlight. You also need to manually define what items emit light, their radius, and colour, while Optifine at least does it for held blocks. It also has support for more items, but that's solvable on your end.
A subtle, but annoying, problem is with shading underground. I can see the movement of the sun without exposure to sunlight because the walls of caves and such are lit/darkened the same way as they are above ground, and turning on the shading fix only reduces the effect while causing its own issues.
There's also a line in water sometimes which I think is caused by diagonal water touching, so I don't know if you can fix that without causing other issues.
An apparently long-standing issue with liquid blocks is that the new rendering doesn't apply until seconds after they update, resulting in it looking the way it does in one of those screenshots.
I'm still happy to see this move forward, especially with compatibility in mind. Night vision is really nice, because I've kinda taken to using invisibility and night vision to cheaply explore and mine caves.
For one, dirt doesn't get darker (Wet), but grass does, so moderately-steep hills look ugly with the brightness difference. I haven't gone out of my way to look at humidity patches, but I don't see why they wouldn't be fine (That might be all the more reason to check, though...)
It seems that paper-thin objects... don't render properly. They're all staticky, and it reminds me of a similar rendering bug from the Coloured Lights mod. It seems that static objects are fine (Blocks like mushrooms), but entities have issues.
Speaking of lights, do you think we could have an option to use Optifine's inbuilt dynamic lighting for held objects? The colours are cool and all, but it's got the same problem I've seen with all pure-shader dynamic lights, which is them looking like a flashlight. You also need to manually define what items emit light, their radius, and colour, while Optifine at least does it for held blocks. It also has support for more items, but that's solvable on your end.
A subtle, but annoying, problem is with shading underground. I can see the movement of the sun without exposure to sunlight because the walls of caves and such are lit/darkened the same way as they are above ground, and turning on the shading fix only reduces the effect while causing its own issues.
There's also a line in water sometimes which I think is caused by diagonal water touching, so I don't know if you can fix that without causing other issues.
An apparently long-standing issue with liquid blocks is that the new rendering doesn't apply until seconds after they update, resulting in it looking the way it does in one of those screenshots.
I'm still happy to see this move forward, especially with compatibility in mind. Night vision is really nice, because I've kinda taken to using invisibility and night vision to cheaply explore and mine caves.
Welcome to optifine's block alias system. I set grass and dirt to the same ID so that wet dirt applies to both of them. If your version of optifine doesn't support this, then it won't think it should apply the effect to dirt since it's not the ID it's looking for.
I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to with thin objects.
I actually do use heldBlockLightValue as a fallback for when I haven't specified the light color of the item in your hand. Therefore, anything that works with its built-in system should also work in mine (just the color will be different). Mine also affect a larger radius, but it's based on the light level of the held item, so any modded block that emits level 15 light will illuminate the same area as glowstone. I do apply a vignette effect to held lights, which may be the flashlight effect you're referring to. I'll make that configurable.
Underground shading is a known issue, but it looks worse than you might think to not have it there. I reduce the effect when the block is illuminated by block lights, and in the modded version it's also reduced with held lights. One idea I can think of is to reduce the effect based on sky light instead of block lights/held lights. That way, it would be much subtler underground. I'm not going to remove it entirely when underground though, since like I said, that looks worse than you might think.
Your screenshot seems to show a one-pixel white line between diagonal water. If that's what you're referring to, then there's nothing I can do about that. Most likely the vertexes of water don't actually line up in-world, or there's some floating-point precision errors happening somewhere. One thing that could be improved about water though is the fact that the refraction pattern doesn't line up in those locations. I'll look into that.
That's the block alias system again. I set flowing water and still water to the same ID. Now that I'm thinking about it though, I could probably make ID_FIX automatically check for those IDs. I'll add that to the todo list as well.
On the topic of night vision, optifine released a preview version not too long ago that has a uniform for night vision (which the modded version uses). That will be included in the main version too next time I update it, but unlike the modded version, it won't have a fallback (the OLD_LIGHTMAP config option). This means that if your version of optifine doesn't support that uniform, then it won't work.
