Why are developers so afraid of making night actually *dark*?

[Carrion]

Outdoors is rarely pitch black or even significantly dark at night assuming the moon is out and you're in an area where most of the stars in the sky are visible.

Yeah, but a forest in autumn during a new moon when there's no snow yet can be pretty damn dark.

Darkness can have a huge influence on gameplay, especially in RPGs. It can provide an environmental challenge that can be combated with torches, spells and magic items. It affects how easily you spot your enemies and how easily they can spot you, which should be critical for especially thieves and rogues. It can affect your perception of the battlefield and add a level of uncertainty to combat encounters. It can force you to adapt and change the setup of your character(s), for example switching to a single-handed weapon in order to be able to carry a torch, or equipping a melee weapon instead of a ranged one (or vice versa, if you have the means to see in darkness but your enemies don't). Darkness is good and should be used more in cRPGs. It's always a shame when a game gives you torches, infravision spells, night-vision goggles etc. and never actually makes you use them.

Why some of you want more hassle in your games I've no idea. It's the same as encumbrance & ammo. It's a game, it should be fun. If you want hassle and work-like aspects put a few more hours in at work and have kids.

Please jump off a cliff.

 

[Trash]

Pitch dark night? I'd wish they'd start with dungeons. Ever been in a cave, mine or cellar without lightsource? Yeah, it's black. In games however most dungeons are anything but. And some of the AAA games do it worst. Skyrim dungeons actually have torches burning everywhere. Even when the place is supposed to be utterly deserted for ages. Screw that.

 

[Darkzone]

Basically i agree with your Post, but i want to give some explanations from the computing side.

In addition to casualization and a fear of added complexity or content restriction, I want to mention that making proper night and light effects is probably actually quite hard - or at the very least, I've never seen _any_ game actually do nighttime or "high-resolution" darkness/light effects justice. It's hard for many, maybe even most, people in the western world to imagine just how pitch-black a dark night can actually be, and due to light pollution, most people rarely if ever experience true nighttime or real darkness beyond the bedroom or a closed closet, in which they are often blinded by whatever little light they actually have.

Yes that is true and there is also the players psychology that comes in play. The players will only rise the gamma and Lift levels to see everything, instead of endorsing the night and the effects of the surrounding darkness.

In reality, light travels far. Inconceivably far, even, and an unprotected campfire in the dead of the woods on a cloudy night (i.e. pitch-black) can be seen from a mindboggling distance, even if it's just a speck of light far away, and the surrounding light actually lights up a lot more than we realize when we're close to the fire or light and more or less look straight at it, because we're completely blinded by it, resulting in a very odd sort of light that is common in shitty darkness mods for Skyrim and similar games.

Yes and light also is reflected by different surfaces. A white room in a full moon night will be more lit than a black room. Lighting takes very much computational resources and a far traveling light that is reflected throught different surfaces takes many more ressources. So by reducing the range of the light and by reducing the reflectivity (especially if the light is bouncing off from several objects) you reduce the required computational power. So it is preferable to use a single global lighting with very limited reflectivity, than to use far travelling several light sources with a more natural reflectivity.
You can test it in pov-ray or an game engine if you want. I would recommend to do it in pov-ray, because you can measure exact there the computational time for the same frame in different lighting.

Seeing it well done in a game would actually be very interesting, but given the demands to do it justice, I wouldn't hold my breath. That being said, we can certainly do better than the current age of "Let's throw a blue filter on it and call it nighttime".
Edit: Also, fucking night-skies. Most developers seem to never have been outside of a zone of massive immediate light-pollution. A cloudless night gives a surprising amount of light and it's no wonder our ancestors venerated that shit. I pity people that live their lives entirely in urban areas and have never seen the magnificence of the universe unveiled. Explains why urbanites are generally so pre-occupied with the navel-gazing of their petty little lives and obsessing over inane shit that only relates immediately to themselves.

