Lighting for night travel overlay

Any chance we could see some lighting outlining some of the roads on the overlay map? Not every road but maybe right before city/town entrances? Or even at crossroads of two major establishments? What's everyone's ideas on this?

 

This game is almost unplayable for me at night anywhere. Way too dark, unless I turn off all the lights in my house and close the blinds. Traveling on world map is impossible at night for me. Lights would be good.

 

I think it makes sense for roads to be lit with lamps. At least well traveled ones. Or maybe we could craft some sort of hooded lantern that works like a flashlight and illuminates in a beam in front of us.

 

I almost wish I had this problem. Night for me is like twilight, it never really gets dark. I guess it's all a matter of hardware and settings.

 

I think they added small lamp posts outside of some of the hidden vale towns but these do not really light up the road near the town at the moment.

 

I play on a laptop. Really need brightness settings in game.

 

I agree that brightness settings would be nice. I have a terribly hard time traveling at night. I know the idea of dark roads at night is to add some realism, but then again, how realistic is the overland map anyway? Don't get me wrong, I like it for the most part, but zoiks! It just seems way too dark at night and adding brightness settings might help alleviate some of that.

 

That is how I feel about the overland map. It's not like it feels like you are wandering in the woods anyway.

 

And I must also agree. I have a cloak of light and a helm that has light on it, and *still* the roads on the overland map are so dark at night that I have to work very hard to stay on the road! [Those light items give light, but mostly at my back.] Further, there is no speed option other than "run" or "crawl" [walk], so there's no easy way to slow down to just the right speed to see where you are going. I don't think it needs to be lightened up "a lot" - but even a small amount I think would help most of us. I'm hopeful that they will adjust it.

 

Norzecs idea then of some lighted points along the road at night may be prudent then if everyone is seeing thing that dark at night.

 

I would love for RG or Starr to explain to us exactly what the purpose of having very dark nights on the Overworld map actually serves......
I understand having day and night, and the nights on the Overworld map were OK prior to R18. In fact, they WERE quite nice - sort of a full moon effect on the landscape - and the roads were all clearly visible...

If the darkness of the current Overworld map is INTENTIONAL then I wish we could get a statement to that effect from the devs. If it's something within Unity 5 that they will iron out, then I wish they would tell us that.
What purpose in the story does trying to find our way in the dark at night serve?

 

I am really hoping that this is just an odd point in development. The world now has many moons, but they don't really shine down on the world. If each moon is given some light to shine in the next publish, then nights would be better unless you hit a full night with no moons. This would probably be fairly rare though... but more realistic.

 

Personally, I just think with a torch we need enough light to see the road ahead of us and behind us. As long as we have that, we can navigate the map as much as we learn the roads. That's how night always worked in the Ultima games,




Its hard to know what problems people are having when they're complaining about night -- we all have different screens and dark in the game looks differently to all of us.

But here's the question ... is the problem that A. on your screen at home you can't even see the roads around you (like you can in the picture of Ultima V above), or is the problem that B. you want to be able to see the whole map regardless?

I did a post on this in the feedback section for R18, focusing on tone-mapping,
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/roads-lighting-at-night.28038/




For myself, I have no problem seeing the road in both directions in all of these screenshots.

If seeing the roads isn't enough for people, we could also have an in-game paper map that shows our location in the world, same as we have paper maps for navigating in scenes.

 

I can't even see the road at my feet... This is with a EVGA NVidia Titan X Graphics Card with 12-gig of ram on the card displaying on a 70inch UHD monitor. I really do hope moonlight comes into the game soon. It would help a lot with the realism/immersion to me.

 

Actually, I have tone mapping on, but it looks like your images of tone mapping that is off! So, if that gives you some perspective, that is where we are coming from.

My system is an Alienware X-51, running an Nvidia gtx 760 ti graphics card, on a 24" Dell Touchscreen monitor.

 

Cool, that's the kind of info the devs need, I think.

 

actually, i have no problem running around in the dark in uninhabited areas. i have night vision. the problem is that the town banners are so bright it ruins it.

 

@ any dev that might stumble across this thread, I offer the following:

Ok, I went thru a LOT of old screenshots and found the first of the two below which shows a beautifully moonlit night on the Overworld map back in the April 28th release , next to the entrance to Solania.

The second one is a recent R18 screenshot of the same area for comparison.


THEN -



NOW -


The "nights" we had (as shown in the top image) were not only lovely IMO, but were very manageable... We could SEE our way from point A to point B. We had reference points that we could SEE. We had skylines and distant oceans that we could SEE.

What possible purpose can be served by creating hindrances to travel?

Why has it been made HARDER for us to find our way around?

Why should my friends and I actually need to consider what time of day it is on the Overworld map when making travel plans?

Do you want me to travel at night or not?

If not, why not?

And please, please do not tell me that this is immersion.....

 

Yes, for pre-alpha testing purposes everything is very dark right now with the new Unity 5 release. Last year everything was just fine--then came Unity 5. Oh well, SoTA will fix it. It makes me glad I am not a programmer at SoTA.

 

It would save me - and everyone that I know personally who all play Shroud daily - some degree of anxiety, if someone on the dev team would simply clarify as to whether or not the current state of nights on the Overworld map is intentional or a temporary annoyance....... That doesn't sound exceptionally difficult, to me anyway.......