wow cant believe this topic is still going strong Thanks for all the support guys! Would love to see colored light some day and maybe colored sand smelting and crafting into colored glass and colored sandstone items for (finally) colored stairs!
wow cant believe this topic is still going strong Thanks for all the support guys! Would love to see colored light some day and maybe colored sand smelting and crafting into colored glass and colored sandstone items for (finally) colored stairs!
no problem!
On the topic of the colored sand, and possibly sandstone, want to add those back to the OP, or create a new topic, and/or poll for them?
The way minecraft is programmed, it gives a tint to textures blocks based on light level and face position. This is why in an item frame, the bottom of a block will always be darker even if it's facing up, and why the side of a block is always darker than the top even when the sun is rising and setting. The more light there is on a block, the lighter and orange-ish the tint is. The less light, the darker the tint is. The problem is that blocks don't actually have an RGB lighting value, and even if that was added, changing the gradient to a universal algorithm for all colors would be tough, especially if you want multiple colors of light to be able to merge. It is possible, but it would require completely rewriting how minecraft renders light.
The way minecraft is programmed, it gives a tint to textures blocks based on light level and face position. This is why in an item frame, the bottom of a block will always be darker even if it's facing up, and why the side of a block is always darker than the top even when the sun is rising and setting. The more light there is on a block, the lighter and orange-ish the tint is. The less light, the darker the tint is. The problem is that blocks don't actually have an RGB lighting value, and even if that was added, changing the gradient to a universal algorithm for all colors would be tough, especially if you want multiple colors of light to be able to merge. It is possible, but it would require completely rewriting how minecraft renders light.
Yep, the fact a complete re-write of lighting engine is required has been well-established for quite some time.
Thanks for explaining a bit of how it actually WORKS, though!
It does not make practical sense with game design...
It adds performance costs.
While I fully support this topic, all the way to its original three main ideas, I want something as this implemented correctly, not rushed and terribly optimized. IDK for sure why mojang hasn't done something like this, but it's safe to assume performance costs are a factor. This is assuming, ofc, common sense applies to ANY of their development of the game. Some of their actions DO make me question it.
That depends on how it is implimented. Colored light itself if coded properly does not have to be any different than the light Minecraft has now as far as processing power. It can simply be an RGB value. However what COULD be taxing on the graphics card is a calculation between colored light and regular white light from a single light source, like for example you had 1 colored block next to the light or a colored glass roof having the light pass through and change only part of the light being emitted from the light source to colored, would be very hard to calculate. but what i proposed was some rules. light sources don't actually dynamically change color like real light would. you MUST have the light source to be completely covered in colored glass or completely covered in one block or another with 1 or more of those blocks being colored glass blocks. This could simply require a check that determined what color all the light emitted would be and it would set that light to the color of the glass. Colored light mixing wouldn't be hard either as it could be an average of the colored light RGB values per block it is effecting. Minecraft already does this with outside light and torch light. That's why you get a slight "purple" tinge to the edges of torch light on nights.
obviously, colored light would not work for sunlight. this would only work with light sources you could surround with colored glass blocks unfortunately. But hey that's better than nothing.
The way minecraft is programmed, it gives a tint to textures blocks based on light level and face position. This is why in an item frame, the bottom of a block will always be darker even if it's facing up, and why the side of a block is always darker than the top even when the sun is rising and setting. The more light there is on a block, the lighter and orange-ish the tint is. The less light, the darker the tint is. The problem is that blocks don't actually have an RGB lighting value, and even if that was added, changing the gradient to a universal algorithm for all colors would be tough, especially if you want multiple colors of light to be able to merge. It is possible, but it would require completely rewriting how minecraft renders light.
I understand minecraft cannot currently support this and that rewriting the lighting engine would be required. But I have never seen that as a good excuse to improve any piece of software. I think it's pretty clear that the community wants this feature, so though it may require work for mojang, not doing something because it's hard should never be the answer; especially for a multi-million dollar game company. Infact CptSpaceToster has already written the algorithm mojang would need if they wanted to implement colored light. mojang has the money to higher talent. talent like CptSpaceToster. so the excuse that it's too hard for mojang especially after the community has made working mods for colored light is just not a viable excuse.
I was just mainly stating, though...that a lot of people are eager to rush it.
At one point, even I was...
A feature likes that needs to be implemented carefully...otherwise problems may occur.
You're right, now that I think about it
they could even steal the code if they wanted to.
