Lighting Choices Abound: Which settings to use and why.

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Morty

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Posted: 18th Mar 2006 04:04

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Hello fellow forumites. I've been lurking in the shadows for some time (posting here and there) and I've come to a point in which I've a question to be asked.

Firstly, I just recently purchased the game and after spending some "alone time" with the manual and searching these forums, I still remain confused over a few elements concerning lighting effects.

I understand the concepts of the three variants of lighting settings but one in particular I have problems with...

[B]No Lightmaps[/B] - This seems pretty self-explanatory to me. No problems here.

[B]Soft Lightmaps[/B] - I understand this one as well.

[B]Full Shadow Lightmaps[/B] - Okay, this is where I run into a few problems. It is my assumption that the only difference between
"Soft Lightmaps" and "Full Shadow Lightmaps" is that entities do or do not cast shadows respectively. However, my chief concern is the nature of this setting. My computer specs are well within the limit of the game, yet it does not proceed past "creating lightmaps" when this option is selected. I am aware that it takes significantly longer (even hours at times) with this setting chosen, but my real question is if this affects load time when the .exe is built and is being played. If so, it would hardly seem practical to ever use this choice, and thus I'm urged to ponder why it's even there to begin with. However, I may indeed be missing something that I'm not aware of. If so, feel free to correct me.

My last question resides in the option of "Dynamic Shadows". I'd like certain areas of my game to be completely dark but the most I can achieve is a dark grey lighting. I assume that this has something to do with the "Dynamic Shadows" setting but whenever I choose this option certain textures are a bit distorted and the walls of my level are completely gone. While I suspect this may be a glitch (and forgive me if it is, as I know of the forum dedicated to [I]FPSC[/I] bugs) is there instead something that I'm missing; perhaps some other setting that would fix my problem?

I realize that this post is a bit long-winded and for that I apologize. But any help any of you forum-goers could offer as to your personal suggestions as to how to handle lighting settings would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much.

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Disturbing 13

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Posted: 18th Mar 2006 07:44 Edited at: 18th Mar 2006 07:45

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The full shadow lightmaps are cool but really bog down a system, and some systems can't even use it, so you would be limiting your audience if you were to depend on its use, if not then go with softshadows. also don't use the full shader effects as that does the same. For completely darkareas -on the build- change the abiance to 0 for r,g,&b. This only works on a build so you wont se the results when you do a test of a level. Hope that helped a bit. IMHO this engine was built with an emphasis on the wrong things. Sure these features work well and smoothly in other engines but it bogs this engine down quite a bit, making for some really poor performance. I mean yeah the screenshots of dynamic shadows and full shader effects look great but they absolutely suck when the framerate suffers like it does.More time should have been spent on some of the missing staples for an FPS game.But like I said, that's just my opinion. I would just depend on good textureing work rather than the system taxing effects.

JEEZ!You people just STFU! You waste more space complaining about people wasting space than the people your bashing! Man, I thought I had no life.

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FredP

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Posted: 18th Mar 2006 10:59

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Don't feel bad.I set my game up for rendering and my computer laughed at me so hard my monitor feel off the desk...just kidding.
It appears that my graphics chip does not support rendering.When my game got built half of it was invisible.
I don't know about anybody else but full lightmapping slows down my game to the point where it's unplayable even by my standards.I'm going to worry more about lighting and stuff like that when I buy the memory chip to boost my memory from 256 to 512 MB.
I remember at the store when I bought the pc and my mom,who knows very little about computers asked:
"Are you sure that's enough memory?"
I laughed and said:
"Why would anyone need more than 256MB of memory.BTW,my first computer had 3K of RAM.A K stands for Kilobyte,which is 1/100 of a Megabyte.
What is cool is that you can tell the difference when you raise or lower the texturing level.

