Normal lighting Vs colored lighting

[hardcore_gamer]

Which do you think is better? I really loved the colored lighting in PSX Doom but most ports don't support it. Plus I think colored lighting sometimes looks a bit bad if overused.

Do you think a map looks much better if it has colored lighting? Or is colored lighting just a overrated gimmick?

[NaZa]

Colored lighting is great when used sparse, however if you overload the map with it (unless it's a disco map) the map becomes colored garbage. Colored lighting can also definitely bring more atmosphere and sense of place into a map, but then again if every bit of the map is red because it's in Hell then it's used wrong.

[rabidrage]

If you really pay attention to intensity and shade, you can do wonderful things with it. I think it was used well in PSX Doom and Doom 64, because it was relatively sparse. I've used a ton of it in an upcoming WAD, but I'd say the WAD looks good--right, even.

[kuchitsu]

For me it almost always looks very weird and unnatural and ugly and. I generally dislike areas where all textures and flats are of the same color, and that's exactly what colored lighting does (and even more, since it also effects the sprites), so...

[Graf Zahl]

Colored lighting as a feature is great. Most mappers use it in the shittiest ways imaginable, though, with fully saturated primary colors which is just ridiculous.

[scifista42]

I see normal lighting as an important aspect of every map that should be as noticeably varied and realistic as possible, and colored lighting just as an optional touch-up that should better stay subtle. Maybe it's just because I'm used to playing wads without colored lighting, but I think I could live without it completely. Contrast between darkness and brightness combined with texture variation alone are powerful enough to create awesome aesthetics that feel great to wander around. Moreso, vision-obscuring darkness affects gameplay too, in a way that I'd call more "natural" than camouflage of things hiding in color-lighted areas, but that might be my personal bias again.

[kuchitsu]

This thread needs more pictures with examples of good and bad.

[Da Werecat]

I'm with the "it's a powerful tool when used right" camp.

[illuknisaa]

Thread title is silly. There is no distinction between colored lighting and normal lighting. It's all just lighting.

It really depends what you want to convey and how you are going to use light to achieve that.

[Six]

Subtlety is quite important. Using harsh colours (especially primary ones) is quite garish to look at.

I've been in the process of making a PSX inspired megawad for the past few years. I'll show some shots i posted some time ago. I attempted to utilize them as best as i could without it being too distracting:

[pming]

Hiya!

As @Six said, "Subtlety is quite important".

Subtle lighting really helps "smooth out" all the rough spots in a level. Lighting (coloured or not) can also break up the repeating textures for large or obvious textures.

Coloured lighting can help subtly influence the "mood" or "feeling" a player gets when playing through a level...warm colours make areas feel more 'close' and 'cosy'...while cool colours make areas feel more 'empty' and 'foreboding'.

Lighting can be used to indicate secret areas, or enhance the small details of some particular texture (e.g., adding small coloured lights to various COMP textures to indicate the 'glow' of the monitors). Adding soft red lights to areas around dead bodies, or blood-splattered textures can help with the feeling of "something violent happened here".

The problems I see with most folks lighting is that they actually don't "use" the lighting for the feeling of the level. It seems like almost an afterthought. Adding lights "because they can". I once made one level (small'ish) that had an ambient light level of something ridiculously low...like 16 or 24 maybe. Then, ALL lighting was done via lights. It was definitely tricky...large areas are hard to light this way in GZDOOM because all lights are spherical), so it was mostly smaller sized rooms with doors blocking off one area from another (or right-angle corridors), but man did it have a mood! :) With all the 'natural' shadowed areas (corners, joining walls, sides of stairs, etc), it had a very distinct "this is a bad place to be...I want to go home!" vibe to it.

Anyway. Yeah, lighting, coloured or not, is one of the most underused GZDOOM (or other) source port features. I just wish Doomsday had an easy way to make Lights and that GZDOOM had a way of recognizing them.