light levels

[cycloid]

what do you consder to be good light levels? as apparently my maps are a bit dark:

outside (day time): 160
inside: 128
dark bits: 96

am i turning gamma up to 11 or are they ok? tried 192 for outside and nearly went blind. though it does go up to 256

[Bashe]

I use 192 for outside and 160 for inside.

[Graf Zahl]

160 is far too dark for daylight. Better are 192-224 but it also depends on the textures you use.

If that is too bright your monitor needs adjustment.

[printz]

0-96: evil hidden rooms, night in the wild outdoors
112, 128: sewers, dark tunnels, night/enshadowed outdoors
144: normal indoors
160: clouded outdoors
176: lighted indoors (144+32)
192: normal outdoors
208-224: high noon outdoors
255: strobing/glowing lights, never outside (buggy and ugly)

[Ichor]

Inside - 128
Candles and dim lights - 144
Normal lights - 160
Bright lights - 176 or 192
Daytime - 192
Outside in Hell - 160
Glowing lights - 224 mostly
Recessed switches - 255
Caves and darkened rooms - 96
Nighttime - 96 to 128, depending on the sky

I hardly ever use 0-80 unless it's for certain effects.

[sitters]

inside 64 + dynamic lights.
Outside 128 + dynamic lights.

[cycloid]

hmm, so it's looking like i might up mine to

192 - outside (sunny episode)
176 - outside (dusk episode)
144 - indoors (lit)
096 - dark bits (what's that blur? O FK it's a mancubus hoarde)

i'm tending to put some detail, like switch alcoves in darker sectors.

anyone else like to contribute in the matter-of-factly list fashion?

[Mordeth]

Perception of light levels are strongly linked to the dimension of the area you are in. A small room at 144 looks bright; while a big outdoor area looks very dark at the same lightlevel.

[Enjay]

Outdoor levels are also hugely affected by the sky texture. Give an outdoor area a starry sky and, even with quite bright sectors, you should find it quite easy to create the illusion of nighttime without having the player feeling his way around in impossibly dark areas.

[cycloid]

heh, hooray! just discovered that like sector heights and such i can select my entire map and enter ++16 in the light levels box. as i'd already carefully lit most of them using the aforementioned 80,128,160 scheme this has magically become 96,144,172 leaving the "inbetween" shading sectors correctly inbetween too. nice and handy :-)

[ReX]

Outdoors = 160
Windows = 144
Indoors in direct-light areas = 160+
Graded lighting [8 units in ZDooM, 16 units in DooM] = 152, 144, 136, .... until the ambient indoor light level is reached
Ambient indoor light in rooms with windows or lights = 128
Ambient indoor light in rooms with no windows or lights = 96
Dark areas = 80
Brightly-lit areas (e.g., spot-lit paintings) = 192+

[andrewj]

ReX said:

Graded lighting [8 units in ZDooM, 16 units in DooM]

That is incorrect. Doom supports 32 different levels (8 unit steps). GL ports (and ZDoom, so I hear) support all 256 levels.

[Enjay]

I think ReX was saying what he uses, rather than what is possible.

[myk]

Enjay said:
I think ReX was saying what he uses, rather than what is possible.

I don't know if he did, and you might be right, though Ajapted's clarification should be pretty helpful anyway. If you had asked me what lighting increments Doom supports, I think I would have said 16, as I thought in this rather recent thread. He even made that remark there, and I kind of forgot about it, having the impression that that variation was 16, from before. It's true that a variation by 16 may make sense mapping for Doom proper (with all its limits), which ReX has indeed done, since otherwise you're bound to have VPOs or HOMs, but for "Doom" in a more vague sense (basic mapping without special features but without limits), 8 degree steps, if they are indeed possible, should be quite fine.

As for the conception of a 16 unit lighting being common among us, take the 2000-08-15 blog post on the subject by Afterglow, here (by the way, that post suits this thread very well).

Ajapted said:
Doom supports 32 different levels (8 unit steps).

Where would this be in the source?

[Fredrik]

myk said:

Where would this be in the source?

There are 32 brightness levels in the COLORMAP lump (plus one level for invulnerability and one unused).

[andrewj]

myk said:

Where would this be in the source?

In r_main.h:

#define LIGHTLEVELS 16

Ouch! I just proved myself wrong! The original Doom only supported 16 levels, even though the COLORMAP supports 32 levels like Fredrik says.

Apologies to all.

[Use]

Look at any of my maps you'll see I use a pretty standard lighting scheme.

Outdoors: 180

Outdoors bright: 192-200

Indoors (normal): 160

Indoors dim: 128-136

Lamps/Light sources: 200-220

[ReX]

Ajapted said:

The original Doom only supported 16 levels, even though the COLORMAP supports 32 levels like Fredrik says.

I believe I had read about this fact some years ago. More importantly, I discovered/confirmed this fact through actual trial and error in maps - using 8-unit increments in DooM, while obviously possible in an editor, yields no perceptible difference in light levels within a 16-unit range. E.g., in DooM one sector with a 136-unit light level will appear to have the same brightness as an adjacent sector with a 144-unit light level. In ZDooM the two sectors will have different brightness.

On a related note, graded lighting shows up best on lighter-colored floors and ceilings; on darker-colored flats the graded lighting is not obvious. But then I'm sure you all know this already.

[jetflock]

hmm....i always have lighting issues, i don't really think it can be simply answered. depends on map and port.