Hi, so I heard on Dinnerbone's twitter (@N15SAN I do not need to see the issue. Increase memory for now, and we're rewriting lighting in the future but it's not an easy job.) that rewritten lighting is planned for the future. So I decided to give my 2 cents on the topic. Lets jump in!
First of all, I'm thinking that there should be multiple "tiers" of lighting quality. This way the people playing on netbooks can still play, but the people like me who have the rig to take it can have something a bit nicer. The quality could be controlled by a ticked slider in the video settings, which when you hover your mouse over a tic level it gives a brief blurb about what lighting features are enabled on that tier. I'll get into that in a minute. There would also be an "Advanced..." button attached to the bottom of the slider to manually enable/disable specific features. Now to the features themselves:
1. Colored lighting:
This is a long requested feature that should be added no matter what when the lighting gets updated. Even if they don't use any of my ideas, it would be ridiculous if they didn't add this in some form, considering how much it's requested. But here are my ideas on it. There would be two modes of colored lighting, which would then be changed further by general lighting and shadow settings. The first mode would be for lower-tier players and be called "Hard Border Colors". In this mode, colored lights would display like lights currently do, (but colored, obviously) and when to colors met borders would be drawn based on the light level for each color. Example:
However, there is also a second mode, "Dynamic Mixed Colors". This mode is for higher-tier players and instead of those ugly borders, the colors would mix at the borders like you'd expect.
2. Dynamic Lighting
Unlike colored lights, dynamic lights is a simple on-off feature, auto-enabled on higher tiers and auto-disabled on lower tiers. When disabled, lights would be like they currently are: updating when a block is placed/removed. When enabled, lights are updated every tick. The reason for having this is that it allows moving entities, like players, to emit light. You could have a zombie miner with a headlamp, or a lamp you can carry that lights the way as you walk. Furthermore, dynamic lighting is requirement for the next feature to look good.
3. Fancy Shadows
Ah, here we go. Now we're looking at something like sonic ether's unbelievable shaders. In fact, just look at that mod for examples of how fancy shadows should look. Screenshot thanks to Grog.
However, to use fancy shadows you need to have dynamic lighting enabled. It wouldn't really have the same effect without it.
There you go, thanks for reading! If you guys have any comments/suggestions, post below!
EDIT: Fancy shadows screenshot changed to better reflect what it should look like.
EDIT: Fixed some typos and generally fixed up some things.
I think dynamic lighting wasn't going to be added because it used too much processing power and/or generated tons of lag.
That's why I explained a way to disable it for people who's computers can't handle it.
Please read my entire post, instead of skimming, before you post. Thanks!
I want colored light sources. There are currently a few light colors available in-game: moonlight (blue), daylight (neutral), torch/artificial light (red-orange), and end ambient (green). Nether ambient might be different from torch light, not sure. But all light sources that the player can control are the same. It would be so cool to have some options, and it seems to me like the lighting engine can handle multiple colors. Maybe it's the intersection of three or more colors that's the issue, but I don't care. Some options for lighting color would be totally worth it.
There is already a huge topic devoted to colored glass, which explains it's implementation in much greater detail. You may or may not know about it.
However, as to rendering shadows and dynamic lighting, I am going to vote no. "It's optional" is not a valid defense. It would take too much time to code and implement, and most people would not want to sacrifice even a modicum of speed for better lighting. Dynamic lighting is not a necessary addition, as it is purely aesthetic and adds no creativity or possibility of expanded gameplay. Shadows fall under the same arguments as above.
So in conclusion, I appreciate the detail in the topic but Galactic has already done a better job with colored glass and the rest is just a no. Sorry. A rewritten lighting system doesn't need to be a complete and total new system. All I really want from mojang is some bug fixing.
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@N15SAN I do not need to see the issue. Increase memory for now, and we're rewriting lighting in the future but it's not an easy job.) that rewritten lighting is planned for the future. So I decided to give my 2 cents on the topic. Lets jump in!First of all, I'm thinking that there should be multiple "tiers" of lighting quality. This way the people playing on netbooks can still play, but the people like me who have the rig to take it can have something a bit nicer. The quality could be controlled by a ticked slider in the video settings, which when you hover your mouse over a tic level it gives a brief blurb about what lighting features are enabled on that tier. I'll get into that in a minute. There would also be an "Advanced..." button attached to the bottom of the slider to manually enable/disable specific features. Now to the features themselves:
1. Colored lighting:
This is a long requested feature that should be added no matter what when the lighting gets updated. Even if they don't use any of my ideas, it would be ridiculous if they didn't add this in some form, considering how much it's requested. But here are my ideas on it. There would be two modes of colored lighting, which would then be changed further by general lighting and shadow settings. The first mode would be for lower-tier players and be called "Hard Border Colors". In this mode, colored lights would display like lights currently do, (but colored, obviously) and when to colors met borders would be drawn based on the light level for each color. Example:
However, there is also a second mode, "Dynamic Mixed Colors". This mode is for higher-tier players and instead of those ugly borders, the colors would mix at the borders like you'd expect.
2. Dynamic Lighting
Unlike colored lights, dynamic lights is a simple on-off feature, auto-enabled on higher tiers and auto-disabled on lower tiers. When disabled, lights would be like they currently are: updating when a block is placed/removed. When enabled, lights are updated every tick. The reason for having this is that it allows moving entities, like players, to emit light. You could have a zombie miner with a headlamp, or a lamp you can carry that lights the way as you walk. Furthermore, dynamic lighting is requirement for the next feature to look good.
3. Fancy Shadows
Ah, here we go. Now we're looking at something like sonic ether's unbelievable shaders. In fact, just look at that mod for examples of how fancy shadows should look. Screenshot thanks to Grog.
However, to use fancy shadows you need to have dynamic lighting enabled. It wouldn't really have the same effect without it.
There you go, thanks for reading! If you guys have any comments/suggestions, post below!
EDIT: Fancy shadows screenshot changed to better reflect what it should look like.
EDIT: Fixed some typos and generally fixed up some things.
That's why I explained a way to disable it for people who's computers can't handle it.
Please read my entire post, instead of skimming, before you post. Thanks!
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However, as to rendering shadows and dynamic lighting, I am going to vote no. "It's optional" is not a valid defense. It would take too much time to code and implement, and most people would not want to sacrifice even a modicum of speed for better lighting. Dynamic lighting is not a necessary addition, as it is purely aesthetic and adds no creativity or possibility of expanded gameplay. Shadows fall under the same arguments as above.
So in conclusion, I appreciate the detail in the topic but Galactic has already done a better job with colored glass and the rest is just a no. Sorry. A rewritten lighting system doesn't need to be a complete and total new system. All I really want from mojang is some bug fixing.
If you want to see a great idea for Minecraft, click the banner! Over 400 supporters and counting!