(09 May 15, 09:20AM)Mr.Floppy Wrote: Those lights of course will be removed later.In fact, they will be reduced automatically during next map load.
(09 May 15, 09:20AM)Mr.Floppy Wrote: Maybe it's only me, but wouldn't it be nice to have some advanced light effects, like blinking regularly or randomly, or something like 'pulsing' in order to have some glowing effects?There are now three unused attributes on all entities, so storing more values is not a problem.
However - adding dynamic effects doesn't integrate with the light management of the engine: everything is calculated exactly once, during map load.
Blinking can be done with animated map models - but without affecting the lighting.
The problem with blinking is, that even three parameters wouldn't get much use out of it: you need at least one for the speed - which leaves just two to describe the blinking itself... should it be regular sine blinking or flashing like an alarm, should it be regular or random. And in the end, it will probably the same problem as with animated map models: you can't use more than one, or it will look like shit because it's weirdly synced. As I mentioned in the first post - I did try to find a solution for the map models - but nothing looks good...
About the shadow entities: should shadow subtract absolute light from it's area - or reduce the light by a percentage? Subtracting constant values would, for example, reduce 120 to 80 and a neighboring 60 to 20 but removing a percentage would change 120 to 80 and 60 to 40.
Absolute reduction makes it easier to get already quite dark areas even darker but a reduction by a percentage would keep the original light profile and just make it darker altogether.
PS: the current state can be tested under https://github.com/ac-stef/AC/commits/mapformat10 - it also includes automapcfg
(don't use this to edit maps that you want to keep - it's not finished)