In other news: I've started playing with shadows, and have gotten them to look quite nice. Only issue is that they're not the most performant thing to do, so I'm not sure it fits with any of the current versions (given that the whole goal is to be good on framerate). I might release another version on top of the standard edition for them (which might include auroras too), and if I do, I'll probably release a lite version too (which has already been coded). Currently though, I'm working on refactoring major sections of the main version to (hopefully) make it easier to maintain, and that's what's currently delaying new releases.
Welcome to optifine's block alias system. I set grass and dirt to the same ID so that wet dirt applies to both of them. If your version of optifine doesn't support this, then it won't think it should apply the effect to dirt since it's not the ID it's looking for.
I figured it would be something like that. I wonder if that'll ever get backported? We got the shader stuff, but we apparently aren't getting custom item textures (Which is the main thing, right up there with shaders, that I was looking forward to. I've got so many ideas, and they're just not possible without either that or making a mod!).
I'm guessing the system lets you make a variable that you can insert a bunch of IDs into, and you can use in place of an ID to act on all listed ones? That sounds like it would reduce a lot of tedium.
I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to with thin objects.
I thought that image with the staticky aurora would have been enough, but I have at least one more example of thin stuff.
I'll leave it as the first image here.
I actually do use heldBlockLightValue as a fallback for when I haven't specified the light color of the item in your hand. Therefore, anything that works with its built-in system should also work in mine (just the color will be different). Mine also affect a larger radius, but it's based on the light level of the held item, so any modded block that emits level 15 light will illuminate the same area as glowstone. I do apply a vignette effect to held lights, which may be the flashlight effect you're referring to. I'll make that configurable.
You know, I keep making a lot of assumptions with this shader pack. I actually thought you did have some kind of system, since prismarine blocks were glowing, but then I just... assumed it was something else.
That's a vignette? Is that what all the shader packs are doing? It looks like the light is being applied just in front of your face, and it always annoyed me. Most shader packs also have horrible light distribution, where a single held torch can potentially light up things 100+ blocks away, with SEUS being the most prominent example I can think of. Just look at a distant anything with and without a torch held.
I like Optifine's implementation because they're real (If clientside and not caring about occlusion) lights, so they are at the right radius, have the appropriate visual effects, and just fit nicer with the game. It also doesn't have that issue where the light moves if you're in third-person.
Underground shading is a known issue, but it looks worse than you might think to not have it there. I reduce the effect when the block is illuminated by block lights, and in the modded version it's also reduced with held lights. One idea I can think of is to reduce the effect based on sky light instead of block lights/held lights. That way, it would be much subtler underground. I'm not going to remove it entirely when underground though, since like I said, that looks worse than you might think.
I don't know... I mean, I've dealt without it in vanilla for ages, why would it be any worse now?
You are talking about how one wall is arbitrarily darker than the other, right? Because that just doesn't make sense.
Your screenshot seems to show a one-pixel white line between diagonal water. If that's what you're referring to, then there's nothing I can do about that. Most likely the vertexes of water don't actually line up in-world, or there's some floating-point precision errors happening somewhere. One thing that could be improved about water though is the fact that the refraction pattern doesn't line up in those locations. I'll look into that.
It's not a white line, it's a full-blown gap. You can see that when it goes down to the cliff.
That's the block alias system again. I set flowing water and still water to the same ID. Now that I'm thinking about it though, I could probably make ID_FIX automatically check for those IDs. I'll add that to the todo list as well.
On the topic of night vision, optifine released a preview version not too long ago that has a uniform for night vision (which the modded version uses). That will be included in the main version too next time I update it, but unlike the modded version, it won't have a fallback (the OLD_LIGHTMAP config option). This means that if your version of optifine doesn't support that uniform, then it won't work.
...Huh? How is that the block alias system? All water has the appropriate effects, it's just that they are temporarily removed whenever the liquid block updates. The same goes for lava, and probably any other fluids if you've accounted for any. This is the sort of thing I'm talking about.
That 'OLD_LIGHTMAP' option is separate from the 'Vanilla Lightmap' option, right? Because I've recently created a resource pack that restores the pure-white, non-flickering light from the alpha/beta period.
