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Bridge Lighting options?
timelord79
Member Posts: 1,852 Arc User
How complicated would it be to add bridge lighting options to ship customizations?
i just visited my origin bridge and got reminded how incredibly dark it is.
Every color, esspecially on the uniforms of my crew is very muted.
they all almost look black.
And this is compared to other maps, that are also not that brightly lit, like ESD.
Now, would it be possible to add a bridge lighting option to the ship tailor?
I would prefer it even, if you get one directly on the bridge, but it seems easier to me, to just put it into the ship tailor.
You could have 3 options:
Dark lighting, like the origin bridge is right now.
TNG/Voyager lighting level as seen in the show and usesd on the Intrepid bridge in the game.
and
JJ Trek lighting levels! Extremely brightly lit with lots of lensflares!!!!1111!1oneoneeleven!
ok, kidding about the lensflares.
so... Taco? Are you there? XD
i just visited my origin bridge and got reminded how incredibly dark it is.
Every color, esspecially on the uniforms of my crew is very muted.
they all almost look black.
And this is compared to other maps, that are also not that brightly lit, like ESD.
Now, would it be possible to add a bridge lighting option to the ship tailor?
I would prefer it even, if you get one directly on the bridge, but it seems easier to me, to just put it into the ship tailor.
You could have 3 options:
Dark lighting, like the origin bridge is right now.
TNG/Voyager lighting level as seen in the show and usesd on the Intrepid bridge in the game.
and
JJ Trek lighting levels! Extremely brightly lit with lots of lensflares!!!!1111!1oneoneeleven!
ok, kidding about the lensflares.
so... Taco? Are you there? XD
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My KDF crews stumble around in a smoky red darkness. It would be nice to have brighter neutral lighting as an option.
Instead of putting money back into their business, which is a very good practice, they streamline.
Meaning the put as many games onto one, single, server as possible. Now, for business in the short term this is okay. However, long term this is a nightmare. Because things are cramped already, things like your suggestion can't be done. There isn't enough room to implement those kind of changes. What this also does, it creates a large amount of stress on this already cramped server.
Imagine a box, now imagine putting two games into this box. All the data required, graphics, the dialogue and so on. This box mind you is only so big, and consider this. It isn't designed for more than a set number of folks to be able to play at one time.
What would be a solution that would usher in your fantastic idea? Creating new servers, one for the paying customers. One for the free to play, the free to play would need to be the bigger of the two. However, both would be generating money for the company, and this would actually be cost saving. Especially if they implemented great ideas like yours. How many folks would try it for free, if they liked it by a life time membership? The gaming experience would be drastically improved, and if done right seamless.
I would, and I am sure many other would too..."IF" the game were stable. And let's be perfectly honest, it isn't. And ideas, great ideas, like yours only make people leave to other games where those ideas are actually heard and have something done about. This is never a good business practice. When you lose a customer, even on a free to play game. You lost the opportunity for that player to purchase anything from you, it's lost revenue that you won't get back. The more customers you lose, the bigger that deficit.
The problem with Cryptic is they think to small. They don't plan for success. If they did, they would have already implemented the aboved stated ideas. Then, they could actually work on improving the overall game experience. And ideas just like yours are the keystone of a gaming companys success or failure. Not all ideas are good, but the idea of adjustable/customized lighting is actually a very good one. The way the could package this, just an example. Life Members package includes....Ability to customize and adjust Bridge Lighting, among the other benefits received.
I hope this helps you understand why it is a great idea, and why it probably won't be done until changes are made.
The only updates we had for the Foundry was done by Taco, and others devs, during their free time. Don't expect anything for bridges, unless they decide to revamp them into something new.
Getting a toggle in there to change I while on the map, i can see would be a deeper programming issues that is probably not worth the investment. but reviewing the fixed bridge lighting the diferent maps have and optimizing them somewhat should be doable, or isn`t it?
For a couple of reasons.
1) UI. We'd need some new UI element that would essentially be your light switch, and let you pick the lighting on your bridge. That'd be available to anyone/everyone on the map, so if you brought your jerk friend over, he could be switching it constantly. If you wanted it restricted to the bridge owner, that'd be new tech.
2) Lighting is one of the hardest things to wrangle on the environment side, in any map. We have a very hard limit on the number and types of lights we can use, and only one type of light will allow you to turn it on and off. That type is called a "Dynamic" light, and is what affects normal maps, and shows specular highlights, etc. That light is also the most severely limited. We can have 2 dynamic lights touching any given object in the scene. So, if we have one big overhead light, which is touching everything, we only have one other light we can put near any given object before it starts to break. It's a tricky process.
So, to create multiple lighting schemes, we wouldn't actually change the colors and such on the fly, we'd essentially just make a couple of different sets of lights, and then hide/unhide those such that only one is shown at a time. However, this doesn't always work very well, and can break very easily if we aren't careful.
3) Someone needs to make up those lighting schemes. And point 2 means that it takes quite a while to tweak everything just right so that it works. Doing that once or twice isn't a big deal. But doing that for at least 3 different lighting schemes for how many different bridges? That's going to add up quickly.
Ah, so it's a lot more work than having the ship tailor offer a color-picker or pull-down list. D'oh.
It's still something I'd pay a little zen for, even if it was on just a couple of bridges per faction.
That could be bad with the crowd here "why that bridge" "this one should get it" etc
Unfortunately people like me appear to be in the minority. It's not that there aren't countless ways you could monetize this kind of customization, even with existing assets. It's more that Space Barbie content like the suggestion in this thread only appeals to a certain kind of player, and we do not seem to be numerous enough to drive the kind of revenue that would justify the dev time.
In order for there to be a significant expansion of player housing in STO, someone well above Taco in the food chain would probably have to have a reason to think it would make money.
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