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I have started work on my first mod for Rimworld and with Version A18 I have started testing increasing the darkness at night as shown in the picture below...before and after shots.

But this mod is not just about making nights darker..... this mod will have Rimworld being on a planet where you will encounter the following scenario.

When you land on the planet, you cannot see anything...the entire map is covered in darkness..... sunlight never touches this planet. In order to start you will need to be able to create a torch to light up the immediate area... the rest of the map is in darkness.

This is similar to Civilization where you need to uncover the map as you move around. In my mod you will need to light up the map as you go around.

If you get a message saying that a bunny rabbit has gone mad and is coming for you.... you may not see it until it is on you.

I am also looking at having new vegetation which does not need sunlight to grow...as well as crops....... not rice, potatoes,etc.

The picture below is just a test... it is going to be much darker than that.

Without sunlight you would expect this planet to be cold...... however I am hoping to add volcanoes and lava fields instead of water to the map...if possible.



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A few more tweaks and I have complete darkness covering most of the map.
If you look at the bottom right (scroll bar to the right of the picture) you will see that this picture is taken at one in the afternoon.

Prior to taking this screenshot I had a message that a pod had just crashed........ however I have no idea where it crashed .... however if there is a survivor I will find the name of that survivor somewhere on the map......

The challenge here is that I need to find a tree that will give me wood for building more torches.



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The pod crashlands at 6am  in total darkness...... for this mod to work one torch lamp is included in the scenario and lights up as soon as the colonists exit the pod.

The picture below shows 2 additional mods working in A18.... Camera+ as well as Increased Forest Density.

The next thing to do in this mod is to try and keep the colonists from stepping into the darkness...... hopefully this can be done with a trait "Fear of the Dark"....... no idea if that is even possible.



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I was doing some testing and the colonists were staying in the light cast by the torch lamp.... without my need to do anything.

With the increased forest density mod running in A18 and in a tropical forest first thing to do was cut down a few trees that were in the light..... then start putting torches down in a particular direction.

Found a banana tree on the edge of the light...harvested it..... then a hen wandered in from the darkness and I started trying to tame it.

I thought the hen when it resisted taming would disappear back into the darkness and thus out of sight..... but the hen also seemed to stay in the light.

Interesting but needs more testing.

Sounds interesting. Tagging this.

9 in the morning and my colonists are wondering why the sun has not yet come up on this planet.

Started a new game and plenty of trees around to gather wood for more torches. My first priority is to try and find food as my colonists will soon be getting hungry.

I check the map and I specifically started in a map which had caves. Looking at the black map I can see a number of glowing areas in the darkness showing promising caves with food...2 of the larger caves with Spelopedes inside..... don't want to tangle with them yet.

A promising cave is to the left so I set both my colonists to priority 1 construction and start putting torches down heading left.

Then as you see in the picture below I suddenly come across a hill and now have to decide how I will get around it. The problem my colonists have is that this could be a small hill... or it could be a big mountain.... my map was created in an area with mountains....so it is possible that the mountain stretches all the way up and down the map and there could be just one small path through...... but where is that path?

With a map in pitch darkness I have no idea what the map looks like at all.

Do I move up.... or do I move down to try and get past this mountain blocking me from the cave?

Of course this raises a problem because my colonists are getting hungry. I look around the area lit by 5 torches and see that a 2 year old female wild boar has entered the light from the darkness on the right. Do my colonists really want to tangle with a wild boar without weapons?

The problem with vanilla A18 is that there is no harvestable food around early game so my colonists are in trouble and could die.

I look around a little more and spot what I was looking for...... Lemongrass. As you can see below I was lucky to find the Lemongrass as all I can see is darkness where I clicked my mouse. I have added the A17 mod "TropiCKAPP Rainforest Mod" and it seems to be working fine in A18. I should be able to find all sorts of food around ...hopefully....such as bananas, coconuts. rice etc.