Reminds me of the colored glass thing: It doesn't matter if they intended/planned to add it or not, they sealed their fate with "MC 2.0" , because seeing as they'd already done it (although not professionally), they couldn't pull the "well, it'd be too hard" excuse!
The Halloween world on the PS4 version seems to have green colored lighting. Torches, fire, and lava are all green and the light appears to be green as well.
The Halloween world on the PS4 version seems to have green colored lighting. Torches, fire, and lava are all green and the light appears to be green as well.
Colored light is great, but I would be happy even with just a glowing-crystals mod (which would likely require colored lights). It's not just nice, but practically required. While you root around a dark underground cave, it is expected to occasionally come across a beautiful area lit up by colorful, glowing crystals; it’s just natural.
If anyone still follows this topic, (and I suspect a few do), I've started Colored Lights projects which hopes to implement all of the ideas said, from light going through colored glass to produce colored light, to simple colored light. Check out the WIP here.
ok.. first post of 2016, so. changing a light's colour is fairly simple. if a lights colour changed when it goes through a coloured piece of glass we could take the code from the glass and implement it into a torch. now, the rest is for mojang to figure out. \o/
Let's say I have long 3 wide by 3 high mineshaft tunnel.
In the middle of that long tunnel, I place a white light source.
4 blocks away from the light source, I completely block the tunnel with a 3x3 wall of red tinted glass.
4 blocks away from the light source, but going the other way, I completely block the tunnel with a 3x3 wall of blue tinted glass.
Now, what I expect to get is this:
In the 7 blocks long space between the 2 walls, white light.
On the other side of each wall, colored light, red or blue depending on the tunnel direction and it,s corresponding glass wall color.
While that would be the desired result, I unfortunately highly doubt minecraft data structure can support this.
Thats what you would expect and what would be ideal, but if you wanted this to work in Minecraft currently without having to do a full lighting engine rewrite, it would HAVE to follow the rules that I have proposed where light can only be changed when colored glass is completely surrounding the light source and is exactly adjacent to at least 1 side of the light source where the light source is entirely covered up by other blocks:
not even considering light, though... making calculations of any kind using colors tends to get laggier and laggier the more of them you do.
at the basic level, you have to combine the colors...
then, with lighting, you need to make the light weaker/dimmer the further from the source you go.
that means making more calculations.
there's a good chance that even more colors get merged further down the line, and thus more re-calculating the colors.
the way mc is currently coded, that would be a major drop of framerate for people.
i'd elaborate more, but i'm tired.
Not unless you give the color range a pre-defined array. THEN all it has to do is run a case check to see if the ratio of colored blocks wich has a max of 6 matches a pattern that is pre defined in that array. Which is an option i propose in the images above. no calculations neccessary. even IF the graphics card had to calculate a mixture of RGB values, it still is such a minuscule amount that it would not be noticeable. In fact, Minecraft already does this between torch and outside light like moonlight.
This is demonstrated quite well in Capt Space Toasters mod demo with colored light. I have that mod and I literally notice no lag difference than regular Minecraft. Which is what I would expect since averaging between RGB values is a very simple calculation.
If anyone still follows this topic, (and I suspect a few do), I've started Colored Lights projects which hopes to implement all of the ideas said, from light going through colored glass to produce colored light, to simple colored light. Check out the WIP here.
That's Awesome Kovu! glad to see people are still working to prove this is possible! I will definitely be following!
I think forcing a light source to be completely surrounded with blocks (no sides open to air) and limiting the light to 1 straight color is too limiting.
Example 1: I want a room in my house o have cool colored lighting. A 1x1x1 colored roof lamp takes a lot less space than having to surround my light source with 5 more glass blocks around it, which works ok only for huge rooms, but looks weird in a more normal-sized room.
Example 2: Not only player builds but world generation, too, would benefit more from the Capt Toaster approach: Imagine a new crystal-fungus "tree" structure, which spawns in rare huge caves underground. The texture would look like a base of rough dark green giant mushroom texture but with "bright green crystals insets" in it (a bit like how emerald ore block is made of a gem-like bright green insets in a base dull gray stone texture). The block would emit green light. Your method would simply not allow this: the fungus tree would look weird if it had to be surrounded by glass, and the block would not really emit green light at all, as soon as you break one of the glass, poof the illusion would be gone.
So, I see your mod as a strictly for "player-builds of big in-house lamps in huge rooms" and almost no other use, while Capt Toaster supports much a wider variety of uses. So what is the advantage of your mod over the CaptToaster one ? I don't quite see it.
