The new lighting system: my dark view

Personally I really like the colours now, it does feel a whole lot more immersive what with having actual shadows again.

I like that black is black etc and it has given me reason to try and inject some good contrasting colours into my building (I used quite a lot of refined black meta due to its previous shininess).

However, I think that maybe there should probably be more gleam types that are classed as “light”, as many of the colours I have seen that are now dull, are in fact what I would expect to be much better at emitting light.

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I will disagree you might like light builds I do not. Again like you said personal opinion, but to have the game force players to use a certain palette does not seem like it is trying to encourage creativity. The more you restrict choice through game mechanics, then do you not limit creativity?

I would agree that reflections are well done, the liquids mechanics are well done. The natural lighting is well done. I think the artificial lighting (gleam) needs to be changed and how meshes handle light needs to be looked at.

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Defective for you might not be defective for everyone. I for one always wanted a material that is essentially a void, so black you can’t see it. But since they’re changing the way existing blocks look people’s work put in to a build can be invalidated. And the new paints are so rare and can’t be used on all blocks it’ll be a real problem if you have to re-do a whole build just to get it looking good with these changes. Not to mention what if in a year they change it again?

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I definitely do agree that the tools look fantastic now. They do look more real, metallic, gem-like and such.

Thank you for providing some examples too by the way.

I think it’s important for the sake of discussion to shy away from “it just feels good” and look at the pros and cons.

While there will always be people who prefer the old way and the new way, I think it’s good that we try and find a common ground, find what we all like, and what we all feel like might do with a bit of an improvement.

:slight_smile:

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Game shouldn’t force players to use certain colors and limit creativity, to me it is one of the core thing of Boundless.I expect players find now new colors that will look nice now, still I am trying to hold myself to change colors in builds just because of I expect to see adjustments to just released system.

Also being honest about this dark world issue; I would be also complaining how build has gone dark if I would have been building with dark blocks and using gleam my light source. That is much rework.

Game offers way to fix many building related light problems with sprays, I am just afraid that if exoworlds keep being rare it won’t be easy and cheap way to fix things, all exo jumping, goo hunting and farming and then playing paint mixing is not easy and fast way to fix buildings if stuff stays dark like this.

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And you cannot paint gleam. But we will see what is decided. No point in tearing anything down until they decide what if anything they are going to do.

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Really no point in playing till they decide what to do for some of us.

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I’ve been concerned about the exo goo/paint sprays from the time it was mentioned. It sounds like a great idea in theory, but it shouldn’t be extremely rare and expensive. It should be a convenience item for making the decision to recolor your build easily, I agree with that.

I kind of wish the devs had made a “block swapper” tool instead. Simply load up a block of your choice, aim the block swapper at already placed blocks and swap them out, old ones going back into your inventory.

Since we have this paint spray as an option instead, they need to not be tied to exo worlds in my opinion. It should be something that’s always accessible. Block and gleam colors themselves can be tied to exo worlds and that’s fine I guess, but if we want to recolor our build with existing colors/blocks we should able to do that easily without having to redo them or tediously replace one block at a time like most voxel/building games.

This is an idea but until then I still have a few thousand storage blocks that I would have to replace. . get the glue and other materials, process into storage, remove what is already in storage, replace the blocks and then replace what was stored. And without any changes I end up with a few thousand worthless storage blocks that I might as well let regen. Fun times

Definitely don’t do that yet, wait and see what happens. I feel like if anything, the storage block darkness issues can be fixed. (Or adding more light to inventory versions of objects.)

I’m certainly deflated about my “black city” build as it’s now just a black hole, but I haven’t given up hope yet.

Hopefully there will be some tweaks coming that will make everyone happy.

I am not going to do it now. I agree this was just released yesterday, need to see what if anything happens.

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Great discussion guys, keep it up.

Also, let’s not just talk about dark blocks.

Let’s talk about lighting in general and night for instance. For those of you who are happy with current lighting system or not, what do you think needs tweaking/fixing?

I feel like everyone has mentioned something about the lighting system that concerned them.

Remember, this post isn’t about block colors and dark ones specifically.

It’s about the lighting system as whole. What about gleam? How lights glow? Etc.

If your build hasn’t been affected, what about other things? Is night too dark? Do inventory/shelf versions of items look odd? Shadows? Gleam brightness? Exploring in caves?

