Dynamic Lighting Program for 2D

Hello,

I was just linked to a kickstarter by a fellow Melbourne dev. It's about creating dynamic lighting for 2D art and looks pretty darn sweet. You can check it out here.

Now I'm interested to see if it can work with C2. It says it can work with most programs that have custom shaders, and that they will make the shaders for the program if necessary, but my tech knowledge is limited so I'm not sure.

Maybe Ashley could make an enquiry? Mixing dynamic lighting with Spriter would be simply incredible.

I have some questions regardless the Sprite Lamp, but by the way, it deserve support!

The main question is about the maps, who will make it, the user need to make custom maps or the software will take care and automatically draw them? He said the Sprite Lamp currently creates normal maps, depth maps, ambient occlusion maps, and anisotropy maps, but it's not shown in any place how exactly it make the job, anyway, is a great tool!

TELLES0808 sorry but I don't know anything else about it yet. The best part though is it's already over its funding limit, so we are definitely going to see a nice new tool for the industry :)

If anyone else could explain a little more about how it works or manages to have a chat with the guy (the Melbourne indie scene is very easy to talk to), let me know. I am still in Nam for a while, so it;s hard for me to do anything (never complaining about Australian internet again!).

This is cool software. However I'm concerning over the practicality of this. Don't get me wrong I would love to use this in my games. I think the effect of dynamic lighting like this is gorgeous and adds depths. BUT.

1. This is PC only tool. The result is 4 images per frame of any given sprite. 1 Diffuse and 3 Maps base on the light system. I have a demo game that has the PC where one animation has 60frames. That's 240 frames with SpriteLamp. memory and storage wise this is shot.

2. Developer needs to create the base light maps to be processed. The guide shows that while it exports 3 maps it needs 2 to 5 light inputs. Again that's going to be for just one animation 60 frams where I need to create these light inputs. Can't imagine what this would be like over the entire characters animation.

3. This seems impracticale due too number 2. HOWEVER this would work SUPER well for static parts of the level. Wich means that use of spritelamp only works best in games where light moves. Which is often dungeon games, dark exploration games where the ligth source is carried by the player.. though shooting blasters would look super cool too :D. But again only the terrain gets' the beenfit.

4. The Only practical way to make this work for moving characters is to use Spriter/Flash like tween based animation. That's why dynamic lighting works for 3D models. 1 Light map and it's MAPPED over the 3D model. Spriter based animation would still require more. but at least it's not based on the sprite's angle an not per frame.

BUT OH WOW. I would love this in my games.... super coool. WANT WANT WANt.

jayderyu yeah I getcha, but I don't mind if it only really works well with Spriter. Spriter usage with this will bring about some really beautiful games. We could start to see some stuff that is not only great to look at, but also very easy to make!

My mind is already racing with what I could achieve on a mid-range machine or console - awesome camera work zooming past bushes as some guy powers up, messing around with timescales as he unleashes a fireball that lights up the whole forest, with particle sparks flying about. All in regular gameplay and automated through functions. I quad-want.

scirra.com/forum/effect-2d-dynamic-lighting_topic59130.html

I remember that sample. it's really cool.

But SpriteLamp also support normal mapping and depth mapping which adds a lot of depth and colouring to an object.

Last contact with the author.

elles0808 says: Hi Finn,

I want congratulation you for making this software and enjoying the opportunity to ask if you have interest in add support for Scirra Construct 2.

Construct 2 is one of the best 2D game creators in the market, and your tool could match perfectly with it.

Sincerely, Telles0808.

Finn Morgan says:

As far as I can see, Construct 2 supports shaders through some kind of WebGL system. I'm not familiar with the engine, but unless there's some unexpected shortcoming specific to it, that means it should be possible to add support.

Support for lots of game engines is going to be a stretch goal, but at this point it looks likely that I'll be funded way past what I was expecting, and I've had a few people ask me about Construct 2 - given that, while I'm reluctant to promise something like this without knowing all that much about the technical side of the engine in question, it seems overwhelmingly likely that it's something I'll put resources towards.

~ Finnedited><editID>TELLES0808</editID><editDate>2013-11-14 12:07:25</editDate></edited>

a very positive reply indeed...

lets hope to have more news soon.lightning system in c2 will be a huge boost..

TELLES0808 - Thanks for sharing, that is great news! I think my artist will weep with joy if it gets working.

woooooow

I would encourage you all to take a quick look at the Ethanon engine to get some ideas about how cool it would be to have a dynamic lighting system in C2. Being able to use multiple light sources, with a variable radius, normal, spec, and illumination maps would be quite amazing.

Certainly it would place additional demands on the engine and if you chose to use dynamic lighting you would need account for this in your game design.

The current implementations that I have seen for c2 in the form of plugins, while inspiring, really don't allow for multiple light sources on multiple objects - at least as far as I could figure out.

Somewhat off-topic but I think the particle effects plugin in C2 could really benefit from some additional features (trails, start and end color, jitter, etc).

I agree a good lighting system in games that really use them is just amazing. So much personality and feelings can come from good lighting.

I've seen some good lighting in C2 though, but it is a lot of work to do it in C2. No built in easy advanced lighting.

srealist - I just watched a quick video and yeah, it looks great. With lighting a strong possibility and multiplayer apparently on the way I am running out of things to ask for!

As for particles, I read Ashley once talking about how he couldn't do rotating on particles due to the way particles are optimised. He went on to say that if you want other effects you should just use sprites. So I'm guessing there are similar issues with your stated particle effects. It would be pretty easy to event those effects from sprites, albeit rather heavy in processing.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what the modules will be like though, that he mentioned in the blog post. Then we could see many various ways to handle custom particles, amongst other things.