Yea, but people are right that "darkness" was far too bright in oblivion, all I'm saying is that pitch black actually isn't very convincing darkness

I adore dark games. I tweak all my games for this, I can't get them dark enough.

My personal favorite is Silent Hill 2. Amazing experience.

A tiny light, lights so much space, it is global illumination. Light bounces off surfaces so it reaches everywhere. Our eyes can adopt too. In Oblivion, the torch is right in front of my face, adding HDR and I am practically blinded, just like real life.(Morrowind too with its HDR mods.) But in real life, we don't hold light sources to our faces, do we?

Until global illumination, I will be decreasing ambient lighting and playing games Doom style.

There is also the problem, number of light sources affects performance. While trying to decrease light sources they can end up with big artificial lights.

I hope global illumination will be used. CryEngine 2 had it... and that's a four year old engine.
Certainly helps with performance...
Makes it look more realistic and better too I'd say.

It is Cryengine 3 which will have global illumination(not the full one off course, next step from SSAO). Cryengine 2 had some ambient light thingy, which didn't end up in the product version.

And real-time GI should kill performance, normally. But there are many new fast methods. New games will look awesome.

Well, you're right on both accounts so you won't see me disagreeing on that. If anything, Bethesda would be awesome if they could do the following:

* lower the overall (global) lighting but keep 'dynamic' light sources (like candles/fire/etc)
* don't have torches in-our-face because they only blind us (more to the side, yes please)
* have enemies that suffer just as much from the dark as the player (instead of each having perfect nightvision)

That was another gripe I had. Even though I couldn't see anything in caves, my enemies could see me perfectly as if it was bright as day. Noticed the same behaviour in Fallout 3 as I recall. So making things darker without adressing the enemies' visual perception would probably result in people not enjoying their game.

Just some musings on my part though

Whoever came up with that claptrap needs to get out more.

Any interior room with no windows, lights go out (whether deliberately or accidentally)- complete and utter darkness.

Inside any room without massive picture windows on a cloudy night without lights- pretty complete and utter darkness.

Power outage anywhere on cloudy/non-moonlit night- complete and utter darkness compunded by the fact that it's everywhere.

Any time you're in a cave like the ones TES (and other fantasy RP) games are full of without a light source- complete and utter darkness.

Seriously, I have a hard time believing any significant portion of the population can reach the age of 18 without experiencing "complete and utter" darkness.

Indeed, there are many places (outside, starlight night for example) where it's dark but not totally so- but that's no excuse for the blatantly-false declaration that all places should therefore never be darker than a starry night. Such nonsense is why we get things like the "no light source needed anytime, anywhere" lighting system we had in Oblivion.

I think this is a much needed area to improve on and give the game even more RPG feel to it. It would definitely be cool to walk into your home at night after a day of exploring/fighting and it's dark and you can either go on up to bed or light up some lanterns/candles while you put things away, etc. And if you want to keep the candles burning 24/7 that's your choice.....or should lanterns/candles eventually burn out of oil/wax and need to be replaced or repaired ?

I'd also like to be able to shoot a fire arrow at a wooden object, barrel/beam,etc and see a little area around where the arrow is sticking catch on fire for a short while. Imagine being able to shoot mulitple fire arrows into some wooden things and in a sense create your own temporary wall torch ?

It's not a matter of whether it occours IRL or not. It's a matter of how the brain experiences it

Very true. But I also want the night lighting outside to be darker and less colorful (Purkinje effect) depending on moonlight (altitude and phase) and overcast. How about vision effects on common diseases? Nyctalopia (night blindness) for some common disease, and hemeralopia (very rare daylight "blindness") for one specific disease - guessing you know which one Should be easy enough with some post processing I think.

I'm surprised this feature isn't in a lot of games.

Never in Oblivion did I ever believe it was too dark to see in a cave. The one time I even bought a Light spell was because it was hard to see all the items in the arcane university's lobby. Not because it was dark in there, but because I dump my junk on the floor in there and it was hard to find my enchanted rings in all the mess.

I'd really like it to be dark enough in some caves that neither you nor the enemy can see anything without obvious light sources. Not just the traditional fire-based light sources (candles/torches), but also such things as breaking the ceiling open to let in the sun or bio-luminescent mushrooms.


Do I really have to ring the false information bell and flash my hypocrite warning lights? A LARGE majority of the population never experiences complete darkness. Complete darkness is 0% light emission. If you can see even a speck of anything then your are not in complete darkness.

