[LVL ED] Boxlights

[Romulator]

Could someone explain to me these things:

1. The purpose of a boxlight.
2. Where a boxlight is used appropriately
3. How a boxlight would be used appropriately
4. And what would be notable colours to focus on in certain rooms.

Its my understanding that they would be used to light an area with a consistant tone of some sort based on the diffuse color, similar to fog, but rather used to keep an area lit. All my time in mapping I have used either pointlights or spotlights, but had never understood proper boxlighting.

I'm always generous with my posts so, +rep (if I cannot straight away, its coz of the fact you cannot do it many times in one day) to anybody who helps out

[PutraenusAlivius]

1) The purpose is to light up an entire level. If it's night, have the boxlight to be faint blue.
2) Any where.
3) See 1)
4) Depends. But make it faint. If it's blue then faint blue and so on.

[CarnivorousJelly]

Could someone explain to me these things:

1. The purpose of a boxlight.

Give the entire area a base ambient light so that you don't leave black-holes-of-darkness all over your map from pointlight abuse.

2. Where a boxlight is used appropriately

Pretty much every map you'll ever make. A better question would be "where would a boxlight be inappropriate?" - I still don't have an answer to that because I always use a boxlight on my maps.

3. How a boxlight would be used appropriately

Make it just slightly larger than the entire map you've created then change the colour so it matches the rest of the lights on your map but is about 10-15% as bright as the brightest one (window/candle/fire/ bright spotlight). In other words, if your brightest light is pure white (1.000 1.000 1.000), then your boxlight would be between (0.1, 0.1, 0.1) and (0.15, 0.15, 0.15)

4. And what would be notable colours to focus on in certain rooms.

Nice question! I love it when you guys ask good questions like this
Basically, it depends on the source of your light:
External light from sun/moon - blue for night/dawn/dusk/sunrise/sunset and yellow-white for daytime
Open Flames - Try a reddish brown. You don't want it to be too red or the walls will look like they're covered in blood. If it seems to red for you, bring the green slider closer to the red slider and it'll yellow out a bit.
Any sort of atmospheric attempts - I've used dim, purple-grey boxlights before with cream-coloured lighting because it made a room look really cool (I was going for a dawn simulation but I liked the purple too much); sewers/overgrown areas tend to be green to yellow-grey; dreams sequences tend to use white lighting (pure grey boxlight) with white fog.

Thanks for asking about boxlights - a lot of beginning mappers mistakenly believe that boxlights serve no purpose and leave them out, causing their maps to be completely black with little islands of lights where they threw in pointlights or windows. There's a really awesome tutorial for lighting already on the wiki (http://wiki.frictionalgames.com/hpl2/tut...tutorial_2 ), but if you have any other questions, you can ask me

[Romulator]

1) The purpose is to light up an entire level. If it's night, have the boxlight to be faint blue.
2) Any where.
3) See 1)
4) Depends. But make it faint. If it's blue then faint blue and so on.

Ahh nice and straightforward. +rep

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Nice question! I love it when you guys ask good questions like this

Spoiler below!

Thanks for that tutorial link and your information When I first used a boxlight, I just let it fill one whole room @ 1.0, 1.0, 1.0 and it made my map look pretty poor to say the very least. That put me off boxlights for two reasons:

1. I didn't want my maps to look poor, but I would think that if I knew how to use them properly, I could perhaps make something better than just many lights on the ground with dark patches in the corner.
2. When i looked through the Amnesia maps which FG had designed, I did not see many boxlights, rather just many pointlights every once in a while.

I'll be sure to start experimenting now. I wont be able to note too many differences as the entire story is in grayscale, but im sure it would at least look a little more lovely and appealing.
Thanks again for the input. +rep

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but if you have any other questions, you can ask me

I MAY pm some screenshots or stuff later if needed. I've made myself a couple of maps, so I'm not an amateur, but I could always use some help if I ever need it. After seeing some of your screenshots on the criticism thread, I'm sure you would be most helpful :3

[FlawlessHappiness]

Useful tip.

Instead of having many boxlights, I usually only have a single one in each map.
Make it very low, like 0.05 / 0.05 / 0.05
Change the colors of what you like, but keep it under 1.0 except your know what you're doing.

There shouldn't be as many boxlights as Pointlights in your map. That's why FG didn't have them either.
Pointlights are good for details, while Boxlights does the general lighting.

[Romulator]

Useful tip.

Instead of having many boxlights, I usually only have a single one in each map.
Make it very low, like 0.05 / 0.05 / 0.05
Change the colors of what you like, but keep it under 1.0 except your know what you're doing.

There shouldn't be as many boxlights as Pointlights in your map. That's why FG didn't have them either.
Pointlights are good for details, while Boxlights does the general lighting.

Well, after some rigorous testing and comparison, you only notice the difference between the boxlight when you go from one to another when you're making a grayscale CS. Otherwise, the general wall looks the same unless the room is a pure white

[FlawlessHappiness]

If your room is pure white, maybe turn down the boxlight a little bit?

[Romulator]

If your room is pure white, maybe turn down the boxlight a little bit?

Well, it isn't pure white Its like 0.325, 0.365, 0.822, 0.222.
But in Grayscale, it doesnt look much different to a normal 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1.0

xD

[TheGreatCthulhu]

That's because, when converted to grayscale (ignoring the alpha), you get (0.325 + 0.365 + 0.822)/3 = 0.504 for each color component - which is almost exactly the same as 0.5, 0.5, 0.5.