City dwellers truly don't know how dark a night can really be (especially in forest and mountains in an cloud covered night), and how nice / lit a cloudless full moon night can be in the wilderness. And to capture the beauty and danger of nature is not really a goal in this games.

 

[Darkzone]

Moon was much closer and brighter back then.

Hail to the King, Baby.
Klaatu Barada Nikto....

 

[Falksi]

Yeah, but a forest in autumn during a new moon when there's no snow yet can be pretty damn dark.

Darkness can have a huge influence on gameplay, especially in RPGs. It can provide an environmental challenge that can be combated with torches, spells and magic items. It affects how easily you spot your enemies and how easily they can spot you, which should be critical for especially thieves and rogues. It can affect your perception of the battlefield and add a level of uncertainty to combat encounters. It can force you to adapt and change the setup of your character(s), for example switching to a single-handed weapon in order to be able to carry a torch, or equipping a melee weapon instead of a ranged one (or vice versa, if you have the means to see in darkness but your enemies don't). Darkness is good and should be used more in cRPGs. It's always a shame when a game gives you torches, infravision spells, night-vision goggles etc. and never actually makes you use them.


Please jump off a cliff.

Good counterpoint brains

 

[DraQ]

A full moon is bloody bright. Two moons? Yeah, it's nearly day-time level.

Two HUEG moons.

Anyway, my guess is that making game truly dark only makes people turn gamma up to eleven (which, if you can see ANYTHING, removes disadvantages of not having a light source) and then complain that it looks like washed-out shit.

 

[DraQ]

In addition to casualization and a fear of added complexity or content restriction, I want to mention that making proper night and light effects is probably actually quite hard - or at the very least, I've never seen _any_ game actually do nighttime or "high-resolution" darkness/light effects justice. It's hard for many, maybe even most, people in the western world to imagine just how pitch-black a dark night can actually be, and due to light pollution, most people rarely if ever experience true nighttime or real darkness beyond the bedroom or a closed closet, in which they are often blinded by whatever little light they actually have.

In reality, light travels far. Inconceivably far, even, and an unprotected campfire in the dead of the woods on a cloudy night (i.e. pitch-black) can be seen from a mindboggling distance, even if it's just a speck of light far away, and the surrounding light actually lights up a lot more than we realize when we're close to the fire or light and more or less look straight at it, because we're completely blinded by it, resulting in a very odd sort of light that is common in shitty darkness mods for Skyrim and similar games.

Seeing it well done in a game would actually be very interesting, but given the demands to do it justice, I wouldn't hold my breath. That being said, we can certainly do better than the current age of "Let's throw a blue filter on it and call it nighttime".

Edit: Also, fucking night-skies. Most developers seem to never have been outside of a zone of massive immediate light-pollution. A cloudless night gives a surprising amount of light and it's no wonder our ancestors venerated that shit. I pity people that live their lives entirely in urban areas and have never seen the magnificence of the universe unveiled. Explains why urbanites are generally so pre-occupied with the navel-gazing of their petty little lives and obsessing over inane shit that only relates immediately to themselves.

Most kwanzanians don't even know you can see the Moon during the day, so what would you expect?

 

[sser]

I have these from a previous New Vegas playthrough. They are much more realistic than the pic in the OP, but they are, on the other hand, too dark. The last one in particular, now that I think about it, is cartoonishly dark: it's like the light suddenly cuts off and goes from BRIGHT to BLACK.

Looks fine to me. There's a nice and quickly fading penumbra, which is just about how it works in real life. Dragon's Dogma is one of the few games I can think of that had a really nice sense of darkness, and it had a pretty heavy impact on gameplay, too.

When I was a kid, me and my neighbor used to ding-dong-ditch my other neighbor. For the unacquainted, ding-dong-ditching is when you ring the doorbell then run off. One time, I rang the doorbell and I can't remember why exactly, but for some reason I didn't have time to actually hide. So you know what I did? I ran to the edge of the porchlights right in the front yard, laid down in the grass, and put my sweatshirt over my head and my eyes low. Lady came out and did not see me laying there no more than 20ft right in front of her, just at the edge of the light.