Otherwise, while your mod idea is great, maybe your efforts would be better spent together with Kovu ?
I love the idea of colored light going through glass wall and window panes and changing color. And I love the idea of light sources that are directly of a color without having to go through glass in the first place. And I love even more the idea of both together: colored light sources, with different colored glass around it (but not necessaraly adjacent) so that a room can be lots of colors. Imagine making a disco room build with several light sources and tinted glass all moved around by sticky pistons (or command blocks) ! :-)
IMHO Colored glass changing light color is really only useful if it can change light color on the fly, no matter how far from the light source the glass is situated. Otherwise, if it needs to be adjacent glass all around, then it all boils down to only being a glorified way to craft, using a 3x3x3 area of blocks, what should really be single 1x1x1 block light source.
I'd really like light to behave as it "should" !
Good luck and still, that is nice work ! It helped me understand the lighting system a bit better.
What would be great is for the final version of the mod to use the Options Video Settings for light and use that setting to determine how "strongly" it applies colored light. For example, at the medium setting, the colored light could spread a bit slower so as not to tax the CPU. At full setting, the light would update ASAP.
I think forcing a light source to be completely surrounded with blocks (no sides open to air) and limiting the light to 1 straight color is too limiting.
Example 1: I want a room in my house o have cool colored lighting. A 1x1x1 colored roof lamp takes a lot less space than having to surround my light source with 5 more glass blocks around it, which works ok only for huge rooms, but looks weird in a more normal-sized room.
Example 2: Not only player builds but world generation, too, would benefit more from the Capt Toaster approach: Imagine a new crystal-fungus "tree" structure, which spawns in rare huge caves underground. The texture would look like a base of rough dark green giant mushroom texture but with "bright green crystals insets" in it (a bit like how emerald ore block is made of a gem-like bright green insets in a base dull gray stone texture). The block would emit green light. Your method would simply not allow this: the fungus tree would look weird if it had to be surrounded by glass, and the block would not really emit green light at all, as soon as you break one of the glass, poof the illusion would be gone.
So, I see your mod as a strictly for "player-builds of big in-house lamps in huge rooms" and almost no other use, while Capt Toaster supports much a wider variety of uses. So what is the advantage of your mod over the CaptToaster one ? I don't quite see it.
Otherwise, while your mod idea is great, maybe your efforts would be better spent together with Kovu ?
I love the idea of colored light going through glass wall and window panes and changing color. And I love the idea of light sources that are directly of a color without having to go through glass in the first place. And I love even more the idea of both together: colored light sources, with different colored glass around it (but not necessaraly adjacent) so that a room can be lots of colors. Imagine making a disco room build with several light sources and tinted glass all moved around by sticky pistons (or command blocks) ! :-)
IMHO Colored glass changing light color is really only useful if it can change light color on the fly, no matter how far from the light source the glass is situated. Otherwise, if it needs to be adjacent glass all around, then it all boils down to only being a glorified way to craft, using a 3x3x3 area of blocks, what should really be single 1x1x1 block light source.
I'd really like light to behave as it "should" !
Good luck and still, that is nice work ! It helped me understand the lighting system a bit better.
What would be great is for the final version of the mod to use the Options Video Settings for light and use that setting to determine how "strongly" it applies colored light. For example, at the medium setting, the colored light could spread a bit slower so as not to tax the CPU. At full setting, the light would update ASAP.
yes it may be limiting but if we want to get colored light to work with the current lighting engine in Minecraft and have mojang have to do as little work as possible, then that is the way it has to be done unfortunately. All your other suggestions would require substantial rewriting of how the lighting engine works not to mention what you are suggesting is dynamic lighting which would be way to laggy for most clients.
Turning all light green is easy. Turning some light green isn't.
And he is right. i only propose to change the color of the light source completely not just part of the light source because that would create a plethora of technical issues.
wow cant believe this topic is still going strong Thanks for all the support guys! Would love to see colored light some day and maybe colored sand smelting and crafting into colored glass and colored sandstone items for (finally) colored stairs!
~Epic Space Milk Muffin
no problem!
On the topic of the colored sand, and possibly sandstone, want to add those back to the OP, or create a new topic, and/or poll for them?
I'd support it!
