I suspect a big part of the problem is the mesh lighting issue, right? Which sounds like it will get fixed.
But then yeah, the rest of your builds will be tough, I’m sure. I definitely don’t love how much work folks will have to do to get their places lit how they want, but I do love the way the new lighting looks!
I agree and that is why there is no point in doing anything until they fix the meshes. It might be enough for me to at least deal with it. If not as I have stated, I can store the good stuff and let the build regen. I can just have the machines I need and storage until I am more certain that the mechanics are more stable around lighting before investing in a build that might be changed by the developers needing or wanting to change the environment.
I hope they take some of the light absorption out of dark blocks.
Yes to the more gleam types. This will give us the option to make everything bright and shiny, dark as night of anything in between.
The endless possibilities it creates is awesome.
Oh gosh. I just logged in to a pretty dark room and for a split second wondered where I’d logged out. Then realised it was my little house…gamma 1, probably was about 5 (out of 10) before…
hmmmmmmmm
I haven’t played Boundless for several months but I was notified of this topic when @Kirinvar quoted my old topic about Improving Graphics Rendering. So I decided to boot up Boundless again today and have a look for myself.
After wandering around for about an hour in a variety of locations, I must say that I think the new lighting is WAAAAAAAAAY better than it was last time I played.
@CrimDeity - looking at your comparison screenshot, I honestly prefer the darker screenshot from after the update. The screenshot from before is actually a pretty good example of what was wrong with the previous lighting system. The bluish environment map was adding far too much shininess and light into that scene.
When looking at that screenshot, you have to ask yourself: Where is that bluish lighting supposed to be coming from? Why are some of the surfaces so incredibly shiny? Just look at those Refined Metamorphic stones at the top of the screenshot. They look ridiculous. They look like they’re made of ice and they appear to be reflecting light from an invisible source behind the wall.
Sorry for disagreeing but I think the devs have made great improvements to the lighting and you should see this as an opportunity to have some fun building some new lighting features into your build.
That previous post was easily one of the most (if not outright the most) well structured examples of constructive feedback this forum has ever seen, and I IMPLORE everyone to give that thread a read and learn from its example.
Honestly, if I could give you your own forum badge, I would have.
I have 51 bright blue gleam lanterns in this room. How is it even possible that my black marble, black mosaic, and black brick look nearly identical? Every room in my house has turned into a cave.
That actually does explain a lot. I still strongly disagree with that decision though lol.
In general, the game looks fantastic after the lighting changes. But blacks/dark colors need to be adjusted, and/or gleam light radius needs to be increased. I had to stick ~50 diamond torches in my storage room just to see what was in the storage blocks (and it was well lit before that).
Not quite. Vantablack absorbs 99.96% of light. Boundless black is 98.72% of light 
(Google suggests a typical black matte paint absorbs around 80% of light)
Close enough. Still not like every day black.
Tell him what he’s won Vanta White.
People may not like what I’m about to say but…how about not being condescending towards a player that may quit the game. Even if it’s meant to be a joke, they may not take it that way. To some people this game is there outlet, brings happiness to them and they take that quiet seriously. Again like I said probably going to get alot of hate for commenting this though don’t care.
I have no major problem with changing the lighting… I do have problems with changing the lighting and not giving me a gamma slider that I can use to make it so I can see to move around in a room that has tons of gleam but is aparently too dark due to my enjoying saturated colors.
I heartily appose the “darker colors give less light” thing if that’s really what I’m seeing here ( though it honestly looks like all gleam is going 1-2 blocks now and handheld sources seem dimmer) but to be fair, the gleam colors should be more like a light filter not a diffuser.
In real life black lights can give off just as much brightness as regular lights, but their color spectrum is so violet shifted we only see it reflect in a purple hue on light colored obects or colors specifcly designed to reflect it.
I love the way most of the opjects look now, i see a nice difference in the vibrancy of the colors… When I can see anyhting at all. (have some vision problems so this isn’t helping any)
I think the most dissappoionting thing about this color change is that even if you have all the colors of gleam in a room in a stunning rainbow display… it seems flat and nowhere near as enjoyable.
If this is the new face of gleam and lighting I would request that a new hgiher end refined gleam with a clean texture (not tiled like normal refined gleam is) be created that has a larger radiuis of light. So I don’t have to compromise my color palette to get the lighting back to an acceptable level…
I dunno, I both love and hate the colors and am truely torn…
Only problem with that is for those people that like the gleam bow gleams that haven’t been on a planet yet. Doubt they got enough gleam to do something like that. I spent thousands of coins just to get the lighting in my Oort storage on point and now it’s a black abyss.