I start harvesting lemongrass to feed my colonists and change my plans. It is 11am and my colonists have worked out the sun may never come up on this world and I have no idea what predators are in the darkness covering the map. I check the wildlife Tab...also working in A18...... and I see that there are tigers, cobras, panthers and more out there.

So it is time to set up camp and prepare defenses in case we get attacked by a predator. I need to craft some basic weapons too.

By the time I finish this testing it is almost 3pm and the sun has still not come up and my colonists realize they may never see the Sun again.



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My colonists were lucky and had stumbled across the entrance to a vast cave system.....started moving west and more torches were put down ....the Agarilux we had found started dying as it was being exposed to light...... so now my colonists have to give priority to saving the Agarilux from dying so it can be harvested later.



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Testing of the mod is going well...but so much to do because living on a planet without sunlight is a real challenge.

I am playing as a tribe which could make things impossible but I am looking at working out how to survive with limited technology first.

The first issue is that I need to fix the torches ... after refueling the torches with wood they should last for 9 days 2 hours... however when I look at how fast the fuel is being consumed when comparing to the passing of each hour on right side of screen...there is an issue where the torch will not last more than 2 days.

I am also looking for the calculation to where it shows the percentage of brightly lit in bottom left of screen. When the mouse is in darkness brightly lit should be 0% but it will show 100% instead. So looking at trying to fix this is possible but I may not be able to do anything about it.

Based on whatever can be done I can then look at what needs to be done to grow crops without sunlight once I have the correct percentage of light in the area I am growing crops.

Power will never be available using solar panels so I will need to use wind power. Looking at what needs to be done as a tribe to get wind power technology.

Playing as a tribe is far more challenging and needs more research......so for the time being I have started a new game playing 2 standard colonists who have crashed on a world covered in pitch black.

To make it easier I am again in a tropical forest with plenty of trees.

However my priority is to build a wind turbine .......and to build that I need to find the many ship structural beams littering the map and deconstruct the closest one to get the steel and components I need.

Other priorities of course are finding food and chopping down trees.

Then build a small room to house a battery...it just started raining...... link the battery to the turbine and start storing power.

Then create a lighting system which will hopefully allow us to start growing crops despite all this darkness around us.

The picture below shows early construction on the wind turbine.
Note : This mod is being created in Rimworld A18



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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEja72NSg5Q

Volvanic planet when

Quote from: kobar on October 26, 2017, 03:11:29 PM
Volvanic planet when

I have already started initial work on adding lava craters to the mod....... I am hoping there will be dormant volcanos as well as active volcanos and when the lava craters breach I am hoping to have the lava expand out from the crater. A lot of work to do before this is out.



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When building on a planet that is forever covered in pitch darkness the one thing to do is to setup some torches to cover the immediate area.....

The problem is that when it rains those torches are going to go out very quickly when they get wet. So to fix that I build a roof over each torch....5 cells x 5 cells..... with a single wooden post on each corner to hold the roof up.

Each of my 2 colonists have priority 1 to keep the torches refueled when they need more wood to be added. Plenty of wood needs to be chiopped as well.

However when chopping trees down you also need to consider that in the small area you have lit by torches you will have limited food to harvest... you may not want to chop a tree that gives you food.

With 3 torches lighting the area and plenty of food and wood collected, I then get my colonists to build a wall. THe issue is that because of the darkness I have no idea where rivers and mountains are on the map.

So before starting construction on the wall, I use the mouse to hover over each cell I plan to build a wall. As you can see below I eventually found in the bottom left corner an area which is undiscovered..... more than likely a mountain..... scanning the are below and to the right shows no likely obstacles like mountains or rivers.

If a mountain gets in the way I can mine it...but if I am obstructed by a river that would prevent building my living quarters.

The picture does not show where the mouse was in the game when I detected the undiscovered area but it was directly left of where the wall was being built and close to the edge of the picture.


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Playing Rimworld in pitch darkness is very challenging and I have not yet got to the stage of being attacked by raiders or wild animals. Until now I was trying to solve how to stop my torches being extinguished by the rain. Got that sorted now.

