Hi my name is Preacher001 and I suffer from Halo Lighting Addiction, also known as HLA. Today we're going to go over some of the symptoms of HLA so you can clearly identify if you or someone you love are suffering from this addiction. Let's start with an image taken from my own private collection and the first image that really helped me to identify my addiction. Wip - Baltis Causeway As you can see in this photo there are obviously a number of lights, but it is quite easy to overlook how many. Most people will take a quick glance and say "it's only a dozen or so lights what's the big deal." The big deal, my sight suffering simpletons, is that had you doubled that number you would still be wrong. The number of lights used is only part of a larger problem. Let's put aside the fact that this image only shows two thirds of the 40+ lights located within its single mid sized room, and focus on the multitude of lighting adjustments. Yes it starts with a simple length change here, and a little width change there, and next thing you know every other one of your 40+ lights have developed their own lighting DNA strands and attained a consciousness of their own. Oh it's not over yet, no, not by a long shot. Then the colors, oh the glorious colours. Yes first it's something subtle, but on the way to subtle you endure a psychedelic color wheel that can not be matched in the real word. You control the horizontal and the vertical in this world and in the blink of an eye your happy little Sci Fi Fantasy map starts to look like that 70's Latex laden photo your mom caught you looking at when you were barely more than a tadpole. Oh Yahhhhh, @purely fat will tell you it's all innocent white lighting. Ya, sure, now, but before it was part of an erotic ocular escapade that Fat just couldn't convince himself to hide. No, just like all the other HLA sufferers, he secretly wanted to be caught, otherwise this map would be called Lilacs in Blossom. But it's not, is it Fat. No, it's called Hot Trash - - isn't it - - Fat. Now that you're aware of the signs don't be afraid to speak up and get the help you need. Those that don't suffer HLA, be vigilant and help those around you that may not be aware of their addiction. Sometimes a beautiful map is just a cry for help. High Citadel is Beautiful, but so are you @no god anywhere. HLA sufferes are all around us, from the lowliest first time forgers to the Forge Veterans and even at 343 industries. Truth Thankyou for your time today, Have a great Week! Shout out to ZFA (Z fighter Addiction) sufferers, our hearts go out to you.
Lol! Now that the world knows I guess I might have a rather... small... case of HLS. Kind of would have preferred to keep it confidential though. We can discuss that later. Good post sir. The DNA bit though... that's literally how it is. Never can duplicate a single light without changing it, never can keep from going back a few more times.
At least it looks less like 90's pornography now(I should probably update the pictures). No I would never give my map a somewhat serious name. Also, I have no lights on another map. I have been clean for a while.
As a lighting artist in the industry, this post hits too close to home. I found this post really fun, and I'm glad you are diving in (and making sweet love) to your lights to get the look you want. Too few forge maps really have attention to lighting, mood, and atmospheric detail. Keep it up!
I'd love to see some of the more hardcore addicts write up some tips for us new junkies. Is the first one free?
its not the lighting fixtures i have a problem with, its the enviromental lighting that can eat a ****. thant bieng said my new map im working on is using so many lights its unreal, to recreate a map......actually 2 in one.....wink
The amusing thing that eventually inspired this post was, in an effort to fix a lag issue caused by lighting, I pulled 8 light sources and replaced it with 16 More amusingly, it worked. You really do have to understand the hows and whys of the lighting system to have any sort of chance to make things work the way you intend. I will probably be pulling another dozen lights from that room and replacing them with a couple dozen others. It seems the obvious is true, in that the larger light bars use multiple light sources and as such cause more lighting trouble then they are worth. Hopefully the Forge dev team at 343 will pull some of those other single source lighting assets from their maps, and drop them into the Forge.
I found a good way to counter this is by using the light bars for the cone effect or bar color only and an invisible light for the actual light. Of course that's wasting object count but when you have HLA you worry more about saving it for lights than pieces. The forge lighting really is quite a learning curve on this game when most of the rules you have are there because of light glitches. Spend tons of time with it and you will eventually learn how to deal with all of them. Even I'm still learning. The one most important guideline is to always ask yourself 'does this look natural? Would this look this way in real life?' You really want to create a realistic atmosphere.
Do you still have the 90's porno version? And does anyone have a Leisure Suit Larry gametype working? I need both to get where I'm going with this.
Being lost in the world of this sickness I find myself even more frustrated when we have lights that have a permanent glow on them. Most of the new lights that I want to use look fine in forge but the next time I load up the map they have that damn bright yellow glow around them. This is doubly useless when I want to use it as a colored light. Yellow glow from a blue bulb seems odd. Has anyone found a way to disable this? I've tried to shut the light completely off, even setting everything as black and it still brightly shines yellow. If not then all the new lights are essentially one trick ponies.
it is the lens flare... it gets interpreted as ON when it is actually off. Only way I found was to turn it on/off again. Won't help when in a custom mathc, though. I'd use invis lights instead, and make a fixture that looks like it is emanating light.