Board Thread:Suggestions/@comment-5354667-20150616004749

Because the world needs that.

Due to several circumstances which include the recent update to the game and some free time, I decided to write down a new mechanic that came to my mind while I was cramming studying for my exams. Links included in this post will either go to imgur links, or a roblox link.

Important note: This is a highly-opinionated suggestion, meaning that this entire post is strictly my opinion. This means that I won’t be changing the OP to better suit what you want it to be.

With the community backlash for the chat update and other mechanics of the game, such as the jump cooldown, and hardly any response to new items such as bluesteel (most people I see have mithril), I realized that individual items added to the game are not going to enhance gameplay more than a new mechanic that would affect everybody, such as the jump cooldown.

=The Time of Day Mechanic; Dynamic Lighting Additions= I know, this has been pitched before, and that the game devs are aware that lighting is a possibility. However the realistic effect that so many of you seem to be obsessed with should be satisfied with this pitch.

Night
As or right now, night is no different than day except for the lack of global shadows (the sides of a brick, like an ore, aren’t defined clearly) and the skybox faded into the night. I have played several games where night is controlled by dynamic lighting which gives a great effect, and the most popular game (that comes to my mind right away) is Apocalypse Rising (or Davidii’s old game, Into The Frost, if you wanted something that is within the survival genre). If you’ve never played AR before, the night is a time where hardly anybody (unless you have lights) moves about. This is mostly because it is hard to see where you’re going, so avoiding zombies is tough, and other, more advanced players could easily kill you. There are several different aspects that I want to address before I move onto the inevitable complaints and loopholes.

Fog
Fog creates low visibility in a game, as shown here. The fog can be changed to different Color3 colours, as well as having the intensity of it changed. Here are two images of fog, one with the FogEnd value set at 10, and one set at 500. The colour was set to a light grey-blue colour. This value can easily be configured. If you want to see the effect of fog on a game like 303, here are a few screenshots (this was done in a copy of 404 with the GUIs removed)

400 FogEnd (Light gray fog) 400 FogEnd (Black fog, used in the Halloween update)

50 FogEnd (Gameplay)

White/Light Gray vs Dark Gray/Black Fog
As you can see from the above screenshots, you can see specific shapes in the lightly-coloured fog. This also means that if you are looking out at the right angle, you will be able to see a player walking along the beach of an island. This fog colour would be best for early-morning (when the skybox looks purple).

Darker-coloured fog is what Into The Frost uses in its dynamic lighting mechanic. This is definitely more of a nighttime addiction, as the visibility is low just as in reality. This is the type of fog used during Halloween to create that eerie effect. This fog would be used at sunset (about 18:00:00), and slowly turn to black, hitting black when the moon sets (00:00:00), when it stays black until the sky begins to lighten, and the fog turns light. This is to emulate the light sources of the environment.

Other Fog Colours and their uses
Since fog uses Color3 for its colour value, the colours that it can be changed to are literally impossible. One of the only scenarios I can think of in-game where slightly-coloured fog could be used is during storms due to the skybox. To demonstrate, here’s what light grey fog looks like as a comparison to tinted fog at 500 FogEnd.

Light Grey Tinted (163, 157, 132)

Obviously, the colour could use a bit of refining, but for the purpose of this suggestion, it was a quick demonstration.

Ambient
Ambient is basically a fancy word for hue, which is a fancy word for the colour that is cast over everything in game regardless of brick colour. For example, if the game had its ambient set to (0,0,0) (black), the game would look like this. Ambient is important in working together with time of day, as it can create different effect based on the current events of the game.

The approximate Color3 value of any game is (153, 153, 153), or in other words, a mid-gray. Since most of the examples are covered in the fog section, I’ll post a few screenshots of different ambient values and their effects.

Dark orange (storms) Some sort of red-orange thing (sunset) Indigo (night) Purple (sunrise)

Putting This All Together
Night @ 00:00:00 & Properties Storms & Properties Sunrise @ 06:00:00 & Properties Sunset @ 18:00:00 & Properties

Album link: http://imgur.com/PhyvHBn,jIBuPmk,Vrm0V97,AFsZXZE,6SCpddS,h07fXp3,iDL2Flg,n9jRNNV

Some Dynamic Lighting Examples
Since I’m too lazy to research stuff in a free copy of 303, I used Into The Frost to explain some lighting effects. In this game, there are currently two (unless I don’t know of others) items that give off their own light; the permanent torch, and the torch. The permanent torch is building that uses a PointLight with a range of 32, so it illuminates everything in a range of 32 studs. The torch creates a PointLight at the player with a range of 32 as well (something like that; I’m working off of memory), which emulates what the dynamic lighting of a lantern is, roughly.

Other Technical Lighting
This is not as fully refined, as I don’t see much of a use for it. ColorShift is a property split into two; ColorShift_Top and ColorShift_Bottom. Whatever colour these properties are set to is the hue that it will reflect off of the top or bottom of an object, respectively. All games have their default Color3 values set to (0,0,0) which is black.

Since this would apply to all surfaces, this is what it would look like in terms of 404. The Top is set to (0,0,255), which is blue. The examples are with ColorShift on, and without, respectively.

14:00:00, 14:00:00 20:00:00, 20:00:00 Album link: imgur.com/wJLJY21,jAkn0zo,BwnMMer,m4PCevf

Problems
'''But Anna, we won’t be able see where we are going! What if we walk into a Teraphyx? -wail-''' This is probably one of the most likely scenarios. If you don’t know already, light tools (lantern, torch, etc) give off their own dynamic light, as shown by these three screenshots; crude torch, oil torch, lantern. Having a light source would widen your visibility area, and therefore, only players who have the most advanced light-sources would be able to travel during the night, and even then, names and the health GUIs of animals are visible, so someone can make a quick escape if needed.

But raiders! I know that raiders are a nuisance at times, and can quickly put new players off of the game. However, night affects them too. If they want to raid during the night, they will need a lantern to see where they’re going. By the time that the raider will have pulled a weapon, the rest of the tribe would have been alerted and ready to attack, since the light must be sacrificed for a weapon. More advanced players will have the advantage, but they have the advantage in many scenarios in the game, and in pretty much every game in Roblox, as it currently stands anyway.

What happens if you spawn during the night?! Obviously, nighttime spawning is not ideal, especially given the terrain and location of several spawning islands. However, a crude torch is just a handle + hemp, which isn’t very hard to create considering that the resources are available on every island with a spawn point on the classic map.

You won’t be able to do anything during the night! Yes and no. Light sources, when not in a dark cave, do not run out of light. This means that you can craft a crude torch, throw it into a box made out of planks, and it will stay emitting light until the player who crafted it leaves the server. So, you can still do things at night, such as craft and forage, just by dropping the light source on the ground. Also, you won’t be completely blind; you’ll still be able to see a little bit in front of you.

Wouldn’t that attract more attention? Not as much as you would think. To answer this one, picture this scenario; a large tribe on Plateau or Mainland, with walls/lighthouses. In the current night system, the walls are more of an attention caller than anything. With fog enabled, the FogEnd value determines at what stud radius, the reference point being your character, things become visible in front of the player rather than wholly obstructed. So, if you are on Spire mining iron with a lantern down next to you, the light will not be visible until it is within the FogEnd value. For example, if the value is 100, it will only be visible to someone who is within that 100 stud radius. In conclusion, it wouldn’t attract more attention unless you are very close to another tribe.

'''Just in case you’ve forgotten, this is still my opinion, and not a collaborative suggestion. Feel free to add comments, but trying to change different aspects of it is not what I’m looking for. If you want to make a similar suggestion, create your own thread.''' 