For the map I am currently playing I can tell that there seems to be large mountain directly west of where my colonists are. It also appears that there are mountains between my colonists and where I am trying to take them..... to a cave.

I also can see in the cave that there is a Komodo Dragon hiding from the rain.......those are nasty creatures with a bad bite.

Maybe implement "Rogue Planet" event?

Temperatures always drop, -2 degrees per season. Possibly add bottom, where temperatures don't go lower, close to -100 (you can't cool anything down -270 already) to make lategame survivable. Rename it to "tidal lock" or "dark planet".

This looks most interesting. Reminds me of the movie Pitch Black.

Gosh, this sounds really interesting and challenging. But, when you make the game understand that there is no light there, how will trees grow without sun light? Because you will need them for torch fuel.

Quote from: CrazyMalk on November 04, 2017, 09:09:46 AM
Gosh, this sounds really interesting and challenging. But, when you make the game understand that there is no light there, how will trees grow without sun light? Because you will need them for torch fuel.

For trees to grow in my mod they will need to be different from trees found on Earth.... therefore my mod will remove trees such as bamboo, oak and palm trees.

I am currently tweaking 4 new trees for my mod that use 3 ingredients to produce light
1. Oxygen
2. A light-emitting pigment called luciferin , and
3. An enzyme called luciferase

The trees you will see are bio-luminescent and generate light when luciferin reacts with oxygen forming a compound which emits light. Their seeds at the beginning do not need light to start growing and one of the first things they will do is create their own source of bio-luminescence which will provide the light needed for photosynthesis to allow the trees and planets to grow.

For this mod I use the theory that plants and trees on my dark worlds will have leaves adapted to be able to carry out the process of photosynthesis with much less light than usual as seen by some plants and trees in Earth's tropical rainforests.

Keeping this in mind my mod will also have completely new food in the growing zone and you will not see rice, strawberries, corn, potatoes, etc existing in this mod as these plants need light to grow.

I will show a preview picture of the first trees after I do a little more tweaking.

This mod will also need a whole new range of animals added as I sure animals currently seen in Rimworld would not exist on a world without light.

The following picture is an example of glowing mushrooms found on Earth.



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Below is an example of the first tree I had been working on for the mod..... I turned the lights back on for testing the new tree but trust me it looks better in the darker environment of the mod.

This picture is taken prior to my adding bio-luminescence which I am currently working on.

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With the tree shown above to create the bio-luminescence effect I plan to simply invert the colors to get a negative type effect with colors becoming blue and purple as seen below  and then applying a glow effect in photoshop.



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Unfortunately the luminescence effect , while the tree looks good against a black background, looses it's effect when in the glow of the torch.

So rethinking the look of the tree so the trees have the look I am after ...

An alien planet where plants and trees are unlike any seen on Earth.
Am currently working through changing each tree one by one.


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I have started adding in those monsters from Pitch Black as seen in the picture below as they would be ideal in my mod where the map is in darkness. I now have the model of these creatures which give me a 360 view and now have the graphics I need to put into Photoshop to create the Rimworld like graphics of this creature.

Looking at extracting their unique sound to put into the mod.



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When creating my mod I was getting an error message when testing the mod....took a while to find out what the issue was but have debugged the error message and well on the way to replacing trees, bushes and shrubs in the mod.

My mod is based on one planet which is called M6-117 and is the planet that was featured in the Pitch Black movie. Took a while to research what the planet was called.

The torches light up too much of the surrounding area. To replicate the picture below from Pitch Black I am looking at replacing the lighting effects.

This mod is difficult to play and I will be tweaking it to make it a little easier for the colonists to find a place to setup base. The power generators in Pitch Black will be added to the mod along with hopefully the lighting such as that seen below.



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Bioraptors as shown below are the dominant species in the mod having killed off many of the other animals.

Due to the aggressive nature of the bioraptors I am hoping to have them attack the colonists whenever the bioraptor finds them....so hopefully bioraptors will not be tame and having a stroll among the colonists..... hence they cannot be tamed.