In other news: I've started playing with shadows, and have gotten them to look quite nice. Only issue is that they're not the most performant thing to do, so I'm not sure it fits with any of the current versions (given that the whole goal is to be good on framerate). I might release another version on top of the standard edition for them (which might include auroras too), and if I do, I'll probably release a lite version too (which has already been coded). Currently though, I'm working on refactoring major sections of the main version to (hopefully) make it easier to maintain, and that's what's currently delaying new releases.
If you're going to do shadow stuff, I'm sure you'll make it a configurable option (And maybe off by default?). I personally feel that shadows like this don't really fit with Minecraft's aesthetic, and the lack of ingame interaction (Thing like mobs not burning up with light shining through a cave entrance directly onto them) does a lot to take you out of it. Well, me out of it. I know loads of people like shadows and are willing to look past that, but I personally... don't really like them too much.
I was extremely excited when they were first announced, and thought they looked awesome. They still do, but over time I've gained a deeper appreciation for more vanilla gameplay, opting to enhance and enrich the core game rather than replace or add such wild things as writing dimensions or mining the Earth from orbital satellites, it just kinda feels wrong. Basically, if it can be done with the vanilla game, I'd rather enhance that and work around the limitation than remove them entirely. It's why I'm not using mods like Project Red or Railcraft; sure, they offer neat enhancements, but Project Red goes too far and makes the vanilla redstone mechanics pretty much useless, while Railcraft seems to have so much stuff in it that gets in the way of the core concept of enhancing rails and minecarts.
I have no idea how to render 3D caves at runtime. Clouds were a simple case because they're 2D, so I just calculate X/Z coordinates for each pixel, then just calculate noise maps for that position. To generate randomized 3D objects, that would require ray-tracing to test for intersections with stuff. Worse, each time I do a ray trace, that requires re-calculating all the logic behind generating the 3D object. So it's not just drawing them once, it's drawing them as many times as it takes to find something that intersects with the current pixel, which could easily be > 50 attempts.
The shaders mod didn't support other dimensions in 1.7, let alone 1.6. I do have separate per-dimension shaders included with the download, but you'll need to use a later version for them to be loaded. Unless you want to copy-paste the files and reload each time you change dimensions.
I've had ideas for end portal rendering, but haven't gotten around to implementing any of them yet due to the fact that they're not the most common block in the world, so it's a bit low-priority at the moment.
Reddening things through nether portals actually was a feature before the re-write of V1.0.0. Should I re-add that?
I made my own shader pack, by the way.
It doesn't need to be a 3d object, since it's so distant. You could do something like your clouds, but more solid and rendering behind all geometry.
If the clouds were, say, black and/or red with some random noise, you could create a pretty convincing illusion of caves in the distance! Even more so if their pattern is based on your coordinates, so if you go to a location, it'll always be the same for that location, but they shift and change as you move through the Nether.
Depending on how you do the clouds, you could move the cloud noise map along depending on where the player is.
For example, for the cloud walls along the +X and -X axis, they wouldn't change their map if the player moves along Z, but they would move as if they were real objects, so you're scanning along the cloud map.
If the player moves along the X axis, the map would begin to shift and change, so you don't always have the same cave in the distance as you travel.
Honestly, the almost staticky-ness of the End portal sorta fits in with the End. I would love to see what you come up with, though, but I understand not focusing on a block most people will probably only see once or twice, and others will probably see for a few seconds at a time every now and then.
I had no idea that was a feature, that sounds cool! At least as an option, but I don't know of anyone who uses Nether portals in their decoration, or in ways that the redness would negatively affect.
My current implementation of clouds in the overworld is as follows:
Step 1: Map each position in eye-space to cloud-space. This basically means pick a direction, and figure out where you'd end up on the cloud plane. Since the cloud plane is 2D AND aligned with the X/Z plane, there's actually a trick you can use to make this much simpler. This also takes your position into account, so that they have the illusion of being real physical objects rendered in the world, instead of just being a skybox that follows you around, as if it were infinitely far away.
