Can't Seem to Increase Minimum Brightness?

[cheekypuss]

With regard to map q2caves.zip available from here . Particularly when a little way into the map, there is a fairly large cavern area with a lot of the area pitch black!

Despite running Arghrad with the command -minlighta [num] to increase the minimum brightness so that the pitch black areas are no longer pitch black, it doesn't seem to work. The pitch black areas seem to remain pitch black!?

I've tried -minlighta 90 setting in Arghrad which should increase minimum lighting dramatically, but it appears not to work for this map.

Any ideas as to why increasing minimum light doesn't seem to work on this map?

Apart from re-editing the original .map (which I don't have), is there any way to increase minimum brightness (particularly in pitch black areas) so that all areas are visible to a degree with no more pitch black areas?

[knightmare]

There may be fields set in the BSP's worldspawn that override the -ambienta or -minlighta command line parms.

Any of these fields will have to be changed or renamed: "ambient", "light", "_minlight", or "_ambient". You should use a hex editor to either overwrite the existing values, or change the field names so that ArghRad doesn't recognize them. Using a conventional text editor can easily change the offsets, which would probably corrupt the BSP.

[cheekypuss]

Jul 18, 2024 17:13:51 GMT -5 knightmare said:

There may be fields set in the BSP's worldspawn that override the -ambienta or -minlighta command line parms.

Any of these fields will have to be changed or renamed: "ambient", "light", "_minlight", or "_ambient". You should use a hex editor to either overwrite the existing values, or change the field names so that ArghRad doesn't recognize them. Using a conventional text editor can easily change the offsets, which would probably corrupt the BSP.

Thank you for this reply.

I have opened the q2caves.bsp file in a hex editor, but frankly I don't really know where and what the "fields" names are so I don't know what to rename.

What is the difference between "ambient" and "_ambient", and "light" and "_minlight"? Is "_ambient" is the same as "ambienta"? Is "_minlight" is the same as "minlighta"? Is "light" the same as "minlight"?

On searching the q2caves.bsp within the hex editor, I found a couple (or so) of "_ambient" references, and a couple (or so) of "_sun_ambient" references. Do these have anything to do with the issue? I also found numerous "light" references.

Would you please elaborate on how do I find the appropriate field name to be renamed to either "ambient", "light" (or "minlight"), "_ambient", or "_minlight"?

[knightmare]

You need to find the set of fields for the worldspawn entity (bounded by curly braces). Search for the below text in the .bsp, as there is only one worldspawn. It will be in the set of fields you need to focus on.

"classname" "worldspawn"


Then look for the field names I posted, and rename any that you find. There's no difference between them when they're used in the worldspawn.

BTW, "_sun_ambient" is for the minimum light for shadowed areas. You may want to change it if it is less than the minimum brightness you set.

[cheekypuss]

Thanks for the clarification.

By comparing a map that I could adjust minimum lighting to this q2caves map, I found the statement "_ambient" "10" present within the q2caves bsp and the statement not present within the other bsp for comparison.

As an experiment, I changed the value of 10 to 30 so the statement "_ambient" "10" became "_ambient" "30" within the q2caves bsp. Saved the changes and tested the map. No change in minimum brightness was noticed!? I thought changing the ambient value to a higher value would increase minimum brightness, but this was apparently not the case!?

Renamed "_ambient" to "_mmmmmmm", a non-sensical name within q2caves bsp and saved the changes. Then ran Arghrad with the switch -minlighta 30 on the modified q2caves bsp and saved the changes.

Tested q2caves map again, and THIS time minimum ambient brightness had increased and removed the pitch black areas from this map!

[knightmare]

Glad to hear it worked for you.

[cheekypuss]

Thanks.

But any comment as to why changing the "_ambient" "10" statement within the original q2caves map to "_ambient" "30" didn't seem to have any effect on map minimum brightness?