True darkness

Started by Teovald, October 25, 2014, 12:22:34 PM

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Teovald

I think that one thing that could be implemented in order to make both day/night cycles and underground colonies more interesting is a more advanced management of light and darkness. 
If accuracy becomes way more dependent on the light conditions (right now I have not seen major differences between night and day battles), it will bring many interesting variations : 
-during the night, you can only clearly see what is illuminated, so you can bring things like torches that allow to detect enemies, or even automated lamp 'traps' that light up when an enemy is nearby, allowing your colonist to more easily focus their fire on him. 
-tunnels are obviously in the dark, so permanently have to deal with visibility in subterrean colonies, which should help balance in vs out colonies. 
-muzzle flash should vary from one weapon to another. You can shoot arrows during the night while staying almost undetected, but not so much with a minigun. 
-Snipers can assault colonies (or raiders siege camps) during the night and use the darkness to their advantage. Even if the muzzle flash betrays them, they can move between two attacks. 
-it also allows surprise attacks against colonies at night (a variation / replacement of the drop pods falling on your colony).
-Equipments (miners-helmets, night vision goggles, ...), traits, specializations (assassins and miners should have good night visions, researchers not so much), mutations and eye implants could all play a role in this.
-Lightning makes everything visible for a couple of seconds. A fire lights up its surroundings, making the flare gun (sorry, I have forgotten its official name) very interesting tactically.

The big downside of this is that it might need a lot of work on the engine if the current lightning system does not support these features.

skullywag

Lighting does effect shooting. If you are in dark and your target is lit up, you have the advantage. I added a flaregun to my more weapons mod for this exact purpose. Darker nights could be modded in I think ive never really checked.
Skullywag modded to death.
I'd never met an iterator I liked....until Zhentar saved me.
Why Unity5, WHY do you forsake me?

Devdabomber

I like the idea of stealth you had. Maybe it would be possible to implement sound as well. The darkness idea makes me think of spotlights. Shine them on the enemy and it would could partially blind them in that direction.