PieceMaker , Colludium , shinkan , glerikud , spy84 ,

Thank you guys!

Ashley , thank you for answer!

Yes, I mention many things and features! I could have mentioned many-many more!

I also understand that it is incredibly difficult to develop this software! However, since you are more than capable do develop it (I wish I was half as smart as you are ), why not do it in a way that it could result in a more functional, out of the box, software?

That is, if you agree that the things I mention are indeed helpful and could improve the workflow!

Now, you are mentioning the “cookie cutter” approach, and I agree that as users should be able to make our own systems, however, what I ask is for some basic, standard functions, as a starting point, a system that works well the basics and reacts closely to what we consider as “normal” Light behavior.

Just as I don’t “have” to build from scratch the Platform behavior and how it interacts with the solids (I wish however that it was unified with the Physics plugin, but that’s for another topic), I wish for a Lighting system that provides me with the basic stuff out of the box: Insert a light, set it’s radius, color and falloff, place it in your scene to illuminate some part of it, repeat as you please! Shadows and normal bumping will react automatically and you won’t have to worry about it!

This doesn’t mean that you won’t have the option to add more stuff on top of that! You could still change the blending modes for each light, add colored Sprites of any shape above and blend them with the light, mask out any parts of the light with other Sprites and Destination out blending, add webGL effects to the light etc.… We should be able to do all of those things, and more…

To be honest, I don’t really get how those nested layers could work with lighting, I’m not familiar with the term (I guess they are something like layers within a group like in Photoshop?), and I haven’t seen any other software that use them to understand their benefits. I vote for them however, the more options the better!!!

Anyway, please just keep in mind that there are many good, even great suggestions around the forum that have the potential to vastly improve Construct’s workflow, productivity and end result. Since you are developing C3, taking some of these suggestions into account early on, could help deliver a more robust and complete solution software from the start, rather than adding and changing things along the way, which is something that could cause backwards incompatibility issues, like when we were discussing about the Tilled BG object and if it should be removed-replaced by a more advanced Sprite Object…

Anyhow, who am I to tell you how to run your business, right?! Please know that I’m just saying all those things out of genuine interest about Construct, the only software development platform that allowed me to express my creativity interactively!!!

I want a better Construct, it will help me be better also!

Be well

Ashley , please have a look at this mockup example, demonstrating a workflow one could expect from a unified lighting system (among a few other things). Make sure to read the notes and the video description for more in-depth info!!!

Aside any issues with Compatibility and software development, I think that if such a system existed (or could be implemented into C3) it will greatly improve our workflow, productivity and end result! I tried to include as many things as I could into a 3 minute video, taking into consideration suggestions that had been already risen.

A thing that was mentioned here while I was making the mockup and didn't have the time to address on the video, is the probability of someone wanting a pixelated look on the light falloff. That could be achieved by using the pixellate effect on the light it self.

Having said all of the above, just by trying to animate this mockup the past 3 days, I realized how difficult endeavor this will be, both programming and UI/UX wise. Never the less, by depicting those issues with an animation I hope that some important points had been made clear!

newt , you are welcome!

Since the shadow caster draws shadows and the 100% light is drawing pure black, there aren't any values mix. So, we get a matte black value. lowering the layer's opacity simply makes the matte black shapes see-trough...

By the way, Ashley, have you noticed that if you apply a sine behavior to two or more lights everything break? If the sine is active that is. Pinning the light on a sprite that has the sine works fine!

And thanks for the tutorial!

Lol I'd settle for shadow casters that weren't additive like in Thomas was alone.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/220780/

With only one light source you can easily achieve this look by putting the light/shadow caster into a separate layer, have the light have 100% opacity and lower the layer's opacity.

See the following example.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gatskbxmb1ogo ... .capx?dl=0

You can achieve similar result with the alpha threshold effect also, but the first method is much easier.

Ashley , The trick with multiplying the background on top of the lights is clever indeed. However I'm not sure how it will work with multiple layers, like when we want to achieve parallax, or other z ordering effects. To be quite frank, while a tutorial would be very muck appreciated, this looks like a hack, a workaround the issue rather than a proper lighting implementation.

And there is still the problem with the artifacts... If we use adjacent sprites, there is a chasm between them, breaking the effect of continuous surfaces. Please see the following example.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pl70s7bu4wtib ... .capx?dl=0

There is a workaround with one light by using the alpha threshold effect, but this doesn't apply with multiple lights.

Also, all of the above doesn't cover the normal-bump map subject.

Anyway, thank you for the examples, they are really cool!

ps megatronx , I can confirm that the links do work!

Ashley , what is been asked is for a unified "lighting" system that takes into account any light(s) position, color, intensity withing the layout, and reacts accordingly to both:

a) Illuminating the scene (casting shadows, preferably with a falloff option)

b) Responding to any normal maps.

The lighting-shadowing system that exists in c2 now is problematic, having more than one light sources produces artifacts, it needs a lot of preperation just to achieve a simple falloff effect and it doesn't react at all with normal textures.

The normal-bump effect within c2 is not useful for most situations.

I hope the above make sense, I can't express my self more clearly that this, I'm sorry, we are hitting the language barrier here

spy84 , is this even possible with webGl technology..? And even if there are features that are not been utilized by the engine yet, this is probably due to compatibility issues. Ashley wants Construct to produce stuff that run on every platform on all modern devices. This is a huge area to cover and this promise, unfortunately, comes with many compromises.

Hey! Welcome!

megatronx , the problem with C2 shadow-light system is that it doesn't properly support multiple light sources. With just one light everything works fine, but with more lights some artifacts are introduced, meaning gaps between the shadow-casting objects, even when they are perfectly aligned. One can build complex and very dense shadow casting shapes from smaller elements of course, but I am both skeptical and unsure if that will actually workaround the problem...

I hadn't noticed the fog before, good call, this is indeed a nice graphical touch, can't imagine how one could do that in C2...

I am impressed with how this game looks, it has simple but effective aesthetics! Thank you for letting us know about it!

megatronx , indeed it looks like it, but was it really created with C2? Because I saw a

Actually, I've seen a great usage of this effect in a game named "Drone", quite some time ago.

"Drone" is something like a demo and it was made within 24 hours for game marathon at 2014.

Anyway, it uses the shadow-light effect in two ways, firstly to mask/reveal text withing the level and secondly to create 3d-ish walls when the alarm sets off!

See this topic, the online game doesn't exist any more, but you can still download and play the .exe version! It's really great!