Minor Rules Change (Game Settings)

[LotharBot]

[bahamut]

I was talking about bright ships, it's not big enough a difference to impact competitive play, which you yourself said has evolved; it doesn't make sense.

and by the off chance it does, it isn't because it's "janky" or unfair, it's the player.

and the player, if they are on a competitive ladder - I would encourage them not to try to make rules around their weaknesses. that's called angling in a "higher sense"

[Mark392]

It's not someones weakness that they were not informed of a host setting, and have to figure out part way through the game why they were snuck up on so easily. That's like saying "it's a weakness that you didn't know tracking ships on the auto map was on and you need to not angle by saying both pilots should know what they are flying in with host settings". It would be obsurd if someone had auto map tracking on in any form of the game without agreeing first. And, as lighting is a key part of the game, having ships harder to see AND NOT BEING MADE AWARE OF THAT at the start of the game is unfair.

[LotharBot]

I agree with Mark. Making rules for set defaults isn't angling. Using unexpected settings is angling. It's a way to gain an advantage over your opponent, not by outflying them, but simply by hosting with a setting they didn't realize was on.

It's self-contradictory to say, in one sentence, that it's making rules to cover someone's weaknesses, and in another sentence to say it doesn't affect competitive play. If it can be a weakness, it affects competitive play. If it doesn't affect competitive play, it can't be a weakness. But I think we all agree, people can be relatively weaker or stronger with different lighting settings and different connection settings -- and since those affect the game, we should have expected settings so that the host can't game it for an advantage. It's OK to play competitively with whatever settings you can agree on with an opponent. It's not OK to surprise an opponent with an unexpected game setting.

[Cyrus]

Luke I have no clue why you don't want 30 pps - you have the best connection to almost everyone individually.

[birdseye]

[Drakona]

Hehe... vulcan is stronger in the current meta than it used to be, but I think saying the game revolves around it is a bit much. It's not my running gun. Well, depends on the level and the circumstances, I guess, but I usually do much better running lasers. If you run vulcan, that's your business. I definitely think calling out bright player ships as a cause of that is a stretch. I would go with, as pilots have improved, you've needed to lean on faster guns and smaller spaces to hit them, so spaces that used to be power weapon dominated like Athena and Vamped are now vulcan dominated. Go somewhere like logic and it's not unless you're playing Cyrus... Go somewhere like Ascend or RIP and I'd argue running vulcan is a bad enough idea that it's a disadvantage even if you ARE Cyrus! I suppose he might disagree about that...

I don't have a running copy of D1x in order to check, but my memory matches Lothar's and Melvin's: the setting is ancient and has been on forever. I definitely don't think it's Rebirth era, because if it had been new and game-changing, I would have been mad about it like I was with colored dynamic lighting. Instead, I knew exactly what it was and that it was supposed to be on. In fact, I had the impression that it being on had been settled long ago and so I never thought twice about it.

In a way, though, it's not terribly relevant what settings people used to use, whether fifteen years ago or two years ago. For the purpose of setting expectations, what matters is what the pilots flying now expect. I'm surprised it isn't as universal as I thought! I know my reaction to the proposed default settings update was, "I don't think I've ever played with that setting off... do people do that?" I know I would interpret it as a clear hosting error.

I do know that as a pilot, I want the ships easy to see and to read. They are pretty easy to miss when only partially visible even with bright ships on. Hiding is plenty easy enough just using the level geometry... I don't have time to stop and scan carefully and try to pick a dark ship out of a dark texture. If I wanted that sort of experience, I'd play games with cloaks in. On the contrary, I like high visibility maps, and go really far out of my way when mapping to avoid noisy and busy textures in which the ships tend to get lost. In fact, I view the use of such textures as a defect in a map, and their rarity in popular maps of any era suggests I'm not alone in this.

Anyway - I suppose one thing we can check is how much of a difference it makes. Whether the map is lit for non-bright ships depends on the designer and his workflow. My maps are all flat lit at 100%, so turning off bright ships literally wouldn't matter. When I spot checked several DKH maps yesterday, I found they were flat lit at less than 100%. In theory that means turning bright ships off will make all the ships a little darker. In practice, I didn't see a difference. Maybe a side by side screen shot would be helpful? I did find that June Bug had varying internal lights, so turning bright ships off would matter there. Might be worth investigating further.

[deimos]

I remember the option (virtually?) always being there, but I am pretty sure that at some point in the distant past it was known that the setting's function was inverse: checked meant DISABLED.

Are bright player ships contributing to the phenomenon whereby ships illuminate through walls, giving away gratuitous location clues? Because that feature sucks hard, whatever is causing it.

[Drakona]

[Drakona]

A bit more research on internal lighting from some spot checking with the editor:

Nysa - brightly flat lit
Athena - brightly flat lit
IO - brightly flat lit
Black Rose - varying light levels, but the darkest it gets is still pretty medium
Fuzed - brightly flat lit
All DKH levels I looked at - brightly flat lit
Minerva - brightly flat lit
Junior - brightly flat lit
Neptune - brightly flat lit
Colorbox - varying light levels, gets kinda dark
Wyndham - brightly flat lit
June Bug - Varying lights, doesn't get darker than medium
FRP - Only one I could find with a super super dark spot

Here are some sample screenshots:

In logic, having bright ships on or off theoretically makes a difference according to the level editor. I can't even see it in side by side screenshots, though, so it's pretty hard to argue that it would matter in a fight.

Bright Ships On:




Bright Ships Off:




Note that the ship with the bright ships off in the dark corner looks brighter to me. I came across a few cases like this while testing. I'm not sure if it's the angle of the ship or and optical illusion or a real effect or what. I know bright ships is *supposed* to make the ships 100% bright.

Black Rose is the most popular level I could find that was lit in such a way that turning off bright ships even mattered. Interestingly, though, this appears to be mainly cosmetic. Pretty much everywhere I would want to camp is lit up super bright. Same story in June Bug. There are some dark spots, but the good spots to sit are pretty brightly lit, and the dark ones are in transitional zones. Here's the darkest spot I found:

Bright Ships Off:



Bright Ships On:



Darkest spot I found in June Bug, bright ships Off:


The darkest spot I could find in any multiplayer level (and it's a stretch to call it one) is in FRP. Here's a camping spot with literally no light. There are no popular multiplayer levels I could find that get anywhere near this dark.

Bright Ships Off:


Bright Ships On:


That's a huge difference, and if you did that to someone without warning, I'd say they'd be well within their rights to be pissed!

Note that the ambient light Deimos is talking about gives this spot away, bright ships on or off.

Camping spot empty:


Camping spot not empty:


It's a much more subtle effect, though. It's easy to see in a side by side screenshot; seeing it in combat relies on extreme familiarity with the level. It screams out to me, but then, I played this level in single player every day for years on end. Someone who knew the map but didn't fly it much would be at a severe disadvantage here. And on the third hand, somewhere you fly every day, you probably will see this effect if you keep an eye out for it. Note the dark textures, as they can reveal pilots by engine glow, something bright textures can't do.

Anyway. I find it hard to believe, as Birdseye claims, that playing with the setting off used to be the norm, given that none of the popular levels I can find from *any* era support it, with the exception of Sirian's works. That suggests that the setting generally doesn't matter, but I think if you found yourself in a situation where it did matter and it was on, you'd be well within your rights to complain and expect to be warned.