Due to the aggression of the bioraptors I would suggest all colonists be heavily armed from the beginning. Research will improve the weapons which will need to be upgraded along the way as the bioraptors hatch their eggs and numbers multiply.



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Inkvine Katterpods shown below will give you material to put up walls for your base. These Katterpods may give you additional resources such as food.




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Nice! I can't see the last image, for some reason. Trees don't look very "RimWorldy" right now, but maybe under the dark light it will not be a issue :D

Quote from: CrazyMalk on November 08, 2017, 06:06:49 PM
Nice! I can't see the last image, for some reason. Trees don't look very "RimWorldy" right now, but maybe under the dark light it will not be a issue :D

When I have the correct blue lighting then I can tweak the images of the trees  so they fit in to the Rimworld game.

The early version of the mod as it appears in my game mod menu.
Now has the official name attached   Pitch Black : Fear the Darkness.

Text will be fixed before the game is released.
Scroll the picture right to see the full text.


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If you have seen the movie Pitch Black you will remember the survivors using makeshift lighting to create a small pool of light around them....around 20 to 30 feet roughly.

The look I am after is almost there but still needs some tweaking .

On the right of the picture below the area of light is probably only big enough for 3 Rimworld pawns to stand in. I need to change that so 4 people can stand shoulder to shoulder in the area of light.

This much reduced lighting is makes the mod even more challenging because the Pitch Black monsters "bioraptors " can attack you from close quarters at any time.

You could also walk by food or other essentials without even seeing them.

When this mod is released I will include notes on how to survive , find food, build a secure base and so on.





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Trying out first test version of the bioraptors.......

Have the lights on for this test and then have the full dark test to see what the bioraptor looks like in pitch black.

Will go through different styles before finalizing the graphics.

The bioraptors will need a little shadow added...especially the one on the left of the picture with the bioraptor facing forward.



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i do like the look of this, keep up the good work!

Tip: remove bioraptors legs and put a stump in their place.

Quote from: CrazyMalk on November 29, 2017, 01:04:35 PM
Tip: remove bioraptors legs and put a stump in their place.

seconded.

Hey, this seems like a really interesting mod, is it still being developed? if not could you release the mod as it is if it is stable enough?

It has been a couple of months since my last post...... sorry...had a lot of work on which needed my attention.

Have resumed work in last couple of days adding new content to the mod. The picture below shows some of the  new content. These look great when the pitch black darkness is applied.

Was not happy with the bioraptors seen in the last picture so looking at redoing those before this mod is released.



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Another picture... another new flower



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Below is a picture of the new world currently being designed for the mod.......
Any areas not covered in green are to be considered non habitable regions.



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Removed the vanilla trees from the mod so all you see are these weird alien trees and plants.



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Even more plants added to the mod



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By default the lights at night give off a nice warm orange glow....... however this mod is about the Pitch Black movie and nothing about this world is nice.

On this world you have crashed on you discover that an eclipse has plunged the world into complete darkness. You have no idea what planet you are in and you do not know how long the eclipse will last. Some in your group suggested it could be just a day....another suggested maybe a month at the worst. You however discover some evidence suggesting it is more likely a year.

Even worse...there is something out the in the dark watching you but never coming into the light.

The pictures below show work in progress on the lighting as seen in the movie..... more tweaks required but the light is definitely not a warm orange glow.

The square in the middle of the 2nd picture is a bug with the new texture not being found.


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In the movie Pitch Black the characters walked through the darkness carrying their own portable lights.

To keep true to the movie the rule with this mod is that no torches can be used outside of official buildings. When you travel through the dark looking for food or other resources you must rely on your portable lights.

This means that you will not ever see the entire map revealed and will need to explore to find what the map has to offer. Need to find steel? You can expect this to be more difficult to find! I may increase the amount of resources on this world if tests show this is too difficult. The only other light that would be seen on the map would be from any caves on the map.

Bandits and visitors..... I need to look at how to add the portable lights to the AI as well because they too will be hunted and/or killed by the bioraptors.

