I have a thick (very very thick building) that is enclosed up tight on all sides; N, S, E, W and Floor
And 8 thick layers covering the ceiling... But the room is still lit up like I have the florescent lights on.
I'm sure this didn't happen before-- I have made caves in the past by digging out a trench and
covering that with objects (that would be dark).. now didn't that used to make it go dark--
cause for sure I have covered up a place in the past and had it go dark. So what's going on now?
Anyone know how to get the dark BACK on and the lights BACK off?!

I am not in a trench this time- is that the problem? Should I have to dig trenches to escape the sun?

BTW, I am running the latest DEC, 2020 release...
I must report also a couple other concerns; The visual settings (Tab, Tab) menus are glitchy,
jumping around wherever they want, often unresponsive when trying to close or move, and...
This version has been cutting off on me for no reason, just sitting there doing nothing
without an error message...

You could add lua commands to drop lighting down to the levels you want via a zone or any other trigger. Probably not what you want to hear, but GG has always been a little weak in the light department. Transport to new area, set light settings, when you leave, return them to the default or whatever they were. Many games do this, especially older ones.

I haven't updated GG in a few updates here as I have found issues in games I was working on. So maybe drop back an update or 2 if you think it worked fine before and wait for a bug fix.

All GG 2020 builds have issues for me, try dropping back to a mid 2019 build and see if that fixes it.

To be honest, I don't know if in the past I made it dark by turning the settings down--
maybe? But it actually doesn't seem so because (yeah this was back at the very beginning
of my use) 2019 that it seemed I could go in the cave I made and come back out into
the daylight. So changing the settings is not very convenient when you want to approach a
cave opening lit up during the day, but a dark interior (like it should be.) Uggh!

@ GubbyBlips
Do you mean something like this?

In an actual cave, it gets quite dark within 10-15 meters. But you can still turn around
and see the bright daylight out past the opening (and subsequent ambient lighting at
the cave mouth).
If GG could at least get proper blocked out sun lighting for indoors, then presumably
the rest of scenes could be accomplished with "baked lighting"- as far as I know.

Certainly the trick would be differentiating between shadows and fully interior scenes.
Right now, there's only shadows everywhere vs light everywhere.

BTW, what is the sun movement function in GG lua? I saw that it was added early last year?

Edit... tested the sun movement. Good for outdoor usage only (it's the sun!)
Does not block the sunlight from disseminating into the textures of all objects.
But the shadows do move- so that's pretty interesting. Maybe we have to use GG mostly for
outdoor scenes?

try light mapping your level? that will make the lighting more accurate but will likely bring different issues

You are right mate, but this is all we can get actually in GG, at least without workarounds.

Use a dynamic light just outside the cave, as the player get's deeper into the cave reduce the ambient light levels and increase the brightness of the dynamic light, that way when the player looks back to wards the entrance from inside the cave it might give the right effect.

Probably won't be very realistic, might have to arrange things so there is something directly outside the cave so the player can't see too far.

Bingo! Those are pretty good ideas AmenMoses. And it gave another idea;
The best (and biggest) fakery-- if it where possible would be to have a big photo prop
/decal/ placed just outside the cave mouth! LOL This would be a picture of the outside
placed there when they entered. This does sound a little familiar like something 3com
would have already done actually...
You would still need a light shining on it as you dimmed all the other settings...

The best way to Blocking out the light is don't pay the bill. LOL
Yes, some fake wall textured with exterior ambiance light picture might help, anyway is a bit tricky to get the same ambiance in the screenshot, you'll have to tweak it a bit. Also, you can place wisely lightrays decal, as I said above you have to use the secret tool (the workarounds)

Its a age old problem with GG

Dave

How did you acheve that?

At a guess im thinking this is the effect your looking for.

Nice one synchro!


It is well explained in the video above.

Quote: "@ GubbyBlips
Do you mean something like this?"
....How did you achieve that?
At a guess I'm thinking this is the effect your looking for.
Yes- nice one. But

I agree- nobody explained. I thought that must be the decal trick, but upon closer
look, just not really sure. If you cannot turn the lights off inside, how do you make
it dark while it's bright and sunny outside? I'll have a look at it later.
What would be awesome is camera "windows" so that you can set cameras at locations
and a window screen (like a decal) would live stream the camera scene.

Oh look-- it works! Who needs sleep?
I went back in GG for a quick check. Apparently I probably did do this once
a couple years back after all. Dark cave, bright outdoors.
My settings:

First: bloom = 0. This is kinda the key. {{Actually maybe not. 0 makes the sky pop
back in with the rest of the settings but otherwise not that important.}}
Brightness: 65 // Contrast: 55
Surface Sun Factor: 100
Surface Level: 55
Ambience can be adjusted from 0-10
These settings make the sky where the sun is highly saturated, but who's looking!?

Finally- that's cool; fog set high and near creates the scattered light effect...
There's give and take though because now in the rest of the map you will have
the outdoors very foggy. I think adjustments via script would be necessary.
Thanks for prodding me in the right direction.

thanks for the explaination..but missed somthing so a video on how adjust the settings should be very appreciated

exactly which settings did you use?

@JC LEON;
which parts are you having trouble with?
This is not to say that the lighting is great because it's not. But it's adjustable.
At the settings I put above, there is now a big problem with flashlight being too bright and gaudy reflecting off the walls or floor. So now I have to make surface level ~30-35 and that effects all the other settings! Need FLASHLIGHT ADJUSTMENT.
Nevertheless I'm amazed that this works on the terrain at the same time as the entities. I thought the ground might be lit inside the tunnel, and it would require a "floor". But not the case. You can have floor entity or not.

The settings I used in a test mode with "tab-tab" menu and the stock tunnel under the 'bridges' folder with some boxes tossed in there also for spacial effect. You can put the road segment in if you want instead of terrain.
#1 make all shaders: "Highest"
#2 shadows: 100
#3 Bloom 0
#4 Ambience 0 (to ~5)
#5 Surface Sun Factor 100
#6 Strong fog is either good or tricky-- mostly tricky but might add to the scene in certain spots.
That is the start, surface level, brightness, contrast are now up to you ~50 or something.
Also-- anyone have better suggestions. Let's hear them!