I was playing on Altar and got a little inspired. I want to create a secret underground Egyptian temple themed map. If possible, I would like to maintain the sand style terrain, while also having a pitch black bottomless pit and a dark atmosphere, with "candles" for lights. Any tips?
Hey, I am doing the same thing with a 2v2 except instead of a pit I am going to have infinite darkness above. Use black chromas. It works for what I am doing. I also have torches instead of candles. I would also recommend building it at night on glacier in the low cave pit part to help with this. This is also the best area to build for lighting.
I can confirm Black Chromas are the way to go with this. Here are examples from my map where I used them to make pits, in less flattering lighting. Spoiler
Thanks! My main wish was that I could get lights colored black to make the rim of the chroma blend more naturally with the walls so it looks like it fades into darkness. However, setting a light to black just turns it off, but I'm sure if someone was to toy with it more they'd figure it out hot to make it look better.
Thanks for the tips, and the torches are a good idea! Hey, aren't you the dude who made that prison map with the lava and the rock flats as sheet rock? If so, the sheet rock was inspiring.
My GT: purely fat the map is bleed build. I say this because if we are both doing egyptian stuff we might as well collaborate a little on concept art.
Can you set Glacier to night mode, or any other sky box? My nephew has been saying that won't work for him at all. Not even on new maps.
@ToRn1ne This is probably an incredibly stupid suggestion on my part, but from the way the light is hitting have you tried just making the hole deeper, to the point where the light doesn't hit the chroma at all? It's pretty dark there as it is, and the parts that are in shadow seem to be blending well enough. Another way is instead of using one chroma laid flat like a floor, maybe positioning four of them angling inward might help the illusion a little. Gold is dunzo for me at the moment so unfortunately I can't check this stuff myself.
The thing with night mode is it doesn't really seem like night so I could understand this problem. If you forge in the crack on the bottom it really helps with lighting. That is why before I shipped my xbone out I was doing experiments with chromas to make skies.
I'd say either mess with the fog or maybe use the black smoke fx so it barely seeps through the chroma to blur the edges? Just an idea idk how well it'll actually look.
It's also possible that there is some combination of chromas and the decal trick to make it look even better. Not having tested either, though, I have no idea. But yeah, I'd try to make it as deep as possible, and then set the distance fog to be such that it just starts to fade out of vision when looking from the top.
Crud, I didn't say that it either kicks him out of the map or crashes the game. I forget which one. He hasn't been able to set the sky box for Glacier for a while now. Was that a previous problem for everyone, or is this just for us... because we're special?
Sounds fun man. I should warn you though (and I'm not trying to be self-deprecating here), I am by no means a proficient forger. I normally just fart around with maps and ideas and never really finish anything, and I still consider myself an amateur. Just letting you know that you will likely notice a large skill gap between us, and you should keep that in mind if you think it's going to be a waste of time. However, it sounds like you're just wanting to talk about ideas, so I'll add you. I want to check out that map of yours anyway. I also forgot to thank the other people who offered tips. I'd tried black chromas in the past and didn't have much luck, but that may have had something to do with my lighting. It works perfectly down in the glacier pit.
No worries. To be honest I never worry to much about the ability to forge. I worry more about a persons ability to design and whether the design acts as the creator wants without there being a more effective way to play the map. If that makes sense. I never judge anything on aesthetic value because that can always be improved a design however cannot. There is always that point with any map where to many changes just make the map mud or just a completely different beast entirely. --- Double Post Merged, Apr 5, 2016 --- IDK maybe reinstall the game?
Making it deeper would probably help the blend but may look kind of weird if I make it too deep. One issue I have with it is that I built this on Parallax using a red distant fog and in both pictures (mostly the second) you can see the natural red lighting bleeding up the walls. A possible solution would not only to make it deeper but put in some kind of wall under it to prevent the map lighting from generating like that. As for the angling I thought of that as well, but it may end up looking like a bucket depending on how close the player gets and how steep the angles are. If I return to that map to update the visuals I'll make sure to play around with a few things. Thanks for the input!
Is there any info around on how the lighting system works? It's too much of a mystery because the only info seems to be the descriptions we get in Forge. The decal trick video did show us how light both goes thru objects and also bounces off the first side it hits. I helped my nephew tested some and we figured out that the floor objects are the ones that will really light up a closed interior space because the overhead "natural" light shines down thru the ceiling then bounces off the floor and lights up the rest of the room more. But that's only when the floor's light baking is turned on. Turning light baking off for any objects that would be lit up by the ambient light can really darken a space. You have to generate the lighting to see the effect. I guess light baking means that the object will reflect (scatter) light into the surroundings. Don't know if it actually blocks any of the light from reaching the objects in its shadow or if the reflected light is kinda extra light made as if the baked object is a light source. Any info around or should we make a lighting info dump thread?
Hooray! Advice from the expert on creating bottomless pits! Lol. Kidding. This isn't anywhere near the bottom. Me posting a WIP is much more of a low point. Which I just might do. You are all warned. Also, I hate bottomless anythings. My gamer tag is bottom-themed!
I definitely learned some things I didn't know. I have been wondering what exactly light baking did. I just want to be able to turn a map into night mode with vary darkness levels, or even almost completely dark so we have to place lighting ourselves or you can't see. It would be great for infection.