Step 2: Figure out if that position even needs clouds to be rendered there. If the pixel at that location is part of the sky, then this is always true. If there's terrain there, then it will compare the distance to that terrain with the distance of the cloud position, and return true if the clouds are closer. Additionally, there's some extra logic to only render clouds above you if you're below them, and below you if you're above them.
Step 3: Generate noise maps based on the cloud position. This involves picking a new random value every 12 blocks (used for the "square-ish" pattern of clouds), and a 2nd random value every 64 blocks (used for making them "clump" together). Both of these values use parabolic interpolation if you're not looking at an exact multiple of 12 or 64 blocks. Additionally, normals are calculated based on the first noise value, and 2 more noise maps are applied on top of that to make them more rough/varied. The final normals are then compared to how closely they match up with the sun's direction. The more similar they are, the brighter the cloud color at that location.
Step 4: Render the clouds. There are MANY edge-case scenarios here for looking at them through transparent objects like glass, or distorting them when looking at them through water/ice, or making sure they're rendered in the correct order based on what's in front of them and what's behind them, etc… This was the trickiest thing to do, since there's so many special cases for how to render them, but I'm pretty sure I've covered most of them. One case that definitely isn't covered is if there are multiple transparent things at the current pixel; some in front, and some behind. In this case the clouds will render behind all of them. And as usual, this is impossible to fix without changing minecraft's rendering engine. If you have a stained glass house above them and like looking at your other stained glass house below them (or vise versa), I would recommend changing CLOUD_HEIGHT (composite1.fsh) to be above both of them.
Now, here's the problems with applying all of that to the nether:
1: The current system takes your position into account, but if I did this in the nether on the X/Z axes instead of the Y axis, you'd just see a "wall" of clouds at x=0 or z=0 (or some other hard-coded number).
2: If I made them not care about your position and always render X blocks away from you in all directions, then you'd never be able to walk up to them. It would just be an effect that follows you that you'd never be able to interact with. This is why I'm rendering clouds manually in the first place instead of just using a resource pack with a custom skybox.
3: Even if the X clouds changed when you moved along the Z axis, and vise versa for the Z clouds, they wouldn't match up in the corners. This would be very noticeable.
4: Fog, again. Clouds in the overworld use different values for fog calculations than the rest of the terrain. This doesn't usually matter, since there's not usually terrain where the clouds are. In the nether though, if one pixel is entirely foggy from terrain being there, and the pixel right next to it isn't foggy at all, it would look very out of place.
5: There's no sun in the nether, so the clouds would always be the same color everywhere. No variation.
6: Clouds. Do. Not. Look. Like. Caves. Presumably you're not asking me to directly render clouds in the nether, but rather tweaking the noise algorithm to have different rules for what color should be rendered at any given cloud position. If you can define your idea mathematically in a way that lets me give you an X and Y position, and you give me back a color and opacity, I'd love to hear it; but currently I'm having a hard time understanding what you DO want it to look like in the first place.
On the topic of red nether portals, this is what they used to look like in the pre-1.0.0 days. I liked the effect, but wasn't happy with the colors, which is why they haven't been re-added yet. Plus, like many things in those days, performance wasn't really something I was focusing on, so it was quite laggy and un-organized. I could probably improve that system today, but like I said, I'm in no rush. Additionally, the goal of this shader pack is to look reasonably vanilla while still making things prettier, and that effect looks like it came straight out of another game. Maybe I'll come up with a better effect that fits in with vanilla in the future, but only time will tell.
I made my own shader pack, by the way.
V1.7.2 released. And you'll be happy to know that I did something with the nether background. It's not much, and it's certainly not 3D caves, but at least it's something. Also updated the imgur album to reflect some of the more recent features, since many of those screenshots are a bit outdated.
I made my own shader pack, by the way.
V1.8.0 released:
I made my own shader pack, by the way.
sp614x had stated that He'll be adding Shaders in OptiFine 1.7.10 (which means you won't be needing the ShadersModCore anymore)
Don't believe me?
It's listed on the preview versions (if i'm not mistaken)
I'm TheCoolSteveMan, you can call me CSM for short!
