Personally, even though the darkness was unintentional, it totally made sense for the deepest and darkest depths of the ocean to be actually dark
The new lighting totally ruins the atmosphere in patches where it made sense to be dark, and ruins the visuals for bioluminescence, effectively reducing variety in the enviroments
This is how dark it was in the darkest patch in the game (abyss, 0.9.2)
You can’t actually see anything in the above screenshot… if I knew earlier than last week that we had such a huge, huge visual problem in the game (with the gameplay being effectively invisible) it would have been fixed immediately when I would have been made aware of it. It took only this long as unfortunately due to a difference between debug and release builds none of us developers was able to see the bug.
There’s no way that we are going back by default to not actually seeing any of the gameplay.
Even so, it really sets the atmosphere for a patch that is literally called the abyss. Going back to thrive after a long time, I thought that was one of the coolest graphical additions to the game. (Looked especially beautiful with bioluminescence)
Currently, there is little visual difference between the surface and the supposedly dark depths, which is why I’d like if there was an optional brightness setting to recreate the same feel, it’s way too bright as it is now
(also for voters, viewing the image on mobile might make it seem darker than it actually is)
Maybe there would be major problems with making this a toggle?
I don’t see the issue in being allowed to choose your preferred brightness level
Does it really need a setting? This change was, IMO, an upgrade as the total darkness made the section needlessly hard. But I also think that in the screenshot of the newer version, the lighting is too flat[1] and that it is possible to add atmosphere without demanding that the players guess what’s in front of them.
I am arriving from work; I still haven’t played v1. ↩︎
IMO, it made perfect sense how dark it was in the abyss region compared to other patches, and it really made the experience very enjoyable and immersive for me as I passed through it
Personally I don’t think it is overly dark to the point where it’s unreasonable, I could see what I needed to perfectly well, if some cells managed to slip past because of their darker hue, that would be an emergent advantage if anything
As of now I really dislike how it looks, you do also bring up a good point on it looking too flat
There isn’t really a technical problem, however this is basically as big of a needed change as the (for example) the current particles toggle option I added. So if someone wanted to program it, I would be open to accepting some new option like a “ambient light” slider (though the option name probably needs a bit more thought).
Hope someone indeed takes an interest in this, imo immersion is what can make or break an experience.
I’d say “Ambient brightness” would make perect sense, as gamma or general brightness would be more post processing effects
In any case, the precious darkness was definitely a bug that caused release versions to be darker than the dev versions. So it’s definitely not being reverted or getting a toggle to go back to the same state.
So it would be more productive to think about and discuss how much darker you would like the game to look from the new baseline, or if there are other ways to give the same feeling.
For starters, I think the brightness overall should still be pitched down a notch, enough that there is a noticable difference between patches with light and without
Shadows should definitely be more extensive, being cast from large objects onto cells, and from bigger cells as well. Currently shadows are not noticable
The entire surface of the object being illuminated the same definitely doesn’t fit all patches
(also, i wasn’t referring to having a toggle to go back to specifically that state, but a brightness slider that is common in games that utilize darkness and lighting effects for its environments)
It would also be great if the colors get colder when it’s dark
Since red gets drowned out in the deep?
I did kind of like the total darkness, but from a gameplay perspective it was kind of bad game design.
Maybe if some kind of glow was implemented around the cells in the dark… But there was no time for that.
Isn’t that just luminescence? (Which we have in the game.)
I meant like a passive dimmish glow that’d allow you to better see where dark cells are in the abyssal biomes, round their membranes. No bio vacuole needed
I can definitely see a gameplay purpose for total darkness once we hit Macroscopic/Aware and there are eyes to see.
Because then light itself becomes a factor in detecting things. It determines where eyes might not be helpful, or you need better dark vision, or luminescence makes a difference, etc. The thing with Microbe/Multicellular is that the species in it aren’t supposed to be using light as a means of seeing things. So having it be a major factor for the human player makes no sense, as you said.
I suppose the main purpose for lighting right now is immersion, not serving gameplay.
True, darkness shouldn’t be interfering with gameplay in a meaningful way right now, but it is definitely a very useful tool in providing immersion for your microbial environments as you swim around in the vast ocean.
