Make night darker, twilight warmer

[Iris]

bumbadadabum do you think adding saturation and lightness sliders would be helpful in this based on fiddling with RGB sliders? I wonder how difficult that would be codewise- I feel users could do some more stuff with those controls (dream sequences, flashbacks, petrifying parts of maps, etc.).

Patches are always welcome!

[Astoria]

I was just thinking of this thread about 15 min ago

Me too!

bumbadadabum do you think adding saturation and lightness sliders would be helpful in this based on fiddling with RGB sliders? I wonder how difficult that would be codewise- I feel users could do some more stuff with those controls (dream sequences, flashbacks, petrifying parts of maps, etc.).

I think this feature would be nice to have, and it has been discussed in #wesnoth-dev as well. Perhaps it will get coded in the near future. No promises, though.

[Mabuse]

Hey everyone, I tried changing some more values, and this is what I've come up with so far (Regular, Summer and Winter schedules).

interesting

[Dugi]

I was thinking about this for some time and I concluded that somehow... it doesn't look like night looks. Neither the original night, nor this improved night. I went outside, away from any artificial light at night several times and tried to describe how does it look.

The experiment:

Times I was observing:
1. Moonlit late October night. The light was sufficient to see my own shadow. More open areas were illuminated by ghostly faint light.
2. Starlit moonless November night. I could see so many stars that I could not recognise the constellations.
3. Starless cloudy late November night. The sky looked pitch black in urban areas.

Observations:
The results were very similar in all three cases. I could see without any earthly source of light in open areas. I could see also in sparse forests where the sky was visible (cut out paths, late autumn deciduous forests). I could not see in thick forests (coniferous) to the extent when I failed to notice a tree right in front of me.
The night does not look blue at all. It does not even look so dark after gazing into it for some time. My trainers and hands still looked white. I however lost the ability to see colours so I saw only in shades of grey. Also, my vision was blurred, my trainers looked like white stains with no texture. The sky looked dark blue instead of the black colour I see in areas with artificial illumination.

Conclusion:
At night, everything is greyscale and blurred, not tinted with dark blue.

So, the night doesn't look like this:

Spoiler:

but rather like this:

Spoiler:

I wonder if it would be possible to add colour saturation decrease (or just plain greyscale) and blurring to [time] schedules to make the nights more night-like.

[Crendgrim]

As you said, nights are not grey, but very dark and almost black. The terrain you posted should thus look more like this:

Dark Night

Units should be darkened as well, since you cannot see people in dark forests at night at all. Maybe leave their eye glow in.

Spoiler:

... On a more serious note, this is where realism and gameplay clash. And gameplay > realism in all cases.

[Dugi]

As you said, nights are not grey, but very dark and almost black.

Where did I say that?

... On a more serious note, this is where realism and gameplay clash. And gameplay > realism in all cases.

How does this affect gameplay? You can still see everything if it's grey and a bit blurred. I didn't ask to automatically hide all units standing in forests at night (this can be already done as an ability anyway).

[Crendgrim]

As you said, nights are not grey, but very dark and almost black.

Where did I say that?

I'm sorry – I misread your post. In this case, replace "As you said" with "in my experience": At least in the forest at night I can see nothing if the moon isn't bright / hidden by clouds.

... On a more serious note, this is where realism and gameplay clash. And gameplay > realism in all cases.

How does this affect gameplay? You can still see everything if it's grey and a bit blurred. I didn't ask to automatically hide all units standing in forests at night (this can be already done as an ability anyway).

For me, gameplay refers to more than just the mechanics of the game. It is the experience. And having washed-out, blurry graphics certainly distracts from this experience. It is not correct, just as the current style is not correct either. It is, however, looking worse due to the blurriness.
Looking at the mechanics alone, there's a further point to make here: If the landscape looks different at night, if only slightly, it makes it way harder to recognize which terrain you're looking at. For a strategy game, this is a no-go.

[Dugi]

Well, okay

[Crow_T]

It'll never happen, but:

Dugi's idea of blurring the landscape could birth an interesting feature- giving chaotic units a better field of vision at night, while penalizing lawful units, and vice-versa. Basically a fog of war based on alignment and ToD.

[iceiceice]

Is it possible right now for UMC to change the overlays that are used? I am assuming it must be yes, since you can add custom TOD's and presumably that allows you to select the overlay? The blur is probably not possible though, although it seems like a reasonable feature request to allow filters like that on the whole screen.

Somehow the general theme of mainline wesnoth is bright colors / cheery -- the night is a deep majestic blue, and even the skeletons are happy and laughing. It's of course not a game made for children but it is certainly family friendly.

It would amuse me if someone tried to use the wesnoth engine to make a horror-themed campaign, like Amnesia the Dark Descent or something -- that's what the grey & blurry night overlay reminds me of. Maybe realtime first-person point of view is necessary to get the best results in that genre though.

[GunChleoc]

I don't think a blur is a good idea - it will be very exhausting on players' eyes.

Playing with desaturation might give some results though.