Dark areas are completely black

[marco.nadal.75]

I'm using Darkplaces engine.

I have noticed that the pre-baked lighting in Quake is kind of odd; If there is a light, a pillar and a wall (in that order), then the shadow cast by the pillar onto the wall is completely black. Changing gamma/brightness as in the sticky will not make the texture in the shadow any more visible.

IRL, some of the light would scatter and illuminate the area behind the pillar at least a little bit.

This does not happen in all maps equally -- some more, some less.

On a related question, I have been looking for a program to create light files for DarkPlace's RT light functions. Many legacy levels are too dark to be playable in DP's Full Light Mode, how do I fix them?

Thanks for reading! :-)

[MadGypsy]

Light Editor For Darkplaces

You can also use hmap2.exe to completely recompile the lighting of a map. Instructions are in the read me. I believe you can even use the -minlight # switch in a recompile, which will set the darkest areas of the map to a higher light level.

[golden_boy]

Quake does not have realistic lighting. Its lighting model is rather simplistic; if you want light on a surface, you have to stick a light entity in front of it. This is how all vanilla Quake maps are lit (and this is also why they have an unholy number of lights in them.)

The feature you're looking for is radiosity.

Custom compilers do have a feature called minlight, but that produces shitty results unless you know exactly what you're doing and balance its effects with manually placed antilights at the least.

[marco.nadal.75]

Thanks for the replies MadGypsy and GoldenBoy!

Tried h2map on wicked.bsp (Something Wicked This Way Comes, possibly largest Q1SP map in existance)
I know you have to run h2map three times to compile .lit file:

1. h2map -bsp2prt (produces .prt file necessary for step 2)
2. h2map -vis (recalculates VIS data for bsp, makes lighting faster)
3. h2map -light (produces .lit file, makes DP's rt lighting faster)

Got strange error message:

S:\Quake Epsilon\hmap2>hmap2 -bsp2prt wicked.bsp
hmap2 by LordHavoc and Vic
based on id Software's quake qbsp, light and vis utilities source code

4 threads
************ ERROR ************
wicked.bsp is version 1112756274, should be 29

[marco.nadal.75]

Extracted marcher.bsp from marcher\pak0.pak, passed step 1., but then:

S:\Quake Epsilon\hmap2>hmap2 -vis marcher.bsp
hmap2 by LordHavoc and Vic
based on id Software's quake qbsp, light and vis utilities source code

4 threads
---- vis ----
5856 portalleafs
19137 numportals
basevis done
portal 278 of 38274 ( 0%), estimated time left: 136 seconds************ ERROR
************
CheckStack: leaf recursion

Ouch. Recursion. I don't like the sound of that.

[Spirit]

Nothing is going to change for the better with the lighting if you recompile existing maps with hmap2.

The maps you chose to try are not exactly compiler friendly

There are light compilers with radiosity support but they are a bit harder to use (and it is pointless to recompile existing maps with it). qrad is one.

Keep in mind that Quake was one of the first, if not the first game to use lightmaps on its 3D levels.

[leopold]

When you use darkplaces, play around with r_ambient, should light dark areas up without ruining everything else.

[MadGypsy]

I have done search after search for a compiler named QRAD and there is nothing. The closest I can come is a book about Quake 4 compiling that says QRAD is what the lighting part of the compile is called and it stands for Quake Radiance, no mention of radiosity.

[marco.nadal.75]

What's the difference between .lit and .rtlights?

Thanks leopold, get pleasing results with r_ambient 2.

What's the difference between .lit and .rtlights?

Nothing is going to change for the better with the lighting if you recompile existing maps with hmap2.

No? Awww... I thought I could "re-light" an existing .bsp even without the .map by manually editing the lights (such as making them colored), using an editor or the lightmap mod and hmap2 -light. I figured I wouldn't need .map if I just changed the lights and left the geometry unchanged.
Was I wrong?

How do people like inkub make .rtlights for all the id maps and make it look so awesome?
What are cubemaps?

The maps you chose to try are not exactly compiler friendly

Gotta learn to walk before I can run, eh? ;->

How did Kinn compile marcher.map into marcher.bsp? Does having the original .map files make compilation work more reliably?
Did Kinn and Tronyn have to tweak and fiddle and perform voodoo to get their .map to compile?

[Spirit]

I have done search after search for a compiler named QRAD and there is nothing.

Sorry, dropped the "1". https://www.quaddicted.com/files/tools/q1rad.zip

[talisa]

lits only add lights to the map itself in some areas. but they only affect the structure and nothing else.
they work just like the original lighting in quake, except that they can be colored lights, and not only white

RTlights are as the name implies Real-Time Lights, lights which affect everthing, structure,
objects and monsters and such and they cast fancy shadows and such, and make the game look a lot more fancy and realistic

[talisa]

example of the differences:

DP with lits only:


.

DP with rtlights:


.

.

RTlights are really resource-heavy though and demand a lot of cpu and gpu-power, you need a quite powerfull pc to be able to run DP with them enabled.
if you do not have a powerfull pc your framerate will most likely die trying to run DP with RTlights, and i dont recommend using them if you do not

[marco.nadal.75]

.lit VS .rtlights

Thanks for that explanation talisa.

RTlights are really resource-heavy though and demand a lot of cpu and gpu-power, you need a quite powerfull pc to be able to run DP with them enabled.
if you do not have a powerfull pc your framerate will most likely die trying to run DP with RTlights, and i dont recommend using them if you do not

I have i5 4GHz and Radeon HD6950. I am unafraid.

Are .rtlights edited manually for each map? I get the impression .lit can be generated procedurally from .map or .bsp, but .rtlights have to be placed in the level manually.

Then again, sometimes I play some old .bsp with rt world ON and objects cast RT shadows. I keep two version of DP, one for HD content, one for vanilla, so I can test what will break the HD install. Everything works with the LD install so far.

Is it possible to have a different filter applied to LD textures? I'm thinking HQ4X or SuperEagle perhaps. Oops, that's getting OT now isn't it.

[talisa]

both have to be added manually to maps by dropping the files in your ID1/maps folder

if you do not have RTlights files for a map in your ID/maps folder and have RTlights enabled,
DP will simply convert all the normal lights in the maps to RT-lights, which might look 'ok' in some maps,
but it gives horrible performance cuz the normal quake-lights are extremely numerous and every single one of them is changed to an RTlight-source.

i do not recommend playing maps which do not come with RTlights files with the rt lighting option enabled in DP, cuz it can give really really bad performance in a lot of maps.


if you want to try RTlights, you can get them here:
NORMAL QUAKE (ID1) : http://quakeone.com/forums/quake-mod...-rtlights.html
MP1 SOA (HIPNOTIC) : http://icculus.org/twilight/darkplac...lights_soa.pk3
MP2 DOE (ROGUE) : http://quakeone.com/forums/quake-mod...rnity-mp2.html

just drop each pk3 in the correct folder.
RTlights for normal quake go into the ID1 folder
the ones for mission-pack1 SOA go into the HIPNOTIC folder
and for mission-pack2 DOE go into the ROGUE folder

[talisa]

lit files for normal quake you can get here: http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/fi...h_May_2009.zip
Dlit for normal quake: http://icculus.org/twilight/darkplac...xemaps_id1.pk3

.

i know theres lits for both mission-packs too, but i cant find them so quickly.
will look for them later and post links to them here for you