[TEC] God's Lightswitch - FIXED!!!

[onelifecrisis]

In case you didn't see the thread I posted on this in the main SH3 forum, by "god's lightswitch" I mean the way the sky flicks bright/dark/bright/dark in the periscope view when water washes over the scope?

Well I fixed it! lil ol me fixed it! W00t!!

So, in case anyone else would also like this fixed...

The "lightswitch" problem is caused by the sky images in the SkyColours_XXX.dat files (Sky_atl1.tga, etc). I opened them in a freebie image editor and noticed that the day-night-cycle image seems to have two... er, channels? Layers? I don't really know image lingo but one "channel" has the actual colours (the night-time colour is blue-black in my version, which is the GWX version) and the other channel (a transparency channel? an "alpha" channel - whatever that is? I dunno) is grey for the night-time.

So, I fixed the problem by re-saving the images as single-channel images (just the colours) and voila - no more lightswitch! WOOHOO!

I can't be the ONLY person who found this anoying as hell

When you apply this "fix" the effect is to have the lights "on" all the time. This doesn't brighten anything except the sky, and even that is only bright because the night-time colours in the aforementioned images are quite bright (at least in the one's I have they are - mine are GWX, haven't looked at stock yet). You can fix this by just darkening the night-time colours (all the way to pitch-black if you want) and you're done.

I know how fussy everyone is about their colours so I thought I'd post the info rather than a mod (especially what with all the potential mod interdependency issues).

Any questions, put 'em here and I'll try.

OLC

[JCWolf]

you posting it for download,
I would like to give it a try and check that!

[onelifecrisis]

I've submitted a JSGME-ready mod (with suitably darkened night colours) to FilePlanet. I'll post a link when they approve the file.

[TarJak]

Have you tested how it looks when night changes to day? The alpha channel is used for transparency or reflectivity depending on the surface the texture is painted on. I think it would be worth checking whether this has adverse effects on lgithing conditions when not in either day or night and also on reflections on the water etc.

There was probably a good reason why there was an alpha channel on the sky, consodering they didn;t have one on things like ships (they are there in SH4), aircraft, buildings etc.

I'm not saying you might not have fixed the problem but I'd like to see some wider testing done before I'd go jumping into this edit wholeheartedly.

[onelifecrisis]

@Tarjak

You're right, there probably was a good reason why they had the extra channel, and I've not found out what it was yet, and I'd very much like to know if this "fix" does break anything, but I can say it doesn't break any of the things you listed because I already tested them all.

The day/night cycle works sweet as ever. I tested in different weather conditions at different times of year, throughout the 24 hour cycle. Water reflections are also unaffected.

I'd love to have some help with the testing though - the more eyes the better. If anyone can host files, say so and I'll email the mod instead of waiting for fileplanet.

[onelifecrisis]

Someone help please - I've found out that the extra channel is definitely an alpha channel. To get the early/mid/late evening sky colours right I need to merge this channel with the RGB channels and output a standard RGB image as a result... but I don't know how to do this! I've installed GIMP, but it's bewildering. I'm sure this can be done with a few clicks of the mouse if you know how.

Does someone here know how?

Thanks
OLC