If you read the read me, you'll see that this is only one of the things it helps with. The other being a general overview of how I handle things internally, so that anyone who wants to make modifications can do so more quickly/easily. Additionally, that version of optifine hasn't been released yet, so I still see it as being useful to have that information there until it is. Plus, there could be someone out there who still plays on even older MC versions, and if there is, this would be beneficial to them as well. Especially considering that some options (like dynamic lights and nether vision) need to be changed in 18 different places (6 per dimension).
I made my own shader pack, by the way.
V1.9.0 released: The ender update!
I made my own shader pack, by the way.
I... I just love it.
It's beautiful! I already have plans to build a tower to 'stargaze' from once I make it to the End.
I did a little testing to preview it, and it's so incredibly frightening and pretty to see it just drop off to infinity below.
However, it almost seemed to move slightly too slowly. When I saw the 'Arcing Plasma' option, I thought it would be small electric sparks jumping through the nebulae (maybe lighting them up around the sparks, here's something to demonstrate the effect I'm talking about)
(I'd like to make that just a link instead of an embedded video, but I don't know how. Pay attention to the walls of the Time Vortex.) every now and then, but this is still pretty amazing. In fact, you're the first shader pack I've ever seen that so much as touches the end, and I can't be more grateful for it.
Also, I don't know if this is something you can fix or just an issue with shaders in general, but the in-world enchantment visual is completely frozen. I've noticed it on every shader pack I've tried, so I think it could be a problem with the implementation of the shaders mod. The lighting on enchanted equipment also seems a little off, though not for first-person held items.
Another issue, but one that's only an issue in versions of Minecraft prior to Release 1.9, is that blocking looks super-weird with hand-waving turned on.
I've attached some pictures showing what's going on.
One last thing: I've noticed that you sorta tilt the rain and snow a bit, which usually looks alright. The problems arise when it gets tilted through a building. I don't mean just blowing through a window or anything, but going through a roof next to an uncovered balcony. I know you can't easily fix that, but just an option to turn it off would be nice, or choose the direction/intensity of the tilting. There's another picture demonstrating it.
(Speaking of rain, would it be possible for you to add an option enabling the old way rain/snow used to render? It was in a flat grid of sheets, rather than being rounded around your player. I honestly quite liked it, and am disappointed that I've not found anything to turn it back. I certainly think it's better for it to be consistent rather than constantly rotating and cutting off in places. It's displayed here: youtube.com/watch?v=qy882ILYJMM)
Fun fact: the "infinite pit" below you was accidental. It's a visual artifact caused by the math I use to "wrap" the sky around the player (basically translating a 3D direction into a 2D position usable for noise maps, similar to cloud-space calculations in the overworld). I originally planned on putting something else un-inviting below you, but never decided on what that should be. Then I came across that infinite pit while messing with numbers and said "that'll do!".
Anyway, the arcing plasma in this case is generated via noise map, where the "density" of the nebulae is determined based on how close that noise map value is to 0 (it ranges from -1 to +1, so 0 is the "middle" value). If it's close enough, plasma gets rendered there too (all this does is make the nebulae whiter at those locations). This also gives the illusion that the plasma is illuminating the nebulae. The effects in that video on the other hand are most likely done completely differently, and while it is pretty cool looking, I have no idea how to replicate it with shaders. I have always wanted to have random lightning show up in the overworld clouds during thunderstorms though, so if I ever get that to work maybe I can apply it to the end as well.
Enchantments are broken in at least 10 different ways. In fact, I'm currently not even using gbuffers_armor_glint (the program which handles all enchantment rendering) because if I do it renders even MORE brokenly. A consequence of this is that it doesn't render at all on first person held items because the item itself technically renders on top of the enchantment glint. (At least in modern MC versions, not entirely sure how it's handled in 1.7)
Blocking issues are caused by 2 things. 1: Hand sway makes each hand move in the opposite direction (like they do in 3rd person), and 2: I determine which hand is currently rendering based on which half of the screen it's on. So far, it's the only method I've found that works at all. When blocking, part of your sword is now on the left half of your screen, so it gets confused. Another side effect is that it can also look odd when eating/drinking. Especially if you have an "effect block" in your other hand (ice, stained glass, etc…) I can probably add a temporary fix for 1.7 users, since there's no offhand in 1.7, but it's definitely on my todo list to try to find a better solution for this.
