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Newcomers DBPro Corner / curious- - why only 7 lights???

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David iz cool
19
Years of Service
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Joined: 21st Sep 2005
Location: somewhere lol :P
Posted: 7th Jan 2006 07:06
why is the limit for lights in dbp 7???

???
Lost in Thought
20
Years of Service
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Joined: 4th Feb 2004
Location: U.S.A. : Douglas, Georgia
Posted: 7th Jan 2006 09:14
Try running a complex level with 3 lights and you will see.

blanky
20
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Joined: 3rd Aug 2004
Location: ./
Posted: 7th Jan 2006 14:03
Indeed, DirectX itself has only support for 8 lights and the first one is taken up in DB with the 'ambient light'...

Whenever you use a light, DX processes it pretty much perfectly, taking everything into account. Even trying to do this 60 times a second will seriously slow your game down, as DirectX has to process more maths per polygon.

With a complex scene, you will seriously struggle to get a playable framerate with all 8 lights on. That's what lightmapping's for; baking the light data onto the textures (pre-calculated) so it hasn't got to be calculated at runtime.

Use lightmapping for normal lights, and DX lights if you're working on a complicated scene with multiple flashing lights to create a cool ambience.

(Oh yeah, and re-use your lights; when they're out of view, hide them, and you can always make a 'dynamic lights system' so that the 7 lights you have access to are re-used as the cloest lights, and when a user moves into another area then the lights are repositioned around the new area.
You can pull it off, if you need dynamic lights support that much.)

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David iz cool
19
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 21st Sep 2005
Location: somewhere lol :P
Posted: 7th Jan 2006 14:57
thanks!

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