Lighting
chimeric
Member Posts: 1,163
[Archive on the bottom. No installer, pick and choose. All files go in the override folder. For some of the effects vanilla versions of the spells have been provided for BG: EE and BG2: EE.]
I've never even looked into this before, but there is so much more that can be done with lighting in the Infinity games. During the day, no one may notice, but at night, it makes a whole lot of difference. This much:
Standard fireball
With a tweaked FIREBALL.PRO
That's just something I've done to that particular projectile, out of curiosity. But if there is a mod that applies changes like that roundly, please direct me. I don't know if I can pick a custom palette for light, would be nice.
I've never even looked into this before, but there is so much more that can be done with lighting in the Infinity games. During the day, no one may notice, but at night, it makes a whole lot of difference. This much:
Standard fireball
With a tweaked FIREBALL.PRO
That's just something I've done to that particular projectile, out of curiosity. But if there is a mod that applies changes like that roundly, please direct me. I don't know if I can pick a custom palette for light, would be nice.
Post edited by chimeric on
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Comments
And lightning bolt and Fireball type 2, with smoke actually correctly trailing. Also changed some others, not pictured here.
I played around with lighting and recolors. Gave a little glow to Finger of Death, this and that. Made a recolor of the effect for Shield while I was at it, gave it a new sound. A little halo, too.
I changed the acid splash to a more expressive chemical gray. Because acid isn't green, and fire isn't carrot-colored. Here are some more changed fires:
All of that is in the archive. And this isn't. It is for a mod of mine now in development.
The next one was not implemented, but it would be good in a cutscene. Note: a couple of Smites and Words had to be included for override to use the special effects here. They are standard versions otherwise, without anything spell-changing mods might have done to them. The same goes for the 6th level wizard spell, Globe of Invulnerability. It had to be edited to use the effect on the screen after.
Finally, I added a small undershine to casting glows. They show in dark conditions. There is no way to color the light, and the timing isn't always exact, but on the whole it's better with them than without them. They look like this:
The new teleport en masse. How the Friendly Arm Inn was vacated:
The new teleport personal - Shandalar teleports away. By the by, the NPC whisk-away spell is now properly called "Teleport" instead of "Dimension Door." No lighting halo visible in daylight. Well, it's a very old engine.
I did not use the fire effect for the actual 4th level wizard spell Dimension Door, also used by hamadryads, but I returned the original door effect of BG, somewhat edited and with lighting. There are minor clipping issues with it, but nothing impossible to ignore. It looks like this:
The spells had to be edited to use the new effects, so these are vanilla versions in the archive. They will overwrite your modded Dimension Door, but feel free to make them compatible. Shadow Door is also in the package, because it is supposed to be a simulation of Dimension Door. It was relieved of the pretzel and given the "Dimension Door" name, when it is cast and in the spellbook. It even uses the Alteration casting glow instead of Illusion's. This way NPC may make the player wonder.
in light of the above, I would ask your permission to use your BG1 Dimension Door animation in my mod. It goes without saying that I would credit you for its creation, of course.
But before you set out to make whole new animations, you better have a good idea of the spell this will be for. And that spell should be original to some extent. There is no point to another "shoot for fire damage" spell book filler. The above is not actually for Protection from Acid, that's only a stand-in name.
All in the archive.
Oopah gets an extra-large version for his performance. The nuke is somewhat smaller in spells.
I also produced a more convincing ring flame and converted all of the fireball projectiles (there is the classic fireball, which is still used sometimes, the fireball that we get when we cast the spell, a green and a white fireball - which did not come with flames of matching colors). I edited them all and supplied all that. The flame tongues in the ring are not oriented outwards in every direction, like the default animation, but I may yet get to work on that. I'm not certain outward-looking flames (horizontal) are such a good idea, though.
Then there was a question of what to do with the ring - keep it neat and round or make the spread wilder and more random. For the two projectiles above, I decided to keep the green ball's ring trim, otherwise it looked too much like a spreading gas, but white is wilder (the image doesn't really show it). The choice was the same for the "real" fireballs, projectiles FIREBALL and PFIRE2. This was the accurate-shape look:
But in the end I decided in favor of a more violent spread:
After this the center explosion started looking kind of out of place. It's still perfect and lovable, but the center of the new, uncombed wild fireball called for something more savage and maybe bigger. I'm still working on the frames of that animation, but this is what it will look like, petering out:
The only thing remaining, except maybe orienting the flame tongues, is to find a better fireball for PFIRE2. I recolored the standard ball some more, so it's not as bright as before, but the Internet doesn't seem to have a good, "realistic" fireball animation. For now, players have to stick with the old missile, just a little less orange:
P.S. If you are going to respond here, please edit the image links out of your post. When screenshots get quoted, it bogs down the loading of the thread.
And then there's this.
All right, no more showing off. From now on this thread will be only about actual tweaks in the archive. The fireball is coming up... And I should mention that I moved the cold damage effect closer to white instead of the strange turquoise and improved blending for electrical damage. The original was almost pasted-on, pretty ugly.
Notice the fire missiles flying out. Creatures and items that use FIREBALL.PRO (I think wands of fire do) will still get this. However, for the standard fireball, the one in the 3rd level wizard spell, I ditched the ring animation completely and went for a different design - an enormous, smoky and bright-hot blast! Stay away!
This is the default now. Those who prefer the spreading flame-tongue version like the one above have been taken care of, look in the folder with the appropriate name and replace. In addition, by a lucky accident I discovered that the explosion creates a wonderful, unbearably hot Incendiary Cloud that swells, bubbles and falls. This is what it is like indoors:
And this is outdoors, with Shar-Teel in it.