setimgcolors, seteffect
 

Why does seteffect need to remove alpha from everything under the gui? Why can't it be that the negative alpha caused by seteffect be cancelled out by the positive alpha in setimgcolors? Instead of having a blurry light, there would then be a light that actually makes things more visible, which would be the purpose of most lanterns and lights. It would really improve scripts. For instance, one could make a nearly pitch black basement or dungeon and let the characters have flashlights or lanterns.

I agree with this.

Right now you can't make good lights because they just appear over the darkness, but don't really help.

Drawaslight doesn't really cancel out the seteffect, which you would want for a lantern.

I am surprised that we seem to be the only ones who really care...

Well, because that's how it's coded. My understanding is that the lights are immediately applied to the screen, meaning that they destroy some of the information below. To facilitate your suggestion, there'd need to be some kind of secondary buffer that accumulates all the different light modifiers before they're applied to the level, and that would:

1. Require quite a hefty rewrite of some systems.
2. Force a fairly dramatic increase in memory usage.

so what you're saying is??
lights modify drawing board x,y
lights modify drawing board x,y
lights modify drawing board x,y
lights modify drawing board x,y

vs

check lights x,y
check lights x,y
check lights x,y
check lights x,y
lights modify drawing board x,y
lights modify drawing board x,y
lights modify drawing board x,y
lights modify drawing board x,y
???

I don't think destroying data is exactly the best way to go about anything, I would much rather search for more efficient ways of applying data. It works how it works. The only way to fix this up would probably be to make it so there was no coloration loss.

No, I don't think so.

Can you present a feasible method?

this is sort of what Massokre means, if you don't get what he is saying

it is removing the darkness from the area around the player in this created image

edit: I meant you in the general sense, not specifically referring to your post, Kaimetsu

I think my first reply proved that I "get what he is saying".

Sortof like how gmaps are expected to load quickly....

The most I can do with my programming is draw maps out of text and have the player (the character "@") run through it collecting or fighting NPCs. This is mostly because I don't know what to do to draw graphics. I am not so good at programming (self proclaims a "beginner").

How much memory would re-reading the section of tiles/images that a light is on take?

My normal thinking would say make another thing and add up all the alpha. This would probably take a lot more memory.

Huh?

You want to re-render the entire level every time a light is drawn?

A much better solution. But you don't get props, since I already suggested it in my original post :p

You don't have to rerender the entire level every time a light is drawn, just the affected part.

You're much better solution would be the obvious one. We're trying to think of a not-so-obvious one.

Considering all the other things that might be drawn on the level - NPCs, projectiles, [i]other/i] lights - that could get pretty intensive, no?

Bottom line: You'd need a whole extra buffer at the very least, which costs a hefty sum of memory. Aside from that, Stefan would also need to rewrite many of the core systems. I agree that the result would be nice, but I also think there are more important things.

I guess it would require some kind of alpha map, which prevents the daynight effect from darkening some areas. Will be interesting to find a solution for that.