Later on, because we rang their doorbell with near criminal glee, the dad came out and pointed a magnum in my face so that ended our fun. But I learned a pretty important lesson, and that lesson was about darkness, light, and human inability to see at night. Things be pretty stark in the dark.

Trash talked about the real screwup, though, which are these well-lit dungeons and caves. Then again, in games like Skyrim you could open a crypt that'd been "sealed for thousands of years" yet find food and shit in the bins so they got a long way to go before minding the dark.

 

[Sigourn]

I also have some interior pictures.

 

[Kahr]

Cause of:

 

[jfrisby]

Is part of the issue the still-massive amount of blue light monitors throw when displaying a black screen? Seems like eventually technical limitations on mimicking real night vision might be removed.

 

[ortucis]

Yeah, well, I skipped the nights in NV as they were because there was really no much point to bother with the low light.
If they were really dark you bet I would've been even more happy to skip them.
Hell, I was skipping the nights in the original Fallout games too. Why would I even bother to play during the night? The visibility was shit, stores were closed etc. No benefit at all. K, maybe some stuff could happen only at night... big deal.

Making caves or dungeons or whatever dark and make that part of the gameplay (needing light sources etc), that's something else.

Even though I love realistic lighting or day/night depiction in games, I ALWAYS end up skipping the night if the game gives me option to. Not cause I'm scared, but it's just annoying as fuck to play at night in-game, while in real life, your eyes adjust to the darkness. Not to mention, there usually is no point in going at night other than being a retard who likes to run around in artificial darkness.

Now if the games spent time making nighttime look nice (or you can call it "cinematic") instead of annoying, without overdoing the darkness, I'd be more than happy to venture outside at night too.

Also, I remember playing New Vegas again with mods, including darker nights and street lights mod. Ended up disabling the darker night mod but kept the street lights. Enemies can still see you at the same distance with the mod on, only you can't see them until they start shooting.

On the side note, only game I enjoyed venturing out at night was, Gothic 3 (first Gothic I played). Having endured Oblivion a year ago, I nearly shat my pants when I held a torch in the middle of the dark forest and there were dynamic shadows everywhere around me.. it was beautiful running at night in darkness with nothing but my torch around.. until I ran into a group of fucking sting flies and promptly died.

Anyway, game developers try their best to make nights as painful as possible, making everyone hate them. "Herp derp, darkness, PREDATORS ARE OUT THERE, THAT IS FUN AMIRIGHTUGUYSDEMONSOULSHARDCORELULZ!" Find a middle ground and don't try to fuck over the player at night just cause it's written in some rule-book. That isn't challenging, that' just fucking annoying (unless you're making a horror game).


EDIT: Few acceptable areas for almost complete darkness includes caves, abandoned mines, forest and houses with few windows (with natural light bouncing around lighting up one room barely). Right now I'm working on a game where basically I am trying to rely on natural light a lot indoors (abandoned places) during day and night.

 

[Delbaeth]

Recently, Batman has dark knights.

Fixed

Thatsthejoke.gif

 

[JarlFrank]

Oh. Shame on me.

 

[Ebonsword]

In Elder Scrolls games the two moons should provide enough light in the night, at least when both are up in the sky, so that Skyrim screenshot isn't totally implausible.

I was about to point out that Tamriel has two moons.

When you people are talking about "realistic nights," what you actually mean are "Earth-like" nights (i.e. nights that look like our Earth does, with our moon, and our constellations). That type of criticism is only valid for a game set on Earth. If it's set on a different world, with more moons, brighter stars, etc. that criticism doesn't apply.

I think you're giving Bethesda *way* too much credit if you believe they actually took the two moons into account when designing their lighting...

