 "Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light. " -Helen Keller Dynamic Filtered Lighting by D4RK3 54B3R Available on the PopLava Resource Center! (10% OFF FOR BYOND MEMBERS) Thanks for watching, -nay like a box. Suggest what I should do next for the Developer Beacon below in the comments. -Oasiscircle | |
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Oct 11 2011, 5:37 pm
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ExPixel
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I like my atmospheric lightning blue.
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Cool, but not worth $5.
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@ExPixel: I'm sure you could change the color if you want!
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Oasiscircle wrote:
@ExPixel: I'm sure you could change the color if you want! I don't think there are many options for the color of lightning but okay. | |
@Shadow813: Well then you obviously don't know the importance of atmosphere in indie games such as the ones on BYOND.
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@ExPixel: I'm sure you could figure out a way to do it in the actual library, the demo doesn't have anything with the color of the lighting though.
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It's not BACON it's BEE-CON. But the atmosphere is nice, and I do like the library.
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Selling it is kind a weird.People that pay, may release it free of charge.Unless he has some other plan going?
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Well, D4RK3 did tell me to mention that you can get it for free if D4RK3 deems your project worthy.
But I do suggest buying the library, as it just helps out a developer that put in his own time to make this library as good as it is. (: | |
It's epic.
Good work :) | |
@Ocean King: Oh, don't thank me! You should thank D4RK3 for making this awesome library! (:
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What does this library do? It looks like my Dynamic Lighting library is better and cheaper - it runs faster, supports moving opaque objects, is easy to use, and is completely free.
When you consider what the BYOND software does for you and that it has no cost, I find it odd that DM developers think that their creations are worth money. If you consider usefulness and the amount of time invested into each project, if this library costs $5 the BYOND software (DS, DM, etc.) should cost $5,000. | |
Your library is not faster, actually. Your shadow implementation is slower by an order of magnitude (something like a factor of 30) in comparison to mine, given the same radius input (6 tiles).
Additionally, there's a lot of functionality that is missing from your library. Namely: - Different types of lights that can be used simultaneously (and it's easy to change lightsource types at runtime per lightsource) - Cached object shading to give the illusion of depth - Luminosity independant of Radius (Which admittedly doesn't follow the laws of light intensity, but neither does your linear dropoff) - Area-based shadows (which yields superior performance to object or image based shadows in multiplayer environments) - Ambient brightness per map Z level that can be changed at runtime - Full compatibility with the use of the native opacity (Yours yields graphical glitches) I have my reasons for selling this library, but frankly, none of them are economic. I don't care about the money coming in. The price is there for a different, more philosophical reason that I am not inclined to share. Not to mention that numerous individuals have purchased the library in the past; I don't want to screw them over by releasing my library for free. | |
This was an interesting Dev Bacon about Darkay Saber.
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Darke, other than a demo, you should give some examples of how your library is implemented so potential customers see whether it's simple/flexible enough for them. That is, show a few code snippets of how you can use your library and/or release the help document.
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EmpirezTeam wrote:
This was an interesting Dev Bacon about Darkay Saber. The name should permanently be changed to DevBacon, everyone likes bacon. | |
D4RK3 54B3R wrote:
I have my reasons for selling this library, but frankly, none of them are economic. I don't care about the money coming in. The price is there for a different, more philosophical reason I didn't think it was economic, it sounds more egotistical than anything else. Especially how you'd give the library to deserving projects - imagine what would happen if just anyone could use the library, we might have better games! If that's not your reason then I'm curious to hear. No sense in thinking you're arrogant for no good reason. - Different types of lights that can be used simultaneously (and it's easy to change lightsource types at runtime per lightsource) I'm not sure what either of those mean. - Luminosity independant of Radius (Which admittedly doesn't follow the laws of light intensity, but neither does your linear dropoff) You can override a proc to change the illumination function. I think there are actually two procs - one computes the illumination for a single tile, the other figures out what tiles get illuminated. You can use this to change all kinds of things. You could make the light have a square shape or make it have a quadratic dropoff. You can even do silly things like make the light get brighter further away. Also, most renderers support linear attenuation because, even though it's not how light attenuates in reality, it often looks nicer. While there's no basis in reality for doing it this way, there's a basis in computer generated lighting for doing this. The reason I use a linear dropoff is because there is such a limited number of icon states. A quadratic dropoff might make it skip shades and there are so few shades to begin with. - Ambient brightness per map Z level that can be changed at runtime This can be achieved by overriding the procs described above. My library is really a dynamic lighting framework that people can easily modify. Adding shadows isn't part of the library, it's part of how you use the library. Because of this, you'll always be able to say "hey, your library doesn't do ____!", but I'd bet that it can easily accommodate that feature. | |
Forum_account wrote:
I didn't think it was economic, it sounds more egotistical than anything else. Especially how you'd give the library to deserving projects - imagine what would happen if just anyone could use the library, we might have better games! So you're telling me to release my system for free, completely screwing over the individuals who have purchased it from me in the past? I've had my system available since November of 2010. The reason why I was giving it to deserving projects is that I've been wanting to generate some kind of publicity for it. If I can't release it for free because of previous purchases, how am I supposed to get people interested in using it? And to top it all off, this is already far cheaper than it used to be. [EDIT]: When you released your system, I was very tempted to release mine for free, but numerous individuals, including those who were involved in the development of my system, advised against it because of the previous sales. - Different types of lights that can be used simultaneously (and it's easy to change lightsource types at runtime per lightsource) Lights in my system can be easily switched from circular to directional, and the shadows (occlusion computations, rather) can easily be toggled. With your framework, something like that requires extensive modifications, since you provide only one function to override that affects all light sources. Not to mention a lack of utility functions for this purpose. On Object Shading to give the illusion of depth: I encourage users of my system to have objects that lie above the shadow layer. For such objects, the system will shade them and cache the shaded icons. This can give objects in a 2d game the illusion of height, and is an absolute must in many applications, especially isometric. My library is really a dynamic lighting framework that people can easily modify. Adding shadows isn't part of the library, it's part of how you use the library. Because of this, you'll always be able to say "hey, your library doesn't do ____!", but I'd bet that it can easily accommodate that feature. While that is respectable, the problem with having your style of framework is that there is no good example of how to implement the desired non-included features. Whereas my system was not designed to be a flexible framework for the developers, it provides a variety of desireable features that many developers on this site would have difficulty with implementing into your framework. For example: How would one go about implementing your lighting system with natively opaque walls? The glitches that appear are inherent to how you present your shadow objects and one would essentially need to rewrite the entire system from scratch in order to resolve that problem. How would the average developer using your library know where to start? Is the potential several hours worth of extensive modifications to your library worthwhile to implement desired lighting behaviors, functions, and performance? My library is as easy as yours when it comes to implementation, it's just not as simple to modify. When people look for a library, they are looking for plug and play functionality. That is what I am seeking to provide. | |
D4RK3 54B3R wrote:
So you're telling me to release my system for free, completely screwing over the individuals who have purchased it from me in the past? Is it "screwing people over" for Kohls to sell coats for $20 during November when it was $150 months prior? YOU DECIDE! | |