The bioraptors which stay out of the light... I need to work out how to get them to keep out of the light in the mod but gather just outside the reach of the light so you can see them in the darkness around you. If in a certain close range to the characters, including bandits and visitors, the bioraptors must be attracted to the characters being there but not wanting to go into the light.

If the bioraptors are gathered close to the light do the characters shoot them?
Should the bioraptors charge if they are injured?

These are being looked at this week.

With testing for any issues I was in a situation where I needed to find steel.
Determined areas on the map where mining areas were located and sent my characters to the various areas to determine if there was steel there or not.

Found one area with a vein of steel and sent my two miners there.




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After finding a source of steel, I then decide if this is an area to setup a building. I can hear the monsters around me and do not know if they will attack at any time.

As you can see this map is in darkness and I have no idea what is out there.
I fixed a bug where a change of weather such as rain removed the darkness.
Now fixed.



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On 9th November last year I posted on page 3 the alpha version 1 of the Bioraptors from Pitch Black.
To be honest those bioraptors were pretty bad..... mainly due to there being none if any images of the bioraptors that can be used in the mod showing the entire bioraptor in full..

However I now have a much better version of the bioraptor now  and I am going to start testing it in the mod.

The picture below shows 2 of our characters exploring the dark tunnels. While there is no danger yet once the predator species known as bioraptors have been added they live in these tunnels when the eclipse has ended and darkness no longer covers the world.

However, even during an eclipse bioraptors such as the weak, the sick or the elderly may still linger in the tunnels.

Wow, so I am very excited that you are working on this mod now. I don't know why, but darkness is one of my favorite things in modded RimWorld. Extreme darkness, with fog of war, spotlight turrets, raid warnings turned off, and alert sirens/lights.

I'm thinking this will be perfect for that group of mods. It's also weird, too, about how I used to have a fantasy universe like this in my head. But maybe the planet did orbit a star, but it did not spin like the Earth. It would be locked into one direction faces the sun all the time, so one side is always dark (like the moon does to the Earth.)

Now if you could only take this one step further with the world map. You start crash-land deep in the dark half of the world, maybe in jungle or on ice. Then you have to choose to stay and try to survive, or pack it up and roll the dice on a blind (because of the darkness!) caravan adventure.

Quote from: Harry_Dicks on January 23, 2018, 07:36:46 PM
Wow, so I am very excited that you are working on this mod now. I don't know why, but darkness is one of my favorite things in modded RimWorld. Extreme darkness, with fog of war, spotlight turrets, raid warnings turned off, and alert sirens/lights.

I'm thinking this will be perfect for that group of mods. It's also weird, too, about how I used to have a fantasy universe like this in my head. But maybe the planet did orbit a star, but it did not spin like the Earth. It would be locked into one direction faces the sun all the time, so one side is always dark (like the moon does to the Earth.)

Now if you could only take this one step further with the world map. You start crash-land deep in the dark half of the world, maybe in jungle or on ice. Then you have to choose to stay and try to survive, or pack it up and roll the dice on a blind (because of the darkness!) caravan adventure.

Thanks Harry...... development of the mod is going well and working in pitch darkness is an added challenge for Rimworld. The colour of the portable lights held by each character is close enough to that in the movie and one thing I am working on at the moment is to make sure this mod is not too difficult to play on the easiest settings.

In the movie the predator bioraptors are scared away by the light. I am actually looking at this in relation to the mod and whether I should have these predators staying out of the light.

If for the entire mod you can wander around protected by light and not have to worry about the predators attacking you in the light, then this mod is going to be extremely boring.

Hence a change to the mod which is explained in the following post.

In the movie Pitch Black , Riddick and the others are able to keep safe from the Bioraptors by staying in the light. That was then.

20 years have passed and the Bioraptors have adapted ....you are no longer guaranteed safety in the light and the predators will now bite you and inject poison into your system. The bioraptors will keep to the dark but will go into the light, attack you and then disappear into the dark to wait for you to die.