The way minecraft is programmed, it gives a tint to textures blocks based on light level and face position. This is why in an item frame, the bottom of a block will always be darker even if it's facing up, and why the side of a block is always darker than the top even when the sun is rising and setting. The more light there is on a block, the lighter and orange-ish the tint is. The less light, the darker the tint is. The problem is that blocks don't actually have an RGB lighting value, and even if that was added, changing the gradient to a universal algorithm for all colors would be tough, especially if you want multiple colors of light to be able to merge. It is possible, but it would require completely rewriting how minecraft renders light.
Yep, the fact a complete re-write of lighting engine is required has been well-established for quite some time.
Thanks for explaining a bit of how it actually WORKS, though!
Support!
That depends on how it is implimented. Colored light itself if coded properly does not have to be any different than the light Minecraft has now as far as processing power. It can simply be an RGB value. However what COULD be taxing on the graphics card is a calculation between colored light and regular white light from a single light source, like for example you had 1 colored block next to the light or a colored glass roof having the light pass through and change only part of the light being emitted from the light source to colored, would be very hard to calculate. but what i proposed was some rules. light sources don't actually dynamically change color like real light would. you MUST have the light source to be completely covered in colored glass or completely covered in one block or another with 1 or more of those blocks being colored glass blocks. This could simply require a check that determined what color all the light emitted would be and it would set that light to the color of the glass. Colored light mixing wouldn't be hard either as it could be an average of the colored light RGB values per block it is effecting. Minecraft already does this with outside light and torch light. That's why you get a slight "purple" tinge to the edges of torch light on nights.
obviously, colored light would not work for sunlight. this would only work with light sources you could surround with colored glass blocks unfortunately. But hey that's better than nothing.
I understand minecraft cannot currently support this and that rewriting the lighting engine would be required. But I have never seen that as a good excuse to improve any piece of software. I think it's pretty clear that the community wants this feature, so though it may require work for mojang, not doing something because it's hard should never be the answer; especially for a multi-million dollar game company. Infact CptSpaceToster has already written the algorithm mojang would need if they wanted to implement colored light. mojang has the money to higher talent. talent like CptSpaceToster. so the excuse that it's too hard for mojang especially after the community has made working mods for colored light is just not a viable excuse.
~Epic Space Milk Muffin
What you have said makes sense
I was just mainly stating, though...that a lot of people are eager to rush it.
At one point, even I was...
A feature likes that needs to be implemented carefully...otherwise problems may occur.
You're right, now that I think about it
they could even steal the code if they wanted to.
Reminds me of the colored glass thing: It doesn't matter if they intended/planned to add it or not, they sealed their fate with "MC 2.0" , because seeing as they'd already done it (although not professionally), they couldn't pull the "well, it'd be too hard" excuse!
Personally, I think all default lights need fixes.
Torches/Any Flame - Should have an orange effect, shouldn't be WHITE.
Sea Lanterns - Should stay white
Glowstone - (In my opinion, it should emit little light like redstone torches because it glows, but that would ruin alot of things) Gold
Redstone Lamps - Dark Red or Gold
Sunset/Sunrise - Rather orange clouds/ground
Redstone Torches - Red
"Ah, my old foe. The English language. We meet again."
The Halloween world on the PS4 version seems to have green colored lighting. Torches, fire, and lava are all green and the light appears to be green as well.
http://imgur.com/a/sP1mI
That looks so cool! Hope it gets added.
Maximum Support
Turning all light green is easy. Turning some light green isn't.
Mostly moved on. May check back a few times a year.
Colored light is great, but I would be happy even with just a glowing-crystals mod (which would likely require colored lights). It's not just nice, but practically required. While you root around a dark underground cave, it is expected to occasionally come across a beautiful area lit up by colorful, glowing crystals; it’s just natural.
If anyone still follows this topic, (and I suspect a few do), I've started Colored Lights projects which hopes to implement all of the ideas said, from light going through colored glass to produce colored light, to simple colored light. Check out the WIP here.
ok.. first post of 2016, so. changing a light's colour is fairly simple. if a lights colour changed when it goes through a coloured piece of glass we could take the code from the glass and implement it into a torch. now, the rest is for mojang to figure out. \o/
it sounds that easy, sure...
not even considering light, though... making calculations of any kind using colors tends to get laggier and laggier the more of them you do.
at the basic level, you have to combine the colors...
then, with lighting, you need to make the light weaker/dimmer the further from the source you go.
that means making more calculations.
there's a good chance that even more colors get merged further down the line, and thus more re-calculating the colors.
the way mc is currently coded, that would be a major drop of framerate for people.
i'd elaborate more, but i'm tired.
