Game Engine: Nighttime Environmental Ambience

[Hyncharas]

I only bring this up because the PS2 Facebook page today asked for feedback. The question was about what people think their best environmental feature has been...

Now unfortunately much of the more recent concept art can only be found on Google if you know where to look, but the thing that strikes me most compared to the game is, when it's dark, the environment doesn't feel as alive as it does in the daytime. If you've been on Amerish, for example, it becomes a pitch black wilderness for the most part! A number of those concepts, however, show some of the foliage and even the crystalline structures illuminate in absence of the sun, due to a temperature differential.

Whilst I'm not suggesting the studio takes a page out of Avatar; completely flooding the landscape, it would be great if they performed a lighting study for each continent to examine what areas could be improved with "fireflies" and other effects at night. I would also be interested in illumination either side of roads, so players can see actual routes across a continent.

[Carbon Copied]

Got to agree full on - actually been awhile since I've been to Indar at night do even the local plant life there come out ala


The alpha video we've probably all seen but definitely echoes "night time ambiance"? I seem to remember that there were things like fireflies and such in the night sky through various grassy areas - have they been removed?

Among other things the map UI looks alot more hi-res and clear as to where/what you're over.

[Phantomdestiny]

i partly agree while i strongly disagree on some point . let me explain i agree that they can work on night effects or just bring back the ones from beta. However i believe that night is NOT dark enough at all . it was back in tech test but they made it brighter which completely killed night for me now it's just blue/violet instead of being black

[Carbon Copied]

Oh definitely would be great to see the alpha/beta night time back in - don't know what the reasoning was behind the whole "lets make it brighter" post relase although it's possibly been mentioned somewhere or other..

[Sirisian]

Originally Posted by Carbon Copied

Oh definitely would be great to see the alpha/beta night time back in - don't know what the reasoning was behind the whole "lets make it brighter" post relase although it's possibly been mentioned somewhere or other..

I believe their reason was because people just turned up their brightness. The issue is with how they implemented darkness. In a game that really supports darkness the models get dark as well. Forgelight doesn't do this yet so by turning up your brightness you can see things others that didn't couldn't.

I hope they fix that and bring it back also. I would love pitch black darkness using flashlights for real with the bioluminescent glow of the plants.

[Hyncharas]

I only played the beta, so apart from vids online there really isn't anything on how PS2's Alpha looked like. I agree there are places where it isn't dark enough; mostly areas where the moonlight touches the landscape. Having said that, there are whole places where even that doesn't impact the environment.

There is, as well, a statement from someone at Bungie I've learned to trust: "...It's amazing how s***** geometry can look when it's not lit". There are areas of the real world that luminesce slightly that would be better here, rather than simply lighting every piece of foliage at night like in Avatar. What I'd prefer to see are certain varieties of plants that luminesce, whilst others don't, along with firefly mechanics and possibly auroras on other continents beside Esamir, creating pockets of lights throughout the landscape. That way it doesn't saturate the continents, yet also provides better ambience to the world at night instead of whole areas becoming uninteresting to use.

[Noxxia]

I want frogs and crickets in the ambient noise.