Night lighting in Attila

[Riekopo]

One of the iconic things (to me at least) about Barbarian Invasion was its night lighting. Units held torches that gave off their own realistic light and fire projectiles gave off their own realistic light. It was really impressive and scary to see a barbarian horde lit up by hundreds of torches and it really added to the spectacle of night battles. I would like to see this type of lighting make its return in Attila.

[Achilles Lacedaemon]

*Looks at second pic*

OMG look at all those TORCHES! THE CITY IS DOOMED!

[Sir_Pee_Alot]

I would love to finally see proper light effects with torches and not a white light.

Would be super epic with the new graphics and effects


But probably they didn't changed it and its still the same as RTW II. "Simpel change that adds so mutch more immersion to Night Battles" So CA what is stopping you!.

[Butan]

Blackberry, you are creating a great number of threads on various extremely interesting improvements idea/suggestion

From where I stand, I can guess you have been playing old games and found a lot of inspiration and old ideas that should be restored! The past is full of glory and there is many things in the TW brand that should make a come back and night battles lightning quality is indeed one.

[♘Top Hat Zebra]

I really liked Shogun 2's night battles. They still had the spotlight problem, but it was way less noticeable. On top of that, the effects for night were magnificent.

It really had wonderful art direction. I wonder what happened.

[atheniandp]

I really liked Shogun 2's night battles. They still had the spotlight problem, but it was way less noticeable. On top of that, the effects for night were magnificent.

It really had wonderful art direction. I wonder what happened.

Word. Shogun II was by far the most polished TW game ever released in terms of aesthetics.

[agent 47]

Yes yes yes. These are the "small" things that are missing that give the game soul. Those screens look way more epic and atmospheric than any screenshot you could take of Rome II. A great example of aesthetics winning over graphics.

[ysl]

In Rome 2, I try to make all soldiers carrying torches, and it looks like this.
1

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

2

3

4


Normally, without spotlight it looks like this.

[agent 47]

In Rome 2, I try to make all soldiers carrying torches, and it looks like this.
1

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

2

3

4


Normally, without spotlight it looks like this.

The lighting isn't great but that's still better than the spotlights, even if just he officers are carrying them. Are you going to release it or is it not in working order.? If the lighting is moddable it could be made to look better, maybe even some tweaking of the GEMFX shaders would make it look ok, as the vanilla lighting isn't great.

[kamikazee786]

guys im not too familiar with BI, never played it but i have it in my steam library.

Was the lighting really like this or was this just from a cut scene ?

[Butan]

One torch need have a x100 lightning zone though. The particle effects in R2 are so performance heavy, if you put more than a handful of torches in each unit, the game would freeze as hell for the great majority of the players.

I still think a lightning mod is possible even in R2, I even wonder if its not already the case somewhere in the workshop.

[ysl]

The lighting isn't great but that's still better than the spotlights, even if just he officers are carrying them. Are you going to release it or is it not in working order.? If the lighting is moddable it could be made to look better, maybe even some tweaking of the GEMFX shaders would make it look ok, as the vanilla lighting isn't great.

To make all soldiers carrying torches, the only way I know is tweaking memory mechine code.
To remove spotlight is a lot easier. All you need is changing the byte value at memory address "rome2.dll+1CC6788" to 0. Not sure if this can be achieved by a mod, though.

[Humble Warrior]

I really liked Shogun 2's night battles. They still had the spotlight problem, but it was way less noticeable. On top of that, the effects for night were magnificent.

It really had wonderful art direction. I wonder what happened.

I`m playing S2 at the moment. I don`t see anything wrong with the night lighting at all. In fact, it`s hard to believe that the same people who made S2, made R2.

It really had wonderful art direction. I wonder what happened.

There were so many things wrong with Rome 2 and it was so unfinished that they simply haven`t been able to catch up to fixing the ludicrous beam spotlights in the game. Even now, that most of us have mentioned it and they MUST know about it by now, they still can`t get round to fixing it. They may even now just have given up on it. Incompetence I call it.

Be interesting if it`s still in Atilla.

[agent 47]

To make all soldiers carrying torches, the only way I know is tweaking memory mechine code.
To remove spotlight is a lot easier. All you need is changing the byte value at memory address "rome2.dll+1CC6788" to 0. Not sure if this can be achieved by a mod, though.

I and lots of others would definitely be interested in this. How does this work in battles though? They can't hold torches and fight at the same time can they? I think only giving them to officers or bearers would probably be the best compromise anyway.

You should definitely release it, your other tweaks are great too.

[ysl]

I and lots of others would definitely be interested in this. How does this work in battles though? They can't hold torches and fight at the same time can they? I think only giving them to officers or bearers would probably be the best compromise anyway.

You should definitely release it, your other tweaks are great too.

Before loading into a battle, changing memory machine code at address "rome2.dll+6143E1" from 74 64 to EB 11 can force all soldiers to carry a torch. You can try to witness it yourself.
(I have to remind you that many in-game actions are accompanied by memory code check of pre-determined memory sections. If a specific action detects it, the game will crash.)

They do everything as normal except that a torch is attached to their right hand, which can look hilarious sometimes. Their ordinary weapons are either replaced or invisible.
For example, when a unit is in pike phalanx, their pikes are invisible, only a torch at right hand, but enemies still get stabbed 5 meter in front of them, just like they normally would.
The main problem is that game can be laggy with large number of soldiers, light sources, and smoke. The illumination from multiple torches also makes soldiers a little too brightened for my taste.

To see the effect with large army, I bring 6400 oathsworns and prevent them from turning into 2D sprites so that they always carry torches. I also force all torch light to appear regardless of their distance from camera. This is how it looks like:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Abdülmecid I]

Was the lighting really like this or was this just from a cut scene ?

Yes, the lighting is portrayed rather accurately and perhaps it's even better, as the image resolution is very low. However, keep in mind that you'll need to play really huge battles, to have such an impressive effect. With normal scale units it'll look much worse.

[kamikazee786]

Before loading into a battle, changing memory machine code at address "rome2.dll+6143E1" from 74 64 to EB 11 can force all soldiers to carry a torch. You can try to witness it yourself.
(I have to remind you that many in-game actions are accompanied by memory code check of pre-determined memory sections. If a specific action detects it, the game will crash.)

They do everything as normal except that a torch is attached to their right hand, which can look hilarious sometimes. Their ordinary weapons are either replaced or invisible.
For example, when a unit is in pike phalanx, their pikes are invisible, only a torch at right hand, but enemies still get stabbed 5 meter in front of them, just like they normally would.
The main problem is that game can be laggy with large number of soldiers, light sources, and smoke. The illumination from multiple torches also makes soldiers a little too brightened for my taste.

To see the effect with large army, I bring 6400 oathsworns and prevent them from turning into 2D sprites so that they always carry torches. I also force all torch light to appear regardless of their distance from camera. This is how it looks like:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Amazing

[Butan]

I would like to see a screen where only a handful of men per unit have torches. I presume the frame rate would be better too

[ysl]

I would like to see a screen where only a handful of men per unit have torches. I presume the frame rate would be better too

I bring 4800 royal spartans, make 1/5 of them to carry torches and take some screenshots.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

1. I set 3D infantry range as 250 and those beyond it will turn into 2D sprites with no torches.

2. Use N zoom to the closest and it looks like this.

Some other pics

[Butan]

The torch spread is too regular between units, if you could have it more randomly it would be perfect. Except that, we can all see that it looks both marvelous and the frame rate isnt too low.

I think a lot of people would like to have that in their mods. Great work!!!