 

[an Administrator]

There should be some sort of Night Vision magic in RPGs

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Even though I love realistic lighting or day/night depiction in games, I ALWAYS end up skipping the night if the game gives me option to. Not cause I'm scared, but it's just annoying as fuck to play at night in-game, while in real life, your eyes adjust to the darkness. Not to mention, there usually is no point in going at night other than being a retard who likes to run around in artificial darkness.

Now if the games spent time making nighttime look nice (or you can call it "cinematic") instead of annoying, without overdoing the darkness, I'd be more than happy to venture outside at night too.

The drawbacks of trying to explore and engage in combat while in a condition of realistic darkness are part of the point; it adds to the logistics element of exploration, forcing the player to consider whether it's worthwhile to continue onward in the night-time or to seek shelter where they can rest and return in the daylight. This also encourages planning and preparation on the part of the player, to avoid being caught outdoors in the night. Unfortunately, developers nowadays shrink from using logistics in general, being unwilling to constrain players in any way, which is to the great detriment of exploration. Logistics encompasses inventory limitations, encumbrance, stamina/fatigue, need for food, need for water, need for sleep, realistic lighting, a day/night cycle, Vancian magic memorization, weapons/armor deterioration and repair, etc. and is a core aspect of RPG mechanics.

 

[Gerrard]

Also I think many modern flat screens don't do dark as well as old CRT monitors for example, never had these problems with the big ol' cube back in the day.

And this is probably one of the reasons people make these shit "darker nights" mods.

There are some games that benefit from total darkness (survival horror)

No they don't, it's just fake "difficulty" stemming from shit technology/retarded developers who never used a flashlight in their sad lives. Because flashlights in video games are all shit that have 5 meter range and/or run out of batteries in 10 seconds, and because there is no radiosity give fuck all light. Bonus points if the game takes place in the future.

If darkness has a gameplay impact then you are encouraging player to crank gamma. Perverse incentive.

If you do it properly increasing the gamma will do nothing except make the wall of blackness in front of you grey. There are game that did this to prevent such cheating.

 

[AW8]

Darkness takes away the player's ability to see, which in turns makes for shitty gameplay. It's as simple as that. Or, at least it makes for shitty gameplay unless the developer is willing to spend a good amount of time making gameplay without sight actually fun. Time that could have been better spent on other areas of the game, since unless the genre is claustrophobic survival horror, it's more than likely that gameplay in complete darkness isn't a big focus in it.

In reality you can't see shit at night. But games are not reality. In reality you're never casually tasked with venturing into a forest at night, fighting 10 zombies and retrieving a magic sword. The black of night in games is "spooky grey" at best, with nighttime ambience gained by other means such as owl hoots, an oversized moon in the sky and eerie music. And unless you really want the player to stumble around frustrated with minimal visual feedback, that's all good.

 

[Beastro]

The problem with star and moon light is how stark the contrast is going from open fields to even partially wooded/enclosed places.

Camping where I live means camping in the forest and it sucks the light out of everything where even large sized open fields becomes minefields of shadows hiding stuff. I went head over heels over a chain gate to keep cars out of part of the camping area once because of how strategically placed it was in the shadow of nearby trees.

That's another thing about darkness with the ancients. They loved that sky, but hated places like forests that "ate" light up and were where the bad things lurked, which if done in games would be mixing the very lethal with the very frustrating.

The less spoken over torches and how they work, or rather, how bad they're used in movies and games, the better.

I do love snow and how it diffuses light. One of the awesome things about Everquest and playing a human, which lacked night vision, was how much prettier lighting was compared to the more bland, sameness of infravision and ultravision.

Edit: Also, fucking night-skies. Most developers seem to never have been outside of a zone of massive immediate light-pollution. A cloudless night gives a surprising amount of light and it's no wonder our ancestors venerated that shit. I pity people that live their lives entirely in urban areas and have never seen the magnificence of the universe unveiled. Explains why urbanites are generally so pre-occupied with the navel-gazing of their petty little lives and obsessing over inane shit that only relates immediately to themselves.

