Spring RTS Engine

Trying to make a new improved version of my SMD creator, I want to find out how the Light tags work.

From what I have gathered, the Ambient colour is the colour of the ground when in shadow. The Sun colour is then added to the Ambient colour when the ground is in sunlight.

Going off this imformation, if you have an ambient colour of 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, and a sun colour of 1, 1, 1, would this give a true sun colour of 1.5, 1.5, 1.5? And if so, how does this affect the colour of the ground? Will it appear all washed out?

How does shadow density factor in? Some places state that it is how 'soft' the edges of shadows are, while others say it is a multiplier placed on the Ambient colour.

So, once and for all, how do the light settings actually work? There are to many conflicting ideas floating around for me to be able to make any sence of them at all.

Just some random info I worked out while testing:

Shadow Density is very strange. If I have a value of 0 for Shadow density, the shadow will be non existant, and a density of 1 will make the ground the colour of the shadow. So it looks like a multiplier. But when the value is greater than 1, all hell breaks lose. Things will be in shadow while they should be in full sun. The number caps off at 2, where everything is in full shadow, even in full sun. Minus values will make shadows glow. Which kinda makes sense. But its still strange

A FogDensity of more than 1 will result in a total white screen. Not even any GUI. Will report as bug later

A minus fog density will result in the fog always being present, instead of just in the distance. The higher(technically lower) the number, the more the fog is visible.

Contrary to what you would think, a CloudDensity of 1 does NOT give full cloud cover, and a CloudDensity of 0 does NOT give a clear sky.

The map will ALWAYS be slightly discoloured. Even setting the ambient and sun values to 1 1 1, which in theory should give you a full colourd map with no shadows gives you a slightly discoloured map. Instead of being white like the texture, the map was slightly grey. And yes, I have made my own DetailTex. Which leads me on to:

How DetailTex's work. An rgb of 0 0 0 in the detail tex will give black ground. An rgb of 0.5 0.5 0.5 will give normal colourd ground. And an rgb of 1 1 1 will give really washed out ground.


This still does not help me (much) with how the Ambient and Sun colours work together, so any more info on that would be good.

btw, smd creator has a bad habit of screwing up start positions