I was shocked when i saw my lilac bricks in lamblis because they look completly different colour in the daytime.Ie they appear blue.The lamblis trees look purple to me not a beautiful bright pink.Im disapointed in the way my creation looks like now.I think it looks gothuc because of the dim lighting.I love the reflections i see in the blocks but why on earth do my colours look so different.My gleam pyramid looks not so good niow because the gleam dosent really have much light to it.Noting looks alive and vibrant now and thats weird because gleam iwas supposed to look a bit dazzling and bright.The whole point of me building with alot of gleam was becausee i love things to look bling and bright alive.Part of me feels at night it does remind me of a dark gothic mysterious world which us perfect for a gothic spooky castle but in general its just dead looking.However i lov the lava and water and also the black glass looks better.They shouldnt of dimmed down the gleam and change the tree colours.Well i guess thiose people that are sensative to bright lights will be extremely happy now.Even though this is new i will still play regaurdless of how it all looks because after all its just a game and not real anyway.I notice that when daylight appears things dont look so crisp and colours are messed up big time.In my opinion keep the lava and water effects also the beautiful reflections in the metal blocks then change my trees to the original pink in lamblis and turn up the lights.lol My creations look dull so please bring them back to life.They must of listened to all those complaints about bright gleam being to bright .Even the most beautiful creations are gonba look ■■■■ now.

Correct me if I’m wrong but the gleam lanterns, normal lanterns and gem torches kick out more light than the refined gleam or raw gleam?

Perhaps this is how gleam is intended, not as a difinitive light source but just a block that glows slightly. Crafting them into lanterns turns them into light sources now it seems… Which in a crafting sense makes sense to me.

I’m not saying I am happy with this, nor unhappy. I think it’s an interesting change and I’m happy to roll with anything.
I just think gleam has shifted purpose perhaps? However changing this so dramatically leaves a lot of builds in the dark.

If you were a new player and started out knowing that gleam wasn’t the way to light your base, more just to accent colours, perhaps we would all have a different opinion?

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The issue seems to be with all light sources from what I’ve observed, not just the gleam. It’s possible the gleam blocks were meant to just be a slightly glowing block that wasn’t meant as a light source, but I don’t feel like that’s the case. I think the gleam being dull is just a part of the issues with the new lighting system in general.

It would make sense if refined gleam glowed more for the effort of refining it since it’s more “concentrated” but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

The biggest problem I’m having is that even torches (an item clearly meant to light your way) aren’t really providing that much light, and my Wayfarer’s Totem with glow is no longer sufficing to provide enough light for me. The torches seem like somebody blew the light out and all that’s left (at least in the case of gem torches) is just a gem with no light in the center. Yes, there’s clearly some sort of glow, but it’s not lighting up the immediate area like it used to.

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I haven’t explored the other lighting yet, but found that all my light coloured gleam especially the white is still kicking out plenty of light in my builds (I build with fairly natural colours though so very little black) but the darker colours give out next to nothing.
Some colours like the cool blue are a little counter intuitive as you would think they would be among the brightest but James said cool blue wouldn’t kick out much light.
I will definitely need a full list of gleam colours and their brightness for future builds!
My cherry exo gleam looks magnificent especially at night but I’ve used a lot of lanterns there.

I think there will be tweaks but overall its something I could learn to really love once I understand it better I think.

I totally understand people’s issues though about the darkness and especially black storage blocks not absorbing any light at all. Perhaps items in storage blocks should have a faint glow to them? I don’t know.

@james Yup one of my favorite places is now ruined. It was my pride. :sob:

Before this update

And now after this update

It’s ruined. Completely ruined.

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I think gleam brightness should be standardized (more or less how it was before) except with very specific circumstances. (Black gleam, brown gleam, or some sort of unique exo gleams.)

I mean, let’s just look at the definition of gleam:

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“shine brightly, especially with reflected light.”

I feel like that name was selected for a reason, or so I’d like to think.

It’s a tricky thing for sure in that gleam still glows a bit, but I think what made gleam so special and desirable was how it shined so brightly and gave you the ability to color your surroundings with the light it provided where torches might fail.

I remember before I had a Wayfarer’s Totem with glow, I used to carry around a block of gleam as a light source for mining because I thought it was cooler than a torch haha

My goodness that’s depressing to see.

I am sorry it affected that area that badly. (And it’s not even black blocks!)

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Yea i can see the issues here the gleam is used for an effect in the room. With the lighting being removed from the gleam the effect is gone. Gleam lighting should be changed back ill agree on that. otherwise what is the use of gleam or special colors.

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