Not changing this sig until I get rich

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SOTSOG GameCreators

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Posted: 18th Mar 2006 18:03

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Hi all I too have been lurking in the background when it comes to these forums and I have been using FPSC since EA was released, and I have come to the conclusion that it is very much system based and I am affraid to say you need far more than the recommended requirements. I was in the fortunate position of being able to spend a lot of money on a new system just after xmas so I treated myself to a high spec system which came with AMD 64x2 3800 cpu, 2 gigs of ram, and a inno3D G-Force6800GS 256mb grapics card. I set my build setting to max with full lighting and full shadows, it took a resonable amount of time but noway near as long as my old system but I was pleased to see that when I played it I was still getting around 30-34fps which was what I was getting with standard build settings. The time it takes to create lightmaps depends a lot on how many entities you have in your scene, for instance I have a lot of crates and boxes and with all the lights I have postioned around the room the program has to calculate where each shadow will fall from each seperate light. It all takes alot of CPU and a lot of time and can be very off-putting if you want to change the postion or the colour of a light, or you want to see what how a shadow will be cast from a particular entity or segment. My advice is stick with it. I have just built my level again and it took 13 minutes and remember that is inside a big room with no windows. It looks fantastic the textures with all the shadows on them look amazing, with a bit a time and effort and grade A game can be achieved.

"Never figure on your poultry enterprise until the proccess of inqubation has been throughly realized."

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Les Horribres

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Posted: 19th Mar 2006 01:45

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You need a good Gig for decent gaming.

Also, Full Light Maps are actually smoother then regular. And I don't think it turns on dyamic shadows... then again, it has been a long time.

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Benjamin A

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Posted: 19th Mar 2006 19:11

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Quote: "It looks fantastic the textures with all the shadows on them look amazing, with a bit a time and effort and grade A game can be achieved."

I'm sure about that, but will you have an big enough target audience to sell such a game to? If you create a stunning game that most people will not be able to play due to high requirements, what good is that?

At the moment I'm simply sticking to no lightmaps, because I'd like my projects to be 'played' by as many as people as possible. It's always a trade of between playabilty and excellence, but I rather choose the playablity.

Also I myself do not own a high end pc, just a good average one. So building a level with settings other then no lightmaps, cause huge build times, at times very very long build times. My project consist of more the just a large room, but many corridors, rooms, entities and a number of floors at times. Using other settings then no lightmaps, render a unplayable game for me after building for a way to long time. Unfortunally.

Yes, a grade A game can be achieved, but not with a bit of time and effort, but with a LOT of time and a LOT of effort and the game can only be played by a few elite (well perhaps more then just a few, but still not the masses).

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SOTSOG GameCreators

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Posted: 19th Mar 2006 20:15

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[At the moment I'm simply sticking to no lightmaps, because I'd like my projects to be 'played' by as many as people as possible. It's always a trade of between playabilty and excellence, but I rather choose the playablity.
] Your point is a valid one and that is why I upgraded my pc but it is also a catch 22 situation, you lose graphical excellence for performance and the target audience lose interest in your game because it is not visually appealing. Its as long as it is short and hopefully TGC will have maybe come to some compromise in Version 2.

"Never figure on your poultry enterprise until the proccess of inqubation has been throughly realized."

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DoomKing

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Posted: 21st Mar 2006 00:31

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Quote: "A K stands for Kilobyte,which is 1/100 of a Megabyte."

Actually, a kilobyte is 1024 bytes, whereas a megabyte is 1024 kilobytes. Therefore, a kilobyte is... 1/1024 of a megabyte. And it's better to have a gig, like Mosillivio said - that's 1,048,576 kilobytes and 1024 megs.

It just gets under my skin when people mess up powers of 2.

Also, full lightmaps are useful in some circumstances, but (as has been said) are power-consuming and ultimately just eye candy. I wouldn't go so far as SOTSOG and use no lightmaps, but full ones are usually superfluous and frame rate killers. If you don't like it, go buy some other $50, no-programming-knowledge-needed engine.

By the way, I'm wondering at the interesting use of single quotes in your post, SOTSOG.

Quote: "...because I'd like my projects to be 'played' by as many as people as possible."

'Played'? Not sure if it really qualifies as a game? Ha.

Changing the connotation of "noob," one post at a time.

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Benjamin A

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Posted: 21st Mar 2006 00:49

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Quote: "'Played'? Not sure if it really qualifies as a game? Ha."

Actually they don't completely do qualify as games, but since you're new around here you cou'ldn't have know that.

I'm creating 3D enviroments with FPSC for a non-for-profit organization in the Netherlands. In those worlds, children do learn something about a certain topic, by interacting with characters. But they do also have to play mini games in these worlds, to advance to the next level. These mini games can be puzzles, collect items, find certain objects, break secret codes and so on.