I can make slanted rain a config option too. I've been meaning to make it offset by a random-ish direction that changes with time for a while as well, but never got around to it. Will probably implement that and the config option at the same time. And no, I can't make it not circle around you. You'd need a dedicated mod for that. I agree it looks nicer, but I don't control the base position it renders at. All I can do is add a hard-coded position offset.
I made my own shader pack, by the way.
V1.10.0 released: The WINDsday update.
I made my own shader pack, by the way.
Huh.... y'know, I was wondering why Endermen and spiders' shadows looked weird! Apparently, they weren't working at all in the last version, since the shadows glowed again and were still pixel-y. I can definitely see shadows of perfect round-ness now, though! (Spiders' shadows still glow, though. I haven't found an Enderman to test, yet)
That blocking fix is awesome! It was pretty distracting when the sword started to quantumly disassemble itself when held in front of my face, glad I won't need to call fourth-dimensional blacksmiths anymore!
I love how the wind effect on crops is less than grass, but can't help notice that it's not fully applied yet. It's on things like wheat and tall grass, but not carrots or potatoes. Stems shouldn't sway at all, so that part's fine.
I do appreciate the option to restore uni-directional rain/snowfall, but the windy-ness seems slightly... off in places.
I made a quick video taking a look at some of the changes, so here you go!
One thing I'm not all that fond of is how opaque the clouds are now. I can't even see my tower through them more than a few inches!
XP Orbs also seem to be black squares, but I'm sure you're aware of that... Unless it's a 1.7.10-specific issue? Items look too bright as they're being picked up, which is a pretty small, but distracting, issue. Some mod blocks are invisible (Specifically Stacks on Stacks in my testing), but that's usually fine. I did lose my diamonds for a while, though...
On a sidenote, would you perhaps consider an option for clear water without overwriting the light values? Basically just the clear texture; It looks really nice, especially for small streams and fountains!
*sigh* I'll take a look at glowing shadows again.
It actually is applied to other crops, that just requires later versions of optifine since I use its block alias system. Also, it's not applied less to crops; it's applied less to things that aren't exposed to skylight. (since it's assumed to be indoors, and not affected by wind)
I used simpler wind calculations for rain/snow compared to tall grass. I think it looks alright personally. Grass is biased towards east/west movement (since that's the direction clouds move), and waves back and forth slowly because that's how real objects act when fixed in place with a wind force applied. The wind first applies fully, until it bends away from it, at which point there's less surface area for the wind to affect, so it goes back to its starting position and the cycle repeats. Rain on the other hand has very little mass and isn't fixed in place, so it doesn't have this effect. As such, I make it wave more rapidly, without the back and forth cycle, and with no bias in its direction.
I didn't change cloud opacity in this version, but I did in 1.9.0. I'll reduce it a bit.
I'll take a look at XP orbs and item pickups too.
I don't control how other mods choose to render things. So unless it's setting its own opacity to 0 and then ignoring opacity when shaders are disabled, it should work fine. I'll test it anyway though just to see what I can find.
And yes, I can separate clear water from bright water.
I made my own shader pack, by the way.
V1.10.1 released:
Also, I tested item picking up, and items apparently don't get passed through gbuffers_entities at all when being picked up, so there's not much I can do about that sadly. As for the stacks on stacks mod, it appears to be pitch black on my client even with shaders disabled entirely. Odd that it's black for me and invisible for you, but either way it's on their end, not mine.
I made my own shader pack, by the way.
Hey, as long as you're interested in getting nightvision working, perhaps you could take a look at this shader pack?
It seems to work just fine with nightvision, so maybe it's either doing something special or refraining from using some part of the shaders mod that breaks it.
EDIT: Even enchantments seem to work with it somehow!
Also, just to let you know, you did seem to fix the glowing shadows, and I'm happy to report that my tower is once again visible in all its glory!
