Post by NIN-Kitsune on Jan 27, 2015 2:17:36 GMT -5
I remember way back when I very first started out with just altering lighting in existing .bsp maps with the help of mapmixer utilizing arghrad and always fiddled with my gl_modulate values to see how things would look, and now much later, I had become quite adept at knowing how to place lighting and do it reasonably well in my own maps made from scratch these days even though I'm not quite a pro still, but one thing remains a bit less obvious to me that I wonder what other mappers are doing in regards to, and that is determining how the maps lighting should look for many different players who tend to have very different brightness and modulation settings. These days I have fine tuned myself to having no other settings different from the defaults of stock Quake 2 other than having a modulation setting of 3 (and especially no gamma, I think that looks horrid both for judging a maps appearance, and playing), because gl_modulate 1 and 2 do tend to look too dark and contrasted in most monitors I have used, while 3 seems to strike the perfect balance of realistic looking lighting, and anything higher than 3 tends to make maps look overly bright and lose any defining shadows and subtle lighting differences. Also, I tend to use light emitting textures in my maps with their default brightness values, I rarely change them.
As can be seen, the first image of one of my older maps has modulation of 1, it looks much too dark according to that default setting, while the next image has a modulation of 3 and has the map exactly as I think it should appear, although if it is set on 1, I hope it still remains acceptable enough for those players who choose to play maps that way. Have I struck a good balance? I chose 3 after a very long time of playing many maps both stock Quake II and made by other players including those made by the most talented of all mappers who are here, whom I'd value an input from as well ^w^. It just seems from all my time messing with the settings, I think gl_modulate 3 seems the most fair to set lighting standards with in my future projects?
As can be seen, the first image of one of my older maps has modulation of 1, it looks much too dark according to that default setting, while the next image has a modulation of 3 and has the map exactly as I think it should appear, although if it is set on 1, I hope it still remains acceptable enough for those players who choose to play maps that way. Have I struck a good balance? I chose 3 after a very long time of playing many maps both stock Quake II and made by other players including those made by the most talented of all mappers who are here, whom I'd value an input from as well ^w^. It just seems from all my time messing with the settings, I think gl_modulate 3 seems the most fair to set lighting standards with in my future projects?