I’m going to try and say this again since some people stubbornly think I want the entire lighting system rolled back.
This is not the case.
I do not want dark color blocks to have random metallic shine on them, or a waxy effect, or look blue like they did before. Even I was baffled by that.
The is issue is with how dark, dark blocks are indeed.
The dev(s) keep talking about wanting realistic lighting, that’s fine.
Here’s an example:
I have my walls painted black in my irl room for example. When I turn a light on, the room lights up, I can see. I can see the texture of my wall. (The wall isn’t completely smooth.)
When I turn on a small lamp which is right next to a wall, it doesn’t quite light up the whole room, no, but I can see a radius of light around that lamp, which reflects off the wall, leaving a bit of a “light circle” against the wall, and that corner of the wall is lit up. I can see the texture of the wall.
Black when applied irl, does not eat all light. Turning on a light in room with no sunlight entering, painted completely black, will light up depending on how strong the light is, you can see the shape of the room and the wall textures and objects in that room.
The devs insist that dark blocks should ignore all light an all builds that are indoors (and outdoors for that matter) should be pitch black to the point of not being able to differentiate block types.
Why have black mosaic, marble, and all the rock types and their refined versions? Why have black wood?
In this case, why not remove all black block types then and just have a single solid block representing black which could be used as a decoration then? But it won’t reflect any light, so you better just use like one or two in an entire build.
It’s not unreasonable to ask that we can see what texture/type of block it is when a dark block is exposed to light.
Have the people defending this (including the dev) think this is reasonable? I’m using somebody else’s picture/example for this:
Before update:
After update:
This is just one example here. The person who made this used their creativity to create an effect and a mood in the old system.
How is the after picture acceptable? Why should he have to redo his whole build and ignore his original intention? Or open a hole facing the sun instead of having a roof?
There’s plenty of other examples using torches, something meant to light up an area, and you still can’t see anything.
Dark blocks in Boundless should react to light like any other block in the game. Tone it down, sure, but don’t cause it to ignore light to the point that there’s no point in having a variety of dark blocks to begin with.
How else can I say this?
And this isn’t just about how black blocks are being treated.
Everything in general is still very dark and light giving objects aren’t doing their jobs.
Keep all black block types solid black, that’s fine, that was the goal, but a room filled with torches should light up a room that uses dark blocks. Carrying a torch/glowing object should light up your way.
I shouldn’t have to add 100+ torches to a small dark room just to be able to see texture.
I will also say again, if it’s technically feasible, why not have a tool that transforms the dark blocks into the shinier metallic/waxy blocks if we so wanted so they can reflect light better? It’s being proposed for gleam, why not normal blocks too? If that’s what we want to use?
It’s not acceptable, but you can’t have change without changing something. The devs are calling these “legacy builds”, the colours were chosen based on how they looked before, builds that want to keep the same look will now have to change their colour palette. You probably check how your blocks look with the lighting before you start building your giant palace, future builds will do this with the new lighting and look like they should.
See my above post in response.
I’m not talking about how the old blocks looked returning.
I’m talking about lighting.
Yes, you’re right.
This is what we have to do now to adapt.
But I ask, how is that fair to the people who built these previously? Who didn’t know/expect a massive change would occur at some point in the future?
In a game about building/creativity, that’s stifling that creativity.
“Here are tools, go wild. Ok, we’re taking some of those tools away so everything you did doesn’t work anymore… sorry! Oh, and we could do that again at any point in the future. Do keep playing though.”
I wish the devs could see from the perspective of the player instead of just the technical aspects.
I also wish the players who think the black block issue is somehow realistic and logical could put themselves in the place of the people who are affected by this. But, I mean, they can’t because apparently they don’t have any dark builds themselves or don’t mind changing everything to accommodate a change they had no control over.
I don’t want to build “something else”, I was perfectly happy with what I had. I don’t have a problem with the lighting changes, I just think the black block issue be tweaked.
Speaking of black and white, that seems to be how other people are seeing it.
I’m not happy with the lighting aspect as it is applied to dark blocks. Not the entire lighting system as a whole. If people want a dark, realistic, game, that’s fine, I don’t mind it either.
I just don’t think all “legacy builds” should be thrown out the window either and we should be forced to conform to imposed restrictions.
