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Author Topic: about the lightning  (Read 7030 times)
algumacoisaqq
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« on: August 21, 2011, 08:28:33 PM »

There is something weird about it. Right now, Minecraft still looks better than this game (no offense intended), despite the fact you have better textures and shaders. The main problems I found are:
1) The lightning is done per-face instead of per-vertex. Minecraft used to have this too, than it was changed to the current version... and the improvement was outstanding in my opinion. Have no idea how to implement this, but you should really keep in consideration
2) The Morning sun doesn't look right on the blocks - they are reflecting it like metal plates - like perfectly flat aligned metal plates - the result ends up being bad. Can't you add a texture that says witch areas should shine and witch ones shouldn't? That would probably be a shader thing (specular map? normal map?), and things could end up complicated... to be honest I would suggest to just drop that shining effect for now.
3) Ambient light - I started digging underground, and suddenly the blocks became completely dark.... you really should consider adding a diffuse light to help in this cases. The light-per-face thing also makes the end result worse.

Hope that this is helpful, there is a high chance that you are aware of this problems, but haven't got the time/resources to fix 'em, but these are my thoughts on it, and some of them might be useful to you. Don't get me wrong though, you have a nice engine over there, I just think that these details could really improve what you already have.
Cheers!
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pspeed
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« Reply #1 on: August 22, 2011, 02:53:45 AM »

Thanks for the feedback.

Per vertex lighting was moved down on my to-do list as soon as Minecraft added it.  It's on the to do list with a bunch of other things like weather, etc. that don't differentiate my game but just bring more MC hate.  Actually, the lighting that is baked into the geometry is already per vertex but it's only in the calculations that its done per face.

There is still a bunch of tweaking to be done to the lighting, for sure... but some of it is intentional and some of it is not exactly what people think.  For example, a good deal of the time where I see a super shining face at sunrise I go there to find a light placed right by it.  Since sunlight and local light is cumulative in sort of an unnatural way it makes these areas super-bright (and note: minecraft only has one kind of light to deal with).  For example, on the server some people like to pepper the face of the castle with light blocks and then during the day these always look like these areas are super-shiny stacked rock... which is a little silly.  There are a few ways out of that problem but they will take days of tweaking lighting equations... and ultimately in the real game most outdoor lights will turn on and off with the day change anyway.

I like the shine and I will keep it.  I spent a long time trying to make it look like the photos I used to take when I did that sort of thing.  At certain times of day, if you want good color on the rest of the picture then anything in direct sun is super brilliant, almost magical.  Without dynamic HDR there really isn't much I can do but match that.

There are literally hours and hours of tweaking left to do on this stuff and especially if I figure out a decent way to calculate the per-vertex lighting for the half blocks and non-square blocks.  But none of that makes me anything but a better looking minecraft clone and since I'm not trying to be minecraft I will work on different things first... there are plenty of huge projects left undone.  Also, the complexity that I've allowed blocks to take gives me some additional issues with lighting and flowing water.  So it also pays to wait until I've explored a few more block shapes.

Thanks again... and I hope you are enjoying Mythruna otherwise.
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algumacoisaqq
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« Reply #2 on: August 22, 2011, 06:06:41 PM »

Oh, sorry, I forgot about all that MC Clone hate thing, this probably made the comparison to minecraft more rude than it should. However, I would suggest that you ignore these people, there isn't really anything you can do to make them realize they are wrong. To be honest, I wish I could make one myself, but I haven't been able to write a single line of code yet.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the concept, and I look forward to see where this is going. I Especially like the distance you are taking from the extra-blocky aproach - the new trees look a lot cooler, by far. The way you make use of different blocks besides the square ones is pretty cool, and it has a huge potential you know. The blue print editor was also a great implementation. This actually makes me wonder of you have the possibility of not using blocks for the terrain at all - since you already have the resources to do it, you could have some sort of 3D tiling system going on. I tried to implement one once, it was so complicated I couldn't even calculate how many 3D shapes I would need to make one =)

But the reason why I made the comparison is because technically, your game was already supposed to look better, since you have a lot more technology going on, better textures, etc. However, something just doesn't feel right, and it makes me wonder what it is. The reason why I bring the light into question is because how important light is to the graphics of a game, and I think that currently that is the problem you are having.

