Wanted: Walls that act like - I dunno .. walls?

saf227_ESO

I'd much appreciate when I add a light source to one side of a solid wall, it didn't shine through the other side of the wall.

Actually, I think it's any solid surface, but the title was catchier that way.

I was about to hijack another thread, then thought better of it & decided to give it its own thread. I've seen it mentioned in other threads, but those go off on a tangents about desired lighting, color, intensity, etc.

I just want a solid surface - wall, floor, ceiling, whatever - to behave like it and block light. Light shouldn't go through to the other side. It's one of the most frustrating things in housing for me. Constantly moving light sources because they're showing through the other side of a wall. Or a floor.

OldManJim

Agreed. It looks ridiculous.

Waffennacht

I will try and position a light source on both sides of the wall to mask the leaks

saf227_ESO

Waffennacht wrote: »

I will try and position a light source on both sides of the wall to mask the leaks

Yeah, but that's the point really. It interferes with all kinds of design decisions. Better if the walls just acted like walls.

Woefulmonkey

I agree with your wish... however be sure you understand the consequences.

Dynamic Lighting in a game environment is expensive, so most environments in a game are 'pre lit'. Meaning when a level is designed they calculate the lighting mechanics for the 'known' surfaces so they can 'appear dynamic' when they actually are not.

Then only critical object types are setup to interact dynamically with a light source.

What does that mean?

Well in the real world every object that a light sources shines on is illuminated by the light source and casts a shadow.

Making that happen in a game object is expensive in terms of system resources.

In order to make the game world more performant and to allow for 'more objects' to exist at the same time developers 'cheat' and only allow critical objects like 'Characters' to interact dynamically with light sources.

Soooooo...

The more 'Furniture' objects they give you that can interact dynamically with light sources the less over all objects they can support while still being performant on the lowest spec machines ESO supports.

Which mean you are asking for a trade off here... More dynamical lighting object for less over all objects you can place.

Which is it you want, because it is unlikely that ESO can achieve both.

PS:

A middle ground solution would be for ESO to provide actual 'Wall' object and only allow you to have a small number of them like say 10. These would need to be fully formed walls not blocks and setup up as a special object type that does interact dynamically with lights.

saf227_ESO

I feel like actual 'Wall' objects in the pre-made house, where you can see both sides is a fairly small number. The whole house area isn't that big (compared to say, a full zone). I don't think we're looking at that big of a performance hit. Of course, we'd never know without being able to test it.

Also, I don't think we're really talking about dynamic lighting here. We already have that. Every light source you add to the house adds more dynamic lighting. I'm talking more about an object (wall, ceiling) defining occlusion - where the light shouldn't go. Quite frankly, if a character model stands right in front of the light, the light doesn't pass through the model. The walls and ceilings should be expected to behave the same way.

Kaktus

An interesting effect of this is light bleeding through walls that aren't obvious. If you put a varla stone in the top floors of Amaya Lake House (the floors accessible past the loading screen and first set of balconies), the blue light will actually bleed through the ceiling of the large hall below it, even though it's not immediately obvious that both sections of the house are connected

huschdeguddzje

More importantly spells shouldn't hit you trough walls

Beardimus

huschdeguddzje wrote: »

More importantly spells shouldn't hit you trough walls

I came in here thinking it was about resource guards in Cyrodiil lol

Hippie4927

Why shouldn't light go through walls when the guards in Cyrodiil can hit you through walls, stairs, whatever?

heaven13

It can be helpful though when you see that familiar red glow and realize there's a runestone on the other side of the building you're in. xD