Game is exceedingly dark

[YuDenton]

I don't know if this is a bug in beta or something to do with my hardware but I've just installed DFU for the first time (Beta v0.13.1) and it's very dark in dungeons and outside at night. Impossible to play. (although outside at night was already very dark in the original, so it's mainly dungeons that are different)
From what I gathered online, DFU is generally too bright for most people before changing the light sliders, so it doesn't appear to be a common issue. I played around with the graphics settings to see if anything made a difference, and ended up reinstalling with a fresh settings.ini to make sure I hadn't broken anything but it's still too dark. The UI and videos look about the same brightness as they did in the original. It's only the game world itself that's too dark. My graphics card is a GTX 1060 if that is relevant.

- The three brightness settings are all set to 1.0.
- Item-based light source makes no difference.
- Retro Rendering makes no difference.
- It looks the same in fullscreen or windowed mode.
- I tried upping hardware gamma but that just made everything look like a washed out brown. Still can't see the opposite wall of a dungeon.
- Fresh install of DFU. No mods are installed.
- I also tried v0.12.3 to make sure it wasn't a bug with the new renderer.

Any other ideas on how I could start debugging this?

It's not a room/monitor brightness issue because I was playing the original in DOSBox for the past week without any noticeable problems. (except maybe the dungeons in the original were a little too bright) Haven't had brightness problems in any other games recently.

[haloterm]

That is known and being worked on by Interkarma, the Dev

Welcome to DFU

[YuDenton]

Thank you!

I wanted to add that I have the GOG release of DF and just now tested with DaggerfallGameFiles to make sure it wasn't an issue with the game version. Only difference noticed is that Privateer's Hold is a tad brighter than the dungeon from my old savegame. (a coven) It's still pretty dark for being at full brightness.

[haloterm]

Thank you!

I wanted to add that I have the GOG release of DF and just now tested with DaggerfallGameFiles to make sure it wasn't an issue with the game version. Only difference noticed is that Privateer's Hold is a tad brighter than the dungeon from my old savegame. (a coven) It's still pretty dark for being at full brightness.

See also this post, and the post linked in that post:

viewtopic.php?p=57408#p57408

And preview tweet for 0.13.2:

https://twitter.com/gav_clayton/status/ ... 91682?s=20

[Interkarma]

Some clarification is needed here. My recent tweet and other topics linked above specifically relate to an issue in retro mode with posterization/palettization enabled in darker environments. This is being worked on, but does not have an ETA release for fix yet. It definitely won't be as early as 0.13.2, though should be in next few builds before 0.13 is out of preview.

However, there's no issue under investigation for dungeons/night being too dark in general, other than the one with retro mode. This isn't a complaint I recall hearing about 0.12, or with retro mode disabled. First post describes trying 0.12 with & without retro mode, so this should be treated as support unique to OP.

YuDenton, can you please take a screenshot in game (default is F8 key) and attach to a reply here so we have an idea what you're experiencing. Please also attach a save so we can load up that exact spot quickly to compare. Link below outlines where to find saves, settings, logs, screenshots, etc.

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2360&p=27552#p27552

I'll follow up with support once we have a baseline to start from.

[YuDenton]

Hey Interkarma thanks for replying! As someone who long ago worked on a retro-game recreation project myself (including deciphering old data formats and reverse engineering game exes), I really appreciate what you've accomplished here. I can see how one might think it's an issue with Retro Rendering because the picture in that link looks very similar to mine.

I attached two screenshots from DFU (v0.12.3), the save folder and settings.ini inside the zip. The savegame is right outside the dungeon.

[YuDenton]

Here are the same screenshots in Daggerfall (Dosbox) for reference. I noticed I can adjust the brightness and contrast on the DFU shots to get the room to look the same, but then the UI elements are washed out. The color balance on those looks about the same without any adjustment.

[Interkarma]

Thanks for your feedback, screenshots and save, and for sharing some kind words along the way too!

