Light Sources?
Moderator: Moderators
Light Sources?
Can we create, destroy, and manipulate a point-source of light, using the LUA interface tools? If so, how?
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- Imperial Winter Developer
- Posts: 3742
- Joined: 24 Aug 2004, 08:59
Imagine turning shadow mapping on and off, and the performance difference.
Then, factor in a 5-10% performance decrease for lua speed and inexperience.
Then place 1 extra light point other than the sun.
You now have 2 shadow maps to handle and a lightmap.
Add a third light point.
2 lightmaps, and 3 shadowmaps.
Now imagine that this was implemented per map. It wasnt in settings.exe. Imagine the user outrage.
Stuff like dynamic lighting is not something that people should implement in lua using the tools currently provided. Its possible, and you could probably get away with a few tricks here and there rather than full dynamic lighting. But the lighting effects would need to be mod absed not map based save for features, I'm thinking street lamps on dark maps, light houses, fires.
Then, factor in a 5-10% performance decrease for lua speed and inexperience.
Then place 1 extra light point other than the sun.
You now have 2 shadow maps to handle and a lightmap.
Add a third light point.
2 lightmaps, and 3 shadowmaps.
Now imagine that this was implemented per map. It wasnt in settings.exe. Imagine the user outrage.
Stuff like dynamic lighting is not something that people should implement in lua using the tools currently provided. Its possible, and you could probably get away with a few tricks here and there rather than full dynamic lighting. But the lighting effects would need to be mod absed not map based save for features, I'm thinking street lamps on dark maps, light houses, fires.
Is it just me, or every time I start to talk about ideas here, it becomes an irrelevant argument
Ok, so JC, you're saying "don't do this, you fool, because it would all have to be routed through all the drawing calls, and doing it through LUA would take too darn long". Good enough. I figured that was the answer, because of the way that the map formats are all tied into the rendering system, but I wanted to be sure. TBH, I didn't really know where I was going with this, because custom GroundFlashes and other nifty things are in the next Spring anyhow, and I don't think I'll actually need it.
Ok, so JC, you're saying "don't do this, you fool, because it would all have to be routed through all the drawing calls, and doing it through LUA would take too darn long". Good enough. I figured that was the answer, because of the way that the map formats are all tied into the rendering system, but I wanted to be sure. TBH, I didn't really know where I was going with this, because custom GroundFlashes and other nifty things are in the next Spring anyhow, and I don't think I'll actually need it.