This is to provide feedback to the below addition on the latest experimental build:
- Added: Client side personal night light (environment is subtly illuminated from camera at night to save players from becoming completely blind without a light source)
This system does not work well. To be perfectly honest it looks terrible. Some textures are actually glowing in the dark, making the environment close to the player look unnatural. This is especially obvious around objects with bright textures, such as some types of trees where the bark stands out like a beacon in the night and some building interiors that look as if the player has a strong UV-torch on his head. Trees with a lighter shade of green on the leaves also glow in the dark.
My personal opinion is that this system should be scrapped entirely. It comes across as an attempt to try and appease the people complaining that nights are too dark, without dealing with the actual problem - which is that the natural lighting (moon & stars) provide no illumination at night. Creating an artificial light source around the player - even if it is only client side - is detrimental to the look and feel of the game environment. It is just not realistic.
Please consider removing this feature and focus on making the moon provide actual light that softly illuminates the ground and casts shadows. That won't help on overcast nights, but that is okay. Without light sources and light pollution nights ARE dark when there is no moon!
Moonlight has worked well in the game in the past, all the way up to beta in fact. It seems to me that the "snuffing" of the moon coincided with implementation of the anti-gamma system. Is there something with the system that prevents lighting from the moon working properly?
Best regards, other than this this experimental patch looks really good.