Different lighting models aside between DFU and classic engines, the screenshots in DFU look about what I'd expect. I can very clearly see the far dungeon walls and the overall brightness looks roughly similar between your DFU and classic screenshots on my display. This is nothing like the issue being worked on for retro mode posterization/palettization where colours are fully crushed to black close to camera, so I'll continue to treat these as different conversations. If you find yourself unable to clearly see the opposite walls in the environment in your screenshots, I'd suggest there's also some local display tuning required as well. Daggerfall can be a very dark game at the best of times.

I think it's necessary for us to remove subjectivity based on our personal displays and try to find a more sciencey method to help move things forward. As you kindly provided comparisons between DFU and classic, I used an online tool to get the average colour of each bridge image then calculated the RGB to Luma (Y) to get the perceived brightness of each. I used the 601 formula which is:

Code: Select all

Y = R * 0.299 + G * 0.587 + B * 0.114

In this formula, black is Y=0 and white is Y=255.

Bridge
DFU average = 23, 21, 19 (Y = 21.37)
DF average = 35, 34, 32 (Y = 34.071)

Or to put it another way, DFU screenshot has an overall luminance of 8.3% and comparison classic screenshot has an overall luminance of 13.36%. BTW, you can see the same 8% and 13% in the HSL output of average colour generator with each image (where L is Luminosity).

Both screenshots are rather dark and you are correct that DFU has a lower overall luminance in that comparison. However, comparing different locations will yield different results, as DFU tends to light a bit brighter overall, especially in daytime and interior settings. That shot is a good example of a specifically darker area due to being open with few light sources, and low ambient being the primary source of light.

I'd also say it's supposed to be dark here. If I wanted more light in such an environment, that's when I'd deploy light spells or some other light source - that's what they're in the game for. The "item based player torch" lets you carry personal light sources ranging from lanterns (very bright) to candles (not so bright). Combine this with Torch Taker mod, and you have a nice role-playing means of managing extra light around dark dungeons. The ambient brightness scales are in the game for people who want to role-play darker environments, that's why the scale is 0 to 1 (default).

What I can promise is that I will continue to refine the game's lighting as best I can under the constraints I have to work with. The main constraint is that DFU must use a 32-bit naturalistic lighting model supporting everything from classic textures all the way to modded PBR materials. Even retro mode supports naturalistic lighting and mods. The palette effects are delivered by a post-process shader.

As 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. This is something classic does, as you can see in dungeons when standing close to a wall vs. far from a wall with no other light sources around. DFU's "player torch" is at best an approximation of this, and I'm working on something in addition to torch setup. 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.

[Interkarma]

BTW, the save you provided is just outside of Privateer's Hold, it's not the location in your screenshots. The goal of having a save was to reproduce the exact same location and vision on my end. 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.

If you can please provide a save matching screenshots above, I'm happy to show a couple of comparisons using the new setting I'm working on.

[Interkarma]

This seems as good a place as any to show off new feature I'm working on, called ColorBoost. The short version is this setting works alongside lighting and linearly boosts the colours of world close to camera. Think of it as modified ambient lighting with a rapid falloff so that parts close to camera get brighter while parts far from camera are unaffected.

At this time, you can set ColorBoost value anywhere from 0.0 to 10.0. I'll show 0.0, 3.0, 6.0 so you can see it progress.


ColorBoost = 0.0 (off and default) | luminance = 9%

cb_off.jpg (470.24 KiB) Viewed 1510 times

ColorBoost = 3.0 | luminance = 11%

cb_3.jpg (524.43 KiB) Viewed 1510 times

ColorBoost = 6.0 | luminance = 13%

cb_6.jpg (554.61 KiB) Viewed 1510 times

Note that only areas close to camera are boosted. This doesn't look completely flat like simply raising ambient light levels. It also helps keep the darker parts of dungeon in the distance. The result is a rather smooth and organic way to ramp the overall brightness that works alongside torch and other lighting sliders.

I'll keep playing with this on my end and tuning for performance, and I'll make it available in a 0.13 preview build as soon as I'm happy.

For anyone else reading, please note that ColorBoost is a feature unique to new shaders in 0.13. If a mod replaces the shaders with something else (e.g. Standard) then ColorBoost will not be available on those materials and player should disable ColorBoost if mixing assets and materials from different mods in their game. Otherwise there might be a brightness incongruity between materials.