I feel more like a master fumbler
, but true words.
I have to make some compromises, so the new approach for the lighting will be a give and take thingie:
Pros:
- smooth scrolling of party light in dark indoors; it feels so much better to move the party in complete sync with the light cone around the party
- Adjusted LoS system for determining visibilty around the party in dark indoors to work with smooth scrolling; it is great fun to see the lit area change shape dynamically around the party while you smoothly move, respecting walls, corners, generally lines of sight (it happens like 80% smoothly, a better coder woud have removed reamining bits of chunkiness by dynamically inflating/squishing certain parts of the dark/light mask)
- other light sources on props become only visible when in line of sight
- squares higher than height of the party square automatically block sight now; this makes setting up levels faster (no need to manually palce LoS state) and also allows for walking on a wall and looking down from itand especially along it while the wall at the same time blocks sight when standing in front of it (I will make this change optional via a module setting as it otherwise will screw up existing modules with manually placed LoS states)
Cons:
- I had to remove party ligths from outdoors areas, ie no torch in night time (the semi transparent layer of the night is trickier to handle than full black darkness due to double overlay situations, ie black on black is black, but two blue hues on top of each other form a deeper hue of blue); lights on props still work in the night though, so you e.g. can have fires of a city turn on at night time
- when the party (with lit torch) gets close a light prop in dark indoors I had to change to a simplified lighting model to prevent glitches - the lit area loses shades and shows as a combined rectangluar space arpound party and light prop, it also scrolls a bit blocky on the edges; well, this is the one I tried really, really, well like really, hard to resolve otherwise, but there comes a point where you have to let go for your sanity's sake (I am here to win the war, not each battle, or so I comfort myself, harf
)
- I removed the explored/visible/fog of war state from dark indoors as it only made matters more difficult to handle and had nota very relevant effect anyway (due to the always creeping back darkness)
- moving props are not fully in snych with the light around them, but it works well enough
More a side note, but I will use like 80% darkness for fog of war in outdoors (ie a bit transparent, like in Malkin). This makes the world feel larger and provides better orienttation. But this is just a customizable preference, not affecting other modules.
To do:
- remove night time modifiers (penalties on skill checks and in combat) from the gamesystem (wihtout party light in the night to counter them they seem a bit unfair); the torch is a tool for dungeoneering only now
- try my - reasonable -best to make the whole new system work cross maps (seamless world)... I already hate this one
- I am trying to uplaod v189 currently, but my connection is crawling these days...
.. but after stepping back and reducing complexity/functionality quite a bit, I start to see a light at the end of the tunnel. All these efforts revolve around smooth scrolling of light sources (party, props) and generally making light more relevant for level building.
to report the clash between party lights and prop lights in dark indoors is resolved much more elegantly now (think smooth scrolling until clash, then a more traditional blockwise set up of the light/dark mask)