Day / Night Cycles

[Luda]

Originally Posted by konidias

This is totally possible. If 2D per-pixel lighting were implemented into Graal. Not only could you do day/night way better than just darkening the screen, but you could have real time shadows, dynamic light casting over 2D images to give them the appearance of depth, and just generally a way more polished looking game.

Check out this example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q020X...eature=related

Granted, they have the room really dark for dramatic effect, but the same sort of setup could be done with a better lit room or area. Take note of how the level looks without the lighting. Definite improvement with the light system turned on. It helps break up repetitive tiling patterns as well.

There's also this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqz4dunlhX4

In my opinion, this sort of system would improve Graal ten fold. However I doubt it would ever get implemented... people are still waiting for tile layers to be added.

I'm honestly surprised it hasn't been added. Graal is still using images for
lights... which is like ancient nowadays.

That's so cool

[Dark_Zeratul101]

Something like that has already been done.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY07b...eature=related

It's a little crude, and at a certain perspective it looks like the walls are actually in 3D. But it can be done.

[DustyPorViva]

That's not really the same thing, though.

[Dark_Zeratul101]

What makes you say that?

[fowlplay4]

Well I think he's referring to shadows like on the house tiles for example..

In the morning the shadows would be on the one side of the house like they are now. At noon there would be no shadows. At evening the shadows would be on the other side, till the eventual night and the cycle repeats.

[Chompy]

Originally Posted by Dark_Zeratul101

Something like that has already been done.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY07b...eature=related

It's a little crude, and at a certain perspective it looks like the walls are actually in 3D. But it can be done.

Well, that isn't hard to make though. I just made that 3D wall effect on testbed ;o

[DustyPorViva]

Originally Posted by Dark_Zeratul101

What makes you say that?

Well I say it because it's essentially a cut and dry, minimalistic, but essentially backbone approach. It's the very basics of lighting -- calculating a point where light does not reach, and stop drawing the light; but that's it. It's very 2-dimensional, and doesn't even take into consideration height of objects... simply because it's very complicated to do so. For example, a table, or even a vase, will stop the light just as much as a whole wall or tree. It is also calculated by tile... which means it won't take into consideration the shape of the actual object, like a round rock will stop at the edge of the tile, therefor way past the boundry of the rock.

And simply: it's not very aesthetic. There are no shading buffers, it's CPU intensive, calculations will end up being inaccurate to lessen the load on the CPU, and it's greatly limited by dimensions. The ones posted are not very accurate in terms of real lighting, but they make up for it by being aesthetically pleasing.