It's a shame about items being picked up, but it's just for a second, so it's not that big a deal. I've never encountered a Stacks on Stacks block being black, and a lot of the time they do show up anyway (Usually after updating them).
Are you referring to the normal pack, or enhanced default? Enhanced default works because it restricts itself to only applying certain "friendly" effects. In particular, it uses the vanilla light maps. I'm handling light completely differently for several reasons, including bright water and varying light colors (like when you stand in the dark for a while block lights become more yellow). Another consequence of how I'm handling lighting is that everything transparent has to be rendered separately from the opaque stuff, which includes your hand when holding things like stained glass. This is why enchantments are broken for me as well, since enchantments are rendered with the rest of the opaque stuff, and therefore your hand is on top of them.
On the topic of glowing shadows, glad to hear they work for you… because they seem to be broken on my end now.
And in other news: I've started playing modded survival again, and I've noticed that a LOT of modded stuff renders very brokenly in the current version of my shaders. As such, there may be a complete re-write coming up with the goal of maintaining compatibility with as many things as possible. Some features (like better stained glass and bright water) definitely won't work under the new system, but on the plus side, night vision will be doable now. No ETA, but it is being worked on.
I made my own shader pack, by the way.
Modded version released! Main differences from the standard version:
Additions:
Changes:
*results may vary.
Removals:
I made my own shader pack, by the way.
It's nice to see these things working!
I have noticed a few issues, though...
For one, dirt doesn't get darker (Wet), but grass does, so moderately-steep hills look ugly with the brightness difference. I haven't gone out of my way to look at humidity patches, but I don't see why they wouldn't be fine (That might be all the more reason to check, though...)
It seems that paper-thin objects... don't render properly. They're all staticky, and it reminds me of a similar rendering bug from the Coloured Lights mod. It seems that static objects are fine (Blocks like mushrooms), but entities have issues.
Speaking of lights, do you think we could have an option to use Optifine's inbuilt dynamic lighting for held objects? The colours are cool and all, but it's got the same problem I've seen with all pure-shader dynamic lights, which is them looking like a flashlight. You also need to manually define what items emit light, their radius, and colour, while Optifine at least does it for held blocks. It also has support for more items, but that's solvable on your end.
A subtle, but annoying, problem is with shading underground. I can see the movement of the sun without exposure to sunlight because the walls of caves and such are lit/darkened the same way as they are above ground, and turning on the shading fix only reduces the effect while causing its own issues.
There's also a line in water sometimes which I think is caused by diagonal water touching, so I don't know if you can fix that without causing other issues.
An apparently long-standing issue with liquid blocks is that the new rendering doesn't apply until seconds after they update, resulting in it looking the way it does in one of those screenshots.
I'm still happy to see this move forward, especially with compatibility in mind. Night vision is really nice, because I've kinda taken to using invisibility and night vision to cheaply explore and mine caves.
Welcome to optifine's block alias system. I set grass and dirt to the same ID so that wet dirt applies to both of them. If your version of optifine doesn't support this, then it won't think it should apply the effect to dirt since it's not the ID it's looking for.
I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to with thin objects.
I actually do use heldBlockLightValue as a fallback for when I haven't specified the light color of the item in your hand. Therefore, anything that works with its built-in system should also work in mine (just the color will be different). Mine also affect a larger radius, but it's based on the light level of the held item, so any modded block that emits level 15 light will illuminate the same area as glowstone. I do apply a vignette effect to held lights, which may be the flashlight effect you're referring to. I'll make that configurable.
Underground shading is a known issue, but it looks worse than you might think to not have it there. I reduce the effect when the block is illuminated by block lights, and in the modded version it's also reduced with held lights. One idea I can think of is to reduce the effect based on sky light instead of block lights/held lights. That way, it would be much subtler underground. I'm not going to remove it entirely when underground though, since like I said, that looks worse than you might think.
Your screenshot seems to show a one-pixel white line between diagonal water. If that's what you're referring to, then there's nothing I can do about that. Most likely the vertexes of water don't actually line up in-world, or there's some floating-point precision errors happening somewhere. One thing that could be improved about water though is the fact that the refraction pattern doesn't line up in those locations. I'll look into that.