The first look at one of the smaller younger Bioraptors from the movie Pitch Black.
Though it looks harmless this young Bioraptor is trying to get out of the light but if angered it will turn on the character shown in the picture.

The adult Bioraptor (not seen yet) is much more deadly.

The texture of the Bioraptors is shown to reflect the blue light from the portable lights each character holds.

While Spoony looks at us in the picture below he does not see another young Bioraptor coming towards him.

Poor Spoony is about to be bitten and is going to become very very sick.

The Bioraptors will be tweaked so they are more visible in the game.

Have you ever seen this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNpCpANeKrM it reminds me of what you are talking about, certain monsters only in the dark. I think the mechanic is a neat idea but it would need some work so that you can't just stand in light the whole time, but still need to inflict some damage on enemies. Maybe make it so that they burn in sunlight (like vampires from Rim of Madness) so that you still need to damage them as they come at you, but as long as you do enough, once they hit the light they wont be able to get to you in time before dying.

Quote from: Harry_Dicks on January 24, 2018, 04:49:20 PM
Have you ever seen this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNpCpANeKrM it reminds me of what you are talking about, certain monsters only in the dark. I think the mechanic is a neat idea but it would need some work so that you can't just stand in light the whole time, but still need to inflict some damage on enemies. Maybe make it so that they burn in sunlight (like vampires from Rim of Madness) so that you still need to damage them as they come at you, but as long as you do enough, once they hit the light they wont be able to get to you in time before dying.

Yes I had mentioned that mod here.
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=38794.0

Very similar to what I had been looking at.

Poor Spoony panicked and tried killing one of the Bioraptors. All that he managed to do was to get bitten and as venom begins travelling through his system Spoony is now severely ill just minutes after being bitten.

As you can see in the 3 icon pictures at the top of the screen.... all 3 characters are fleeing from the Bioraptors.

The picture shows the newest look for the Bioraptor.

Spoony had managed to injure the Bioraptor which has a cracked skull..... but Spoony is much worse off as seen below.

As he is still fleeing he is progressively become worse as the toxins in his body build up....now at 6%.



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Now added to the mod.......

When the colonists crash on the planet they may be injured. Not only may you have injured colonists to deal with but a fire will begin with the ship parts crashing around you.

In the first picture below, only one colonist is on his feet and he is trying to put out the fire near where another colonist is lying injured.

He cant rag her away as he needs to construct a bed.
No time for that.... by the time he cut down a tree and made a medical bed she would be engulfed in flames.

Only hope is to put out the ever expanding fire all by himself.

The other question..... somewhere in the darkness.... where is the other colonist lying injured in the dark.

The second picture shows other areas on fire due to the crashed ship parts.

More parts of the mother ship has crashed in the area with another 5 colonists on boar.

8 colonists have crashed on the planet...only 3 have survived but with major injuries.

The mod has started with devastation and we have not seen the predator species of this planet yet.

Huge fires have broken out and no sign of rain......

With colonist Erison down with 6 hours to live, Mick installs the emergency bed as fire rages on both sides of them.

If he can get Erison on her feet they will have to run before they are surrounded and trapped by the fire.

Looking at the last few pictures the flames needed work.
Flames now different looking and not the one picture.

Poor Ida got hurt badly in the crash landing in the darkness.
While doctor Fridge works on saving Ida, the rest of the colonists explore where they have crashed.

While testing the latest additions to the mod my colonists face dire trouble.

Ida was first down as seen in the last post......she has been bandaged but is unable to walk and is confined to the bed.

Ortega is in the remaining hospital bed and has two and a half hours before she dies.
Lilith is lying on the ground with  hours left to live.
Redfields is trying to save Ortega and Fridge is cutting a tree for wood for another bed.

The problem is that one of the girls on the team is about to die and there is nothing that can be done to save her.

Quote from: rjord2018 on February 01, 2018, 01:33:52 AM
there is nothing that can be done to save her.