Any interior room with no windows, lights go out (whether deliberately or accidentally)- complete and utter darkness. BAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. No, seriously good joke. If you can see your hand in front of your face, then it is not complete darkness. If you can see a
Inside any room without massive picture windows on a cloudy night without lights- pretty complete and utter darkness. I don't feel like being a justified jerk twice in a row. Read about the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bortle_Dark-Sky_Scale. Note that the darkest is still not complete darkness with clouds or without.
Power outage anywhere on cloudy/non-moonlit night- complete and utter darkness compunded by the fact that it's everywhere. See above. Read it again.
Any time you're in a cave like the ones TES (and other fantasy RP) games are full of without a light source- complete and utter darkness. Real life: Most caves, no. Deep caverns, yes. Video-games: Very rarely. Not even pokemon has complete darkness in their caves.

Seriously, facts and opinions are different.
Facts come from reputable organizations who publish their results after proving scientifically. Opinions come from a single person saying what they want. My friend is severely color-blind and says the sky is green.

I think that might get tedious... I, for one, don't want to have to constantly be buying candles.

As for the pitch black argument, I think that it would odd for the screen to be completely black, even if it is realistic. Maybe so dark that you can't really see much, like being in your room at night where you can make out the outlines of things but nothing else.

Also, I'd like for windows to be dark when it's nighttime. I remember being inside a building and light was coming in from the windows, and then I'd walk outside and it would be in the middle of the night.

That would be a cool feature, in oblivion you can use the theives arsenal mod to add water "arrows" that can extinguish most lights... great mod btw

Agreed on everything 100%.

This is something I feel was sorely lacking in Morrowind and Oblivion. I play a stealth character [Assassin/Thief] and I would greatly benefit from tech such as this.

Come on gamesas - you can do it! :deal::clap::tops:

The fixed lights in Arx Fatalis were usually ensconced torches that could be on or off; but more amazingly... the Player could light or extinguish them (for just the reasons you mention), and the guards would sometimes notice snuffed torches and walk to them and light them again.

**AFAIK... ZeniMax bought Arkane ~that made Arx Fatalis. :shrug:

It doesnt have to be complete darkness. But haveing it dark enough to barely be able see your hand in front of your face would be fine. But it should easily be dark enough to fall into a pit or walk into walls at the darkest.

I want my night to be filled with darkness.

I remember turning my brightness down in OB, such a game changer to simple effects.

I was actually scared to go into a room because I heard moaning......But from where?

I would love torches candles lanterns, etc in and out on inventory to be relittable/or blow out the light.

Also let us relite light sources with a fire spell or blow them out with some kind of gust spell.

Its an old game dont worry about that.
I hear alot of people saying that oblivion was ugly and morrowind too and i just dont understand them. they are not to the standards of AAA games right now but when they got out they were just stunnigly beautiful. it will be the same for skyrim

AFAIK... an AAA game is defined by how much money is spent on advertising.

Maybe that's because the world is alot lighter than it was in oblivion's time period.. And in a dark cave, once you get far enough into it, it will be very dark.. maybe not complete-no-light-utter-blackness dark, but reallly dark so that when you use your torch, you can only see (maybe) 10 ft in front of you..

If you see the Xbox version of the game, you would notice how dark oblivion was. I want darkness but I hade being a warrior who fight with melee weapons and cant even see what i am hittig. Check out the video and notice how dark this game really is, wich is certainly enough.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUtvj_pqxvs

Skyrim should not be darker than this.

Morrowind is great for this. Most of the interiors were just a bit too dark in that game. But, you could put down a lantern and have some extra light. There were also some lamps that put out a different color of light and those could be used to add some nice ambiance to the home.

Then again, in Morrowind, you could put things down in your house and they would stay where you put them too.

In the new graphic engine, if they use a lighting engine like http://www.geomerics.com/screenshots.htm, all the problem is solved and the lighting is dynamic and automated, and if you walk in a dark passage, and go near a red wall hanging, then the light hue of the passage becomes red, and you stand beside a green tree, then the passage becomes greenish hue.

And you only place a few lights around, and all the ambient light is automatically calculated, so if you light a new torch or extinguish a lighted one, you see a realistic change in the ambient light of the area.

They did it in Amnesia and it looked godly. And surprisingly it did not stress out my card too much. No reason why it can't be in Skyrim.

Remember, Oblivion was a long time ago, don't expect to see old tech.

I think I'd be happy with full GI only for sunlight and moonlight, and only for indoors. What is the cost for multiple dynamic lightsources (like torches we can place anywhere) even if it was just based on SSAO? Arma2 which have SSAO have a heavy penalty when using multiple non shadowcasting dynamic lightsources used with its town generator module. If they can pull off "anything", then sure, go for it. But GI and SSAO is fairly heavy stuff. Just trying to be realistic about it.