That's the block alias system again. I set flowing water and still water to the same ID. Now that I'm thinking about it though, I could probably make ID_FIX automatically check for those IDs. I'll add that to the todo list as well.
On the topic of night vision, optifine released a preview version not too long ago that has a uniform for night vision (which the modded version uses). That will be included in the main version too next time I update it, but unlike the modded version, it won't have a fallback (the OLD_LIGHTMAP config option). This means that if your version of optifine doesn't support that uniform, then it won't work.
In other news: I've started playing with shadows, and have gotten them to look quite nice. Only issue is that they're not the most performant thing to do, so I'm not sure it fits with any of the current versions (given that the whole goal is to be good on framerate). I might release another version on top of the standard edition for them (which might include auroras too), and if I do, I'll probably release a lite version too (which has already been coded). Currently though, I'm working on refactoring major sections of the main version to (hopefully) make it easier to maintain, and that's what's currently delaying new releases.
I made my own shader pack, by the way.
I figured it would be something like that. I wonder if that'll ever get backported? We got the shader stuff, but we apparently aren't getting custom item textures (Which is the main thing, right up there with shaders, that I was looking forward to. I've got so many ideas, and they're just not possible without either that or making a mod!).
I'm guessing the system lets you make a variable that you can insert a bunch of IDs into, and you can use in place of an ID to act on all listed ones? That sounds like it would reduce a lot of tedium.
I thought that image with the staticky aurora would have been enough, but I have at least one more example of thin stuff.
I'll leave it as the first image here.
You know, I keep making a lot of assumptions with this shader pack. I actually thought you did have some kind of system, since prismarine blocks were glowing, but then I just... assumed it was something else.
That's a vignette? Is that what all the shader packs are doing? It looks like the light is being applied just in front of your face, and it always annoyed me. Most shader packs also have horrible light distribution, where a single held torch can potentially light up things 100+ blocks away, with SEUS being the most prominent example I can think of. Just look at a distant anything with and without a torch held.
I like Optifine's implementation because they're real (If clientside and not caring about occlusion) lights, so they are at the right radius, have the appropriate visual effects, and just fit nicer with the game. It also doesn't have that issue where the light moves if you're in third-person.
I don't know... I mean, I've dealt without it in vanilla for ages, why would it be any worse now?
You are talking about how one wall is arbitrarily darker than the other, right? Because that just doesn't make sense.
It's not a white line, it's a full-blown gap. You can see that when it goes down to the cliff.
...Huh? How is that the block alias system? All water has the appropriate effects, it's just that they are temporarily removed whenever the liquid block updates. The same goes for lava, and probably any other fluids if you've accounted for any.
This is the sort of thing I'm talking about.
That 'OLD_LIGHTMAP' option is separate from the 'Vanilla Lightmap' option, right? Because I've recently created a resource pack that restores the pure-white, non-flickering light from the alpha/beta period.
If you're going to do shadow stuff, I'm sure you'll make it a configurable option (And maybe off by default?). I personally feel that shadows like this don't really fit with Minecraft's aesthetic, and the lack of ingame interaction (Thing like mobs not burning up with light shining through a cave entrance directly onto them) does a lot to take you out of it. Well, me out of it. I know loads of people like shadows and are willing to look past that, but I personally... don't really like them too much.
I was extremely excited when they were first announced, and thought they looked awesome. They still do, but over time I've gained a deeper appreciation for more vanilla gameplay, opting to enhance and enrich the core game rather than replace or add such wild things as writing dimensions or mining the Earth from orbital satellites, it just kinda feels wrong. Basically, if it can be done with the vanilla game, I'd rather enhance that and work around the limitation than remove them entirely. It's why I'm not using mods like Project Red or Railcraft; sure, they offer neat enhancements, but Project Red goes too far and makes the vanilla redstone mechanics pretty much useless, while Railcraft seems to have so much stuff in it that gets in the way of the core concept of enhancing rails and minecarts.