I've often found light pollution to be the perfect metaphor for how blind modern man is.

 

[ortucis]

Even though I love realistic lighting or day/night depiction in games, I ALWAYS end up skipping the night if the game gives me option to. Not cause I'm scared, but it's just annoying as fuck to play at night in-game, while in real life, your eyes adjust to the darkness. Not to mention, there usually is no point in going at night other than being a retard who likes to run around in artificial darkness.

Now if the games spent time making nighttime look nice (or you can call it "cinematic") instead of annoying, without overdoing the darkness, I'd be more than happy to venture outside at night too.

The drawbacks of trying to explore and engage in combat while in a condition of realistic darkness are part of the point; it adds to the logistics element of exploration, forcing the player to consider whether it's worthwhile to continue onward in the night-time or to seek shelter where they can rest and return in the daylight. This also encourages planning and preparation on the part of the player, to avoid being caught outdoors in the night. Unfortunately, developers nowadays shrink from using logistics in general, being unwilling to constrain players in any way, which is to the great detriment of exploration. Logistics encompasses inventory limitations, encumbrance, stamina/fatigue, need for food, need for water, need for sleep, realistic lighting, a day/night cycle, Vancian magic memorization, weapons/armor deterioration and repair, etc. and is a core aspect of RPG mechanics.

Yeah, doesn't work for me.

Every single game other than Gothic, that has done this darkness bullshit, it has always come across as half-arsed excuse to make things harder or scary. Witcher & Dying Light are good examples (Witcher fails harder, drink more cat potions.. spoopy-time preparation, very immersive u guyz).

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

Put Arcania into the trash bin. And try Gothic if you want to a proper day/night cycles. Or Stalker - I remember venturing through Red Forest during the night, great experience.

 

[Carrion]

No they don't, it's just fake "difficulty" stemming from shit technology/retarded developers who never used a flashlight in their sad lives.

What's fake about it? It's an environmental hazard like any other. Even real flashlights have their drawbacks, and when moving through a monster-infested area I'd probably choose not to use one.

To me this thread is pretty weird since I can't name a single game off the top of my head where darkness was an actual issue. Seriously, what are all these games? Even Doom 3 with its nonsensical flashlight mechanic probably would've been worse off without it considering how unremarkable it was otherwise. Sure, some mods suck because they only make things darker without altering the mechanics in any way, but even in those cases the issue isn't really the darkness but the fact that they only went halfway through with it. On the other hand I can definitely think of games where darkness notably improved the game, like Jagged Alliance 2 (although it was mostly about mechanics rather than the visuals), the Stalker games (one of the few genuine improvements that Clear Sky brought was making the nights actually dark) and Operation Flashpoint (where the time of day could completely change the nature of a mission, with nightly firefights generally being close-range affairs where a careless muzzle flash could expose your entire squad to enemies you hadn't even spotted yet). Betrayal at Krondor and a number of other older RPGs also had nearly pitch-black areas that could only be navigated by using spells or torches, which added another layer of resource management to the games aside from making the dungeons seem appropriately inhospitable. I also enjoyed the area in the Dark Souls gif from the last page — sure, it was a gimmick, but it worked well and made an otherwise pretty dull area a lot more interesting and memorable.

 

[Jazz_]

Doom 3 gameplay was designed around pitch black darkness, flashlight and jump scares, wasn't it? That's the little I remember from playing it eons ago.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

Fallout 4 was very bright don't understand it, takes away from the atmosphere. Also when you had your flashlight on it created no shadows. Dragons Dogma is very dark at night it's the closest thing to a fantasy horror game. Witcher 3 is also pretty bright during the night. Sometimes I think they keep it bright because they want you to look at their beautiful creation at all times.
I think Stalker was pretty dark.

Fallout 4's no shadows was an engine problem. It being light is just a convenience feature that mods take care of.