You can just create a sleeping spot instead of chopping wood and constructing a "real" bed when you want to save somebody in emergency.

Quote from: wwWraith on February 01, 2018, 02:55:26 AM
You can just create a sleeping spot instead of chopping wood and constructing a "real" bed when you want to save somebody in emergency.

Stop being so smart. Share the wealth, man!

Quote from: wwWraith on February 01, 2018, 02:55:26 AM

Quote from: rjord2018 on February 01, 2018, 01:33:52 AM

You can just create a sleeping spot instead of chopping wood and constructing a "real" bed when you want to save somebody in emergency.

That was exactly what I did..... with the rules I set for my games I always opt to building a bed first and only create a sleeping spot if time runs out and a colonist may die.

Anyway the sleeping spot was created , the injured colonists patched up but still in a serious condition in bed, and all colonists now sleeping.

Keep in mind I am trying to test a new addition to the mod and will test it when the colonists awake.

However, as my colonists sleep, another ship crashes nearby and a group of prisoners attack.

Only 2 of my 5 colonists are able to get out of bed, each with a revolver.

The prisoners come out of the darkness and my colonist Redfields is stabbed in the heart and dies. Fridge is stabbed in the torso and falls to the ground.

The prisoners wander away apparently not realising my other 3 colonists are recovering in bed.

Suddenly Fridge gets up and runs..... was he playing possum?
One of the prisoners spots Fridge and gives chase.

As Fridge flees east with the prisoners chasing him, drawing them away from the other 3 surviving colonists in bed, I clicked on the Combat tab which showed in detail what was happening in the fight.

Had not pressed the combat tab before so was surprised at what I saw.

In the picture below Kim is one of the prisoners

The disasters in this game continue.....

A ship part crashed nearby and more colonists arrived who helped eliminate the prisoners....that was the good news.

The disaster occurred minutes later as shown below when part of the ship wreckage fell directly on the forest clearing where my colonists were recovering ....... was able to pause the game as the ship crashes directly on the colonists

Testing the new lighting system in the mod...this picture is prior to adding power cables to the lights.
Additional tweaking after some testing may have the light intensity increased while using the lights.

When you start the mod you have limited time in which to setup the power and lighting system.

The aim of the mod is that you then connect the first light to power and then each light after that connects to other lights via a light cable to get their power. Thus having a string of lights going across the map.

The lights running off one power source would be limited in number as more lights added will reach the maximum output of the power source

This should allow research to start to build more lights and energy sources to expand across the map.

My next step in the mod is to add the cables between the lights which would allow cables to be added in the directions UP, DOWN, LEFT and RIGHT.

3 days ago I had a huge problem with the mod where it started throwing up errors every time I tried to load the mod.

I was unable to find where the problem was so I moved the mod to a temp work folder and slowly rebuilt it copy and pasting into a new mod folder.

Apparently the problem is somewhere in the def folder for buildings....... I had been working on replacing the lights and something must have gone haywire .

Anyhow , the picture below is where I am now ......which is where I was in the last picture 3 days ago.

My next step is to look at having the mod not so dark...... perhaps with just enough light where you can see things very faintly....... will test that.

I am also adding in environmental suits for the colonists .......  the problem with this planet is a loss of breathable air during the darkness because the plants are no longer producing oxygen.

I am going to try and add into my mod the need for the colonists to create their own air system.

Surface water is also contaminated so the colonists will need to dig for water soon after crashing on the planet. If the colonists drink contaminated water they will become very sick.

I am looking at making the bioraptors far bigger in size than they currently are.

When I play this mod the colonists crash and a fire breaks out...... now I can specify the home area where the fire is...but then the colonists will have the fire out in 30 seconds.

To make it more of a challenge, each of the  colonists needs to find their helmets and turn on the light. I do each colonist one at a time ans turn on their lights before going to the next colonist.

When all colonists, except for the ones who are badly injured,have their helmet lights on, then I get them to fight the fire.