Ok, so lemme get this straight.
Let's say I have long 3 wide by 3 high mineshaft tunnel.
In the middle of that long tunnel, I place a white light source.
4 blocks away from the light source, I completely block the tunnel with a 3x3 wall of red tinted glass.
4 blocks away from the light source, but going the other way, I completely block the tunnel with a 3x3 wall of blue tinted glass.
Now, what I expect to get is this:
In the 7 blocks long space between the 2 walls, white light.
On the other side of each wall, colored light, red or blue depending on the tunnel direction and it,s corresponding glass wall color.
While that would be the desired result, I unfortunately highly doubt minecraft data structure can support this.
Thats what you would expect and what would be ideal, but if you wanted this to work in Minecraft currently without having to do a full lighting engine rewrite, it would HAVE to follow the rules that I have proposed where light can only be changed when colored glass is completely surrounding the light source and is exactly adjacent to at least 1 side of the light source where the light source is entirely covered up by other blocks:
~Epic Space Milk Muffin
Not unless you give the color range a pre-defined array. THEN all it has to do is run a case check to see if the ratio of colored blocks wich has a max of 6 matches a pattern that is pre defined in that array. Which is an option i propose in the images above. no calculations neccessary. even IF the graphics card had to calculate a mixture of RGB values, it still is such a minuscule amount that it would not be noticeable. In fact, Minecraft already does this between torch and outside light like moonlight.
This is demonstrated quite well in Capt Space Toasters mod demo with colored light. I have that mod and I literally notice no lag difference than regular Minecraft. Which is what I would expect since averaging between RGB values is a very simple calculation.
That's Awesome Kovu! glad to see people are still working to prove this is possible! I will definitely be following!
~Epic Space Milk Muffin
I think forcing a light source to be completely surrounded with blocks (no sides open to air) and limiting the light to 1 straight color is too limiting.
Example 1: I want a room in my house o have cool colored lighting. A 1x1x1 colored roof lamp takes a lot less space than having to surround my light source with 5 more glass blocks around it, which works ok only for huge rooms, but looks weird in a more normal-sized room.
Example 2: Not only player builds but world generation, too, would benefit more from the Capt Toaster approach: Imagine a new crystal-fungus "tree" structure, which spawns in rare huge caves underground. The texture would look like a base of rough dark green giant mushroom texture but with "bright green crystals insets" in it (a bit like how emerald ore block is made of a gem-like bright green insets in a base dull gray stone texture). The block would emit green light. Your method would simply not allow this: the fungus tree would look weird if it had to be surrounded by glass, and the block would not really emit green light at all, as soon as you break one of the glass, poof the illusion would be gone.
So, I see your mod as a strictly for "player-builds of big in-house lamps in huge rooms" and almost no other use, while Capt Toaster supports much a wider variety of uses. So what is the advantage of your mod over the CaptToaster one ? I don't quite see it.
Otherwise, while your mod idea is great, maybe your efforts would be better spent together with Kovu ?
I love the idea of colored light going through glass wall and window panes and changing color. And I love the idea of light sources that are directly of a color without having to go through glass in the first place. And I love even more the idea of both together: colored light sources, with different colored glass around it (but not necessaraly adjacent) so that a room can be lots of colors. Imagine making a disco room build with several light sources and tinted glass all moved around by sticky pistons (or command blocks) ! :-)
IMHO Colored glass changing light color is really only useful if it can change light color on the fly, no matter how far from the light source the glass is situated. Otherwise, if it needs to be adjacent glass all around, then it all boils down to only being a glorified way to craft, using a 3x3x3 area of blocks, what should really be single 1x1x1 block light source.
I'd really like light to behave as it "should" !
Good luck and still, that is nice work ! It helped me understand the lighting system a bit better.
What would be great is for the final version of the mod to use the Options Video Settings for light and use that setting to determine how "strongly" it applies colored light. For example, at the medium setting, the colored light could spread a bit slower so as not to tax the CPU. At full setting, the light would update ASAP.
yes it may be limiting but if we want to get colored light to work with the current lighting engine in Minecraft and have mojang have to do as little work as possible, then that is the way it has to be done unfortunately. All your other suggestions would require substantial rewriting of how the lighting engine works not to mention what you are suggesting is dynamic lighting which would be way to laggy for most clients.
remember what Bumber said:
And he is right. i only propose to change the color of the light source completely not just part of the light source because that would create a plethora of technical issues.
~Epic Space Milk Muffin