Dimmable and multi-color Lights

[swag100107]

Dimmable Lights:

One thing I wish we had is dimmable lights. I was just thinking of this as I was building a hospital on board a station I have under development. What I was thinking (and you can agree or disagree with me on this) is the same thing you did with the rail controllers: connect as many as 1 to 100 activation blocks to it to control how bright or dim the light is.

Multi-color Lights:

Another thing is multi-color lights. It would make it easier for making alert lights. They should be controlled by a controller that can have up to [x] inputs (where x is the max amount of inputs that it can have, controlled in the block config) that control what color. I have ideas on what that would look like. I'll post the drawing later.

-swag

 

[OfficialCoding]

What I was thinking (and you can agree or disagree with me on this) is the same thing you did with the rail controllers: connect as many as 1 to 100 activation blocks to it to control how bright or dim the light is.

That could work, depending on how you implement it. If you link the Light to the button it would work.

 

[canadianbacon]

I'd rather see the light blocks have a dimming slider inside a gui in the light block. Don't want to bloat block counts.

 

[klawxx]

I'd rather see the light blocks have a dimming slider inside a gui in the light block. Don't want to bloat block counts.

I would love if It could be controlled by logic, like rail speed controller.

 

[kikaha]

Mmmm color light depending on cristal they are linked to (like weapons and thrusters) and dim them with rail speed control system ?

 

[Lone_Puppy]

Dim-able lights would be interesting and useful for lighting affects.
I'd be happy with the ability to swap lights using logic the same way we do with rails. This would enable us to have a single light in place able to change colour.

 

[OfficialCoding]

Dim-able lights would be interesting and useful for lighting affects.
I'd be happy with the ability to swap lights using logic the same way we do with rails. This would enable us to have a single light in place able to change colour.

Yes that would be good.

 

[NeonSturm]

Dimmable Lights:

One thing I wish we had is dimmable lights. I was just thinking of this as I was building a hospital on board a station I have under development. What I was thinking (and you can agree or disagree with me on this) is the same thing you did with the rail controllers: connect as many as 1 to 100 activation blocks to it to control how bright or dim the light is.

Multi-color Lights:

Another thing is multi-color lights. It would make it easier for making alert lights. They should be controlled by a controller that can have up to [x] inputs (where x is the max amount of inputs that it can have, controlled in the block config) that control what color. I have ideas on what that would look like. I'll post the drawing later.

-swag

I am not against the idea, but it is still not good to implement it to the degree you describe.

Because it would hurt performance a lot; I think!

1.
Some light-shader/code-update, a year and a half or two years ago, decreased my FPS to 50-70% of the previous state!
And I think it would be a similarily big update to that system.

2.
Personally I can live without lights beyond 10 basic settings (5 bits + bits for distance):

1. Full Darkness (=Disabled) OR
   1. Barebone sight (=Mostly Black)
      
   2. Dim (=Secondary with orange/green/purple as warm/cold/strange light)
      
   3. Average (=Primary with red/yellow/blue like flame-colours)
      
   4. Bright White (=Disabled supplementary)
      1. Depending on dim/average, the 2 bits to describe colour (disabled+3 options).

It is sufficient and everything beyond it is handled by distance to the light source.

Maybe you can modify the emitter's distance offset (as if the light source were further away before it starts emitting) via controller blocks.
That is why I voted for dim-able lights!


With that, it would be possible to keep a maximum FPS.
Perhaps it could be 7 instead of 3 options, depending on optimisation and code/hardwäre interfaces without loss of performance, but I wont go further than that.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

I am not against the idea, but it is still not good to implement it to the degree you describe.

Because it would hurt performance a lot; I think!

1.
Some light-shader/code-update, a year and a half or two years ago, decreased my FPS to 50-70% of the previous state!
And I think it would be a similarily big update to that system.

2.
Personally I can live without lights beyond 10 basic settings (5 bits + bits for distance):

1. Full Darkness (=Disabled) OR
   1. Barebone sight (=Mostly Black)
      
   2. Dim (=Secondary with orange/green/purple as warm/cold/strange light)
      
   3. Average (=Primary with red/yellow/blue like flame-colours)
      
   4. Bright White (=Disabled supplementary)
      1. Depending on dim/average, the 2 bits to describe colour (disabled+3 options).

It is sufficient and everything beyond it is handled by distance to the light source.

Maybe you can modify the emitter's distance offset (as if the light source were further away before it starts emitting) via controller blocks.
That is why I voted for dim-able lights!


With that, it would be possible to keep a maximum FPS.
Perhaps it could be 7 instead of 3 options, depending on optimisation and code/hardwäre interfaces without loss of performance, but I wont go further than that.

Yeah, I was thinking the dimming might cause increased processing resulting in lag. Perhaps/surely there is a way to leverage the video capability to offload this processing to.

 

[NeonSturm]

Perhaps/surely there is a way to leverage the video capability to offload this processing to.

Dimming is not the problem. Light shades are.
With light shades you also spend additional time constructing (more options, more distractions).
But just swapping light may be as easy as changing a rail blocks direction.

Optional behaviour is not an easy solution, because you design a ship for all players with all kinds of settings. And we can't compete with "this" anyway, so I would choose to have an unique solution to attract players rather to compete on who has the best graphic engine. (This is:.)


Theoretically, the fastest setting would be to have a shipwide ruler which options to apply and make a bulk-processing of #1 entities and #2 entities. Practically, it may or may not be possible to sort entities into bulks without a hit on optimisation and performance plus having both makes SM more complex, thus error-prone, than having only one - errors may lead to design challenges, furture changes of howto build, etc.

But finally, it is time to decide, for everyone, whether you want a fast or an beatifully luxurious light system like the top-modern graphic engines running only on high-end PCs build for gamers.
We can't have perfect circles of random sizes with 45° wegedes, thus I opt for a fast solution and would put ressources elsewhere.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

Dimming is not the problem. Light shades are.
With light shades you also spend additional time constructing (more options, more distractions).

True! I can live without it if it's less of a strain on my old hardware.

But just swapping light may be as easy as changing a rail blocks direction.

I think I've mentioned this before, not only for lights. Ideally, it would be awesome if we could use logic to swap any blocks. We could do some crazy fun designs/stuff if this was possible.

But finally, it is time to decide, for everyone, whether you want a fast or an beatifully luxurious light system like the top-modern graphic engines running only on high-end PCs build for gamers.

Yeah, I understand what you mean. I recently saw another voxel space game in a trailer that has opted for speed over visual.

 

[EricBlank]

Lighting of a chunk is only recalculated when that chunk updates, either when a block is added or removed or a light source is turned on/off, so this shouldnt hurt fps any more than having a bunch of blinking lights does already.
I would love to have logic controlled adjustable lighting. Whether we can even have lights that are both dimmable and color-swappable via logic, because thats asking a lot from one block in starmade, it seems

 

[davedumas0]

Dim-able lights would be interesting and useful for lighting affects.
I'd be happy with the ability to swap lights using logic the same way we do with rails. This would enable us to have a single light in place able to change colour.

i posted a similar thing here
https://starmadedock.net/threads/swap-light-blocks.30900/#post-371314