This adds a randomness to how big the fire is by the time the colonists begin to fight it.
If you only have 2 colonists out of the 5 who are prepared to fight fires, you could be in trouble.

To recreate events from the movie and other events a new Story Teller has been created specifically for this mod........

Fear the Darkness and those that lurk within it.......

This is exciting. What % are you until a "semi-playable" build would be ready for release? I'm curious :)

I have enlarged the images for the last 2 pages........

Quote from: Harry_Dicks on February 04, 2018, 03:49:07 AM
This is exciting. What % are you until a "semi-playable" build would be ready for release? I'm curious :)

No idea yet....... will let you know when I get to that stage.

Quote from: rjord2018 on February 04, 2018, 04:04:33 AM
No idea yet....... will let you know when I get to that stage.

I meant more like, do you think you are 25% complete towards being able to put out a "beta" of your mod, or something like that? I don't need a super exact number, I was just curious of how far along you think you are, compared to what you want to accomplish with this mod :)

Quote from: Harry_Dicks on February 04, 2018, 11:12:55 AM

Quote from: rjord2018 on February 04, 2018, 04:04:33 AM
No idea yet....... will let you know when I get to that stage.

I meant more like, do you think you are 25% complete towards being able to put out a "beta" of your mod, or something like that? I don't need a super exact number, I was just curious of how far along you think you are, compared to what you want to accomplish with this mod :)

I really have no idea.... have a lot of ideas on what to do with this mod and have no idea if they will be possible..... am working on the mod daily and sometimes the development goes quickly...other times it is really slow.

For example,each tile in the map has 3 light levels:Lit, Brightly lit, and Dark.

This light level is shown in the bottom left of the screen and is followed by  the level of brightness
shown as a percentage ...

In the picture below it indicates where the cursor currently is that the tile is reporting the tile is Lit with 90% brightness. I can fix this by using an eclipse however when I use an eclipse I lose the pitch black darkness.

I have worked out the changes required to fix this ...however when I change the xml files to show my new idea here there is no change seen and it still shows the old settings.

If I did not have issues like this in the development I would have a better idea on how to answer your question.

Checking the science.......

In Pitch Black the eclipse would take a long time as a large ringed planet in close proximity to the planet the colonists are on blocks the sunlight and plunges the smaller planet into pitch black. This event occurs every 22 years and the eclipse is long in duration as both planets are moving in the same orbital direction at roughly the same speed.

The longer the eclipse occurs the cooler the atmosphere would become. If the eclipse went for several weeks or several months the cooling of the atmosphere would result in ice age conditions. The bioraptors and other native species on the planet would survive the ice age like temperatures...the colonists would not.

Both sides of the planet are in darkness so no chance the atmosphere would be anything but growing colder.

Based on this, with the clothing Riddick and the others had in the movie, they could not have survived a few days to a week.

In this mod, the crashed ship has apparel for all weather conditions so they will have appropriate clothing for sub-zero temperatures.

Over the next day or so I am creating the suits that will be worn by the colonists.

Who else will be seen in the mod.......
Apart from the bioraptors there will be other species seen on the planet in this mod.

They are planned to be:

- Native human species to planet living beneath surface
- Alien Jackals
- Alien Vultures
- Sulfur Eels
- Mud Demons
- Trison Bulls

The Sulphur eels live in sulphur pools and the eels are edible.
It is planned that the lakes and rivers will be removed and replaced with sulphur pools....if possible.

The planet is littered with the bones of long dead huge animals ...and while these large animals are not in the mod their skeletons will be.

Am going to try and add these to the mod..... I believe these are where they bioraptors or other animals come out of when darkness falls.

Quote from: rjord2018 on February 04, 2018, 02:13:24 PM
In the picture below it indicates where the cursor currently is that the tile is reporting the tile is Lit with 90% brightness. I can fix this by using an eclipse however when I use an eclipse I lose the pitch black darkness.

Looks like you really should make a copy of vanilla eclipse but with your additions to make it a proper map condition. But probably something there would require C#.

Working on the apparel the colonists will need to survive on the planet.