I've just gone to both games and did some testings. I don't know why, but there are some instances in your game where two faces of the same block will have the exact same light value, and this will make them look like exactly the same (in color values). This effect will kill the feeling of 3D in the game. Now, I did some testing in minecraft and noticed that no matter what settings I used (fancy or fast; daylight or torches or complete darkness inside caves; smooth lightning of face lightning), the 6 faces of the same cube would always, always have different colors, even if  the change was subtle. I don't know why this happens or how he did it, but I bet that in any 3D game you have, you won't find instances of two cube faces with different normals having the same light value - this might be the source of this "there is something wrong and I don't know why" feeling that I have. Actually, this means I was wrong earlier, the problem isn't the smooth light, it is something else I have no idea what it is.

On the brightness and shine of the sun you are right, most of the time it feels nice. (also, I checked, and only the sun light was in place). I just made a marble tower, and it was really shinning in the sunlight - since it is marble, it looked really cool. The problem is actually the sand, I think, it has the same shine of the marble block, while they are two separate materials. But this means it is a texture problem, not an engine problem, so once you get some texture artists it will look good, I think. The other problem of the sand, of course, is that we are not used to sand cubes in the real world, when we see a virtual one, even if the shininess of the sand is right, it will look different. However, I would note that the greatest offender of the shine is by far the sand, every thing else looks ok.

Another thing I would add is a possibility of turning Fog off. Right now, I think it would look better without it, IMO.

Also, it makes me wonder, how much time did it take you to get this far? I mean, you have a lot going on already, that is pretty impressive work. Haven't tried multiplayer yet, but considering the possibilities of half blocks you have, it seems very interesting you managed to get multiplayer working at all. Good luck with the project!
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pspeed
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« Reply #3 on: August 22, 2011, 06:30:08 PM »

Too many things to address in one response so I'll probably forget some...

I didn't take your post as Minecraft hate but it's hard to convince people that this will be a completely different game when all they see is the test engine and no real distinguishing features.  So I'm concentrating on the "different".

Any game that has a dynamic lighting direction will have occasion where two faces of a cube are lit exactly the same.  Minecraft's lighting direction never changes so it's possible he has it pointing in such a way that two faces never get the same light.  In my case, I've carefully engineered the angle of the sun that it should never happen as the sun and the moon never directly point at a 45 degree angle to a face though it is possible for it to happen briefly with a top surface and a side surface.  I would note that in real leaf this happens all the time.  There are certain buildings for example that in full sun from the right angle completely blend for a while.  Anyway, the player placed light sources can create this situation pretty trivially and that light is based on where the camera is.  Smooth lighting will help but if you look on a lonely brick from a 45 degree angle then two of its faces will be lit similarly.  There's really no way around it without other artifacts... because I originally tried a fixed lighting direction for the non-sunlight and it looked bad.  Minecraft doesn't have to deal with this issue because it's lighting is way simpler.

I'd do smooth terrain if I could.  In fact, my last attempt at a flexible engine 6 years ago was trying to do that.  It's really hard and I spend all of my time trying to make it work instead of making a game.  This engine is 1000 times simpler and lets me develop all of the other systems.  If I ever figure out the other way then I will happily remove block terrain.  There's a chance that the design I have in mind for flowing water helps also make terrain flow better but I think it will kill the geometry generation performance.  It's one thing to smooth a few water blocks and another thing entirely to smooth the whole world. Wink

Sand in real life is very bright... white marble even brighter.  Look up some pictures of tropical coastlines and the sand will be glowing.

It's also a very subjective thing... for every person that hates that they get blinded I get a complement from someone else.  There is some tweaking and balancing left to do but I've taken hundreds of "wow" photos as I walk around the Mythruna world where I catch some cool view that looks perfect.  So right now I like it more than I dislike it. Smiley

I should put a post together about the history for those who are interested enough to read it.  I started coding this at the beginning of February... so 6.5 months now.  The networked version was released at the beginning of April and since then I spend a lot of time in the game, too because it's fun. Smiley  So development slowed down a bit after that.  Sometimes I just wander around and find the cool and crazy stuff people have built over the months.
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algumacoisaqq
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« Reply #4 on: August 22, 2011, 07:00:11 PM »

Actually, about the two faces having the same color thing - at first I thought it was a bug in the code, or in the normals, but actually you are right, it is possible to happen. Basically, since you have a dynamic sun light source, there will always be at least 3 faces not in sun light, and they will be only lit by ambient light. Again, I think you should address it eventually, but it is not a bug as I first thought.

About the brightness, indeed, I was looking at my marble tower and actually, it does look very cool depending on the light, so I see where you are going with this brightness glow.

Now, don't get me wrong, the reason why I brought this topic up is because I think there is something odd with your graphics that are holding you back to the true potential you have there. But talking to you now, I realize that figuring out what the problem is a lot harder than I first thought.

Thanks for the response, I love to hear the technical side of this stuff!
Cheers!
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