Game is exceedingly dark

Post here if you need help getting started with Daggerfall Unity or just want to clarify a potential bug. Questions about playing or modding classic Daggerfall should be posted to Community.
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Interkarma
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Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: Game is exceedingly dark

Post by Interkarma »

For a "behind the scenes" shot, here's the boosted area tinted red. It fades to 0 and stops after 25m, just over half the dimension of an RDB block. I found anything shorter felt too much like a bubble around player, and anything larger had the same problem of just raising ambient light.

cb_tinted.jpg
cb_tinted.jpg (460.17 KiB) Viewed 559 times

I feel it looks quite nice in the naturalistic lighting of baseline DFU. I might even set a small amount of boosting as a default property based on your feedback.

This doesn't quite solve the problem with retro mode posterization/palettization, but it goes a long way towards the start of a solution.

YuDenton
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Oct 03, 2021 2:59 am

Re: Game is exceedingly dark

Post by YuDenton »

Ugh, this is embarrassing. :?
Since you took the effort to calculate and present actual data, I verified it myself and realized it was just my lying eyes. Sorry to waste your time. I had tried all those other troubleshooting steps but never even thought to try it on a different monitor. Actually since the compass and health bars look the same between shots (Daggerfall or DFU), and changing NVidia control panel settings didn't produce a better image, I assumed it couldn't be the monitor, but now I've simply dragged the pictures over to my second monitor and boom - like you said a little darker in DFU but at least it's *playable.* Don't know what's up with my main monitor. Believe me, on that one even using light sources and spells didn't help.

This shows my ignorance in graphics and color profile settings because it's still sort of black magic to me how one monitor could produce an entirely different profile than the other, when the screens look basically the same to the untrained eye. Maybe the contrast is a little different but I can't really tell except for the Unity window - and only the world space within that window. Oh well.
Interkarma wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 1:23 amAs part of working on solving the posterization/palettization problem, I'm developing a fairly general solution to brighten the areas closest to camera irrespective of light sources... I'll see if I can work this in a an extra slider option for game, which would allow you to raise your overall luminance of environments to something closer to your preferences.
👍

YuDenton
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Oct 03, 2021 2:59 am

Re: Game is exceedingly dark

Post by YuDenton »

Interkarma wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 3:42 am A save at the correct location will load in everything right down to the camera angle, which is very helpful for this kind of support.
I don't know what happened. I must have been half asleep at the time. Here is the correct dungeon.
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Interkarma
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Re: Game is exceedingly dark

Post by Interkarma »

I can't explain why the monitors are so different, but I am happy you were able to make some progress. You can probably imagine how disheartening it is to receive feedback both the game is too bright and too dark from different people within a few days of each other. :D

I think the ColorBoost feature will be useful generally for cases like this. At first, I was only going to make this available as part of retro mode, but after playing with it elsewhere I think it will benefit anyone who wants to juice up the colours near camera like classic does. With your updated save, I've made a couple of comparisons on that bridge position.


ColorBoost=0 | luminance=10%
bridge_cb_off.jpg
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ColorBoost=5 | luminance=14%
bridge_cb_5.jpg
bridge_cb_5.jpg (381.92 KiB) Viewed 519 times

People remember classic Daggerfall's dungeons as dark, but in fact they're really quite bright close to player and falloff to full black within a very short distance. It's that rapid light falloff and short draw distances which give it's dungeons those dark mysterious vibes. At least now player will be able to get closer to that effect by dialling down the ambient settings and dialling up ColorBoost.

Thanks for being so patient and pleasant to chat with. All the best with DFU from here! :)

Tkia
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Joined: Thu Dec 10, 2020 10:31 pm

Re: Game is exceedingly dark

Post by Tkia »

Interkarma wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 8:55 pm ...
I think the ColorBoost feature will be useful generally for cases like this. At first, I was only going to make this available as part of retro mode, but after playing with it elsewhere I think it will benefit anyone who wants to juice up the colours near camera like classic does.
...
Yes, please, make it available to all players. I remember when I first got Daggerfall back in the day it was actually a year before I could play it and it took a new monitor to make it possible. Until then I could't see a hand in front of my face to get through PH. Now it's aging eyes that require higher contrast than they used to need. From your earlier posted examples I can see me running a setting of around 3 as a regular thing. This function will give people options to work around varied vision and display problems so thank you for putting in the effort on it.

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Interkarma
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Re: Game is exceedingly dark

Post by Interkarma »

I'll definitely make this available as a general setting. It should be ready by around 0.13.3 / 0.13.4.

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