Effective "Darkness" System

[Red_Giant]

Hi. I've tried experimenting with a "Darkness" system, in which the play screen is mostly obscured by shadow save for the reaches of a "light source", usually centered on the player or whatever.

This is easy as pie when there is only one light source- just use a big ol' active object with a hole cut out of it- but I am immediately stumped when attempting to create multiple light sources. I've had some success using Active Overlays, but there are still problems when multiple lightsources overlap each other.

So I was just wondering if anyone out there could provide a working darkness system like the one I described. Thanks in advance.

[Stephen]

Try this:

Flashlight Example

stephen1980

[RickyRombo]

Active overlays work fine for me. Just draw with the RGB 0,0,0 and have it set at transparent mode. If they overlap the will appear to join.

[00J]

that's how nintendo was doing it for years.

But what results are you after?


Shot at 2007-11-04

[Red_Giant]

Try this:

Flashlight Example

stephen1980

Like I said in my post, It's easy when only one light source is used, but I can't seem to do more than one effectively.

Active overlays work fine for me. Just draw with the RGB 0,0,0 and have it set at transparent mode. If they overlap the will appear to join.

I can't seem to crack it. Do you mind offering an example?

[Red_Giant]

Okay, I've actually solved my previous problem. This is what I've managed to do so far;

http://www.box.net/shared/j61485e65c

Left or Right click to activate light. Does anyone have a better or more elegant solution than this? Maybe one that supports custom shaped lights or feathered edges?

[uprize]

if you figure out a good example please let me know as I am interested too.

[Red_Giant]

*cough* So am I....

[RickyRombo]

I would say use Alpha transparency, but that wouldn't look too great, darker rings would be visible even if they overlapped...

I know you could use the hole effect in HWA, but I'm not sure how you would get multiple holes...

Arg I'm not quite sure on this one...

If I had more free time I'd figure it out.

[uprize]

it would be great to have some sort of Dynamic lighting extension for MMF2 in which you could input various light sources, specify the radius, intensity etc and it would calculate the alpha transparency and you could paste this into an overlay or something.