So now you know, why I called it 'played'

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Reality Forgotten

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Posted: 21st Mar 2006 00:54

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I have been working on a lightmap how to. I know alot of you know how to use them or atleast think you do. so this would not be intended for you. But for the rest of you it might be of some use.

One thing I want to stress is you do not have to sacrifice good lightmaps for performance. it's all in how you put everything together.

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Les Horribres

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Posted: 21st Mar 2006 04:58

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RF, so VERY TRUE!

Lightmapping does nothing but adds an extra texture to the game, if you have already exceeded the current texture limit, then it will hurt you, but typically that doesn't happen.

Turning on stupid features (because they completly kill Frame Rate) like Dynamic Shadows (which I still don't belive ever are suppose to go on) or dynamic lights will cause massive FPS drop. And yes, even though Physics can be turned on for more then 1 item (I prefer to have around 10 items per section [kinda like room]) excessive use of it will hurt your FPS.

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Morty

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Posted: 25th Mar 2006 05:35

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Thank you for the responses guys. They are indeed appreciated.

As to the points brought up:
From what I've read on the forums computer specs aren't always the major determining factor. For example, I've read of some members with over 1Gb of Ram but painfully low frame rates. Likewise, I've heard of members with 512Mb of Ram with acceptable frame rates. So as to what determines how well a computer can run any given level is still uncertain to me.

I do admit, that while I do enjoy this program very much I am concerned about its playability across different computers. While it may run at a somewhat acceptable framerate with my middle-of-the-road specs, what about those people who have average specs? Surely their frame rates would considerably drop.

If there's anything I've noticed, it's that lighting seems to cause the most angst when it comes to frame rate (or loading for that matter). That and entities.

But like I said, thank you all for your replies. They are very appreciated.

P.S. And a tutorial over lightmaps would be most useful in my opinion, Reality Forgotten.

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Walking Dead Productions

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Posted: 26th Apr 2006 00:37

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Quote: "Turning on stupid features (because they completly kill Frame Rate) like Dynamic Shadows (which I still don't belive ever are suppose to go on) or dynamic lights will cause massive FPS drop."

However, if you don't turn on dynamic lights in a game with a low ambiance level, all the dynamic items appear black.

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Les Horribres

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Posted: 26th Apr 2006 01:13

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Quote: " low ambiance level, all the dynamic items appear black."

FYI, ambiance doesn't need to be that low, and the reason for that is possibly because dynamic objects don't get that extra texture.

We need a thread bumper logo.

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FredP

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Posted: 26th Apr 2006 01:16

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Use static lighting.It's easier to work with than dynamic lighting anyway.
I have levels with an ambience of 5 and with the proper static lighting entities appear just fine.
If you saw something outside at night and there was little to no light it should appear as black to you.
Sometimes dynamic entities appear black because I changed the sky box after I started making a level and it happened when I added fog.
There are other reasons why dynamic entites appear as black too.

FLA
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Benjamin A

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Posted: 26th Apr 2006 01:29 Edited at: 26th Apr 2006 01:47

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Well here's the final verdict..... at least for me.

When turning on soft lightmaps or full shadow lightmaps, and using static lights only, it has no influence on the speed of the game at all. It does have a huge influence on the build game time and it times the shadow can look pretty harsh. For me soft lightmaps are the way to go.

Also when using soft lightmaps or even full shadow lightmaps in a level, making sure that the level is build as optimal as possible, the game will run easily on a P3-1Ghz with 384Mb Ram and an GF2 MX400 64Mb. You don't need a superpc to play the game or lots of ram or even the most recent gfx card, but it all depends on well designed levels.

The whole issue changes when using Full Shader effects or Dynamic Lights. I avoid checking the Dynamic Lights option at the Build Game menu at all costs! It destroys the framerate of the game on my main pc and that's a pretty decent one.

As for Full Shader Effects, I'm still playing with those.....

Shader update..... on my pc the framerate is dropping 3-4fps when using Full Shader Effects. They really rely on the gfx card also. Some of the shader effect on characters and other entities look really good, but some of the walls look terrible, at least on my pc.

So my final verdict is complete: use soft lightmaps. No speed loss, good looking and good game building and game loading times.

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FPSC Classic Product Chat / Lighting Choices Abound: Which settings to use and why.