Standing in a shadow looks weird

[Gergely]

It is probably the visually best solution if the artificial lights make all shadows near them fade out, and shadows do not appear at all during night. This means that during the day-night transition, the shadows fade out, and shadows around light sources completely disappear as soon as the light is on. If the shadow is partially in the light, it makes a transition.

For example, shadows could be drawn on to a "sprite shadow" layer that is just above the titles and below entities. It only has an alpha value for each pixel with 0 being no shadows and 1 being completely black. During the night, every pixel is 0. During the day, it might be around 0.5 or so which decrements during the evening, and increments during the morning. The value is also decreased by a greater amount depending on how illuminated is the area by artificial light sources.

[Deadlock989]

I literally can't think of a better way for the devs to completely waste their time.

[eradicator]

Honestly, i think removing shadows altogether or making it an option to do so probably won't lose much out of the game. I play league on no shadows and i don't have an issue with it.

You're free to speak for yourself. But not everyone wants to get eye-cancer. Games without shadows look like garbage have a serious lack of contrast. And if you look outside you'll notice that things still cast shadows at night. Infact there's whole genres around the concept of "shadows in dark places".

[Sir3n]

But not everyone wants to get eye-cancer. Games without shadows look like garbage have a serious lack of contrast. And if you look outside you'll notice that things still cast shadows at night. Infact there's whole genres around the concept of "shadows in dark places".

I'm not saying eye candy isn't nice but having shadows that don't make sense is worse than having no shadows in my opinion. I'd rather the devs spend time on some other part of the game that you have to deal with all the time and could use some improvements before they focus on the eye candy.

Think about it this way. Working on shadows to make them look consistent at night is only an improvement for about half the time you spend in game because in daytime lamps don't turn on. And even then it only affects you if you happen to be around lamps at night, which isn't always the case. So best case scenario, you see an improvement for about half your game time.

On the other hand, if the devs work on the UI like they say in the last FFF or some other more important aspect of the game, you'd get an improvement for more than just half the game time. Especially the UI thing, you deal with the UI every single second you are in game. Best case scenario where you have like 300 apm or something, you make use of the UI with close to 100% of the game time

In addition, factorio is more of an abstract game if i can describe it that way. Kinda like a board game with some real time elements to it. The key thing about a games like that is where each piece goes, not how each piece looks. You can play chess with like little bits of paper with King, Queen, Pawn, Bishop, Rook written on them. It doesn't make the game any less than it would otherwise be. The intricacies are all still there.

Eye candy is nice, but only if it adds substantial value to the gameplay and shadows wouldn't add enough imo to justify reworking the whole system just yet. I think there are things that can definitely use improvements before they focus on the shadows thing. Also, it would up the performance cost of the game if they add realistic shadows. This might end up being an issue for people with lower end systems.

Again, the option to disable shadows is quite justified from how i see it.

[eradicator]

Eye candy is nice, but only if it adds substantial value to the gameplay and shadows wouldn't add enough imo to justify reworking the whole system just yet. I think there are things that can definitely use improvements before they focus on the shadows thing. Also, it would up the performance cost of the game if they add realistic shadows. This might end up being an issue for people with lower end systems.

Don't skew what i said to fit your opinion please. Shadows are not "eye candy" they're an itegral part of how we see the world. And thus i fully expect the shadow system to stay the way it is now. Forever. At no extra cost (as they're already fully implemented) you get correct shadows for "half your game time" to quote your words. Which isn't actually true btw, because factorio nights are significantly shorter than factorio days. And just to be double clear: I am not in favor of wasting huge amounts of time on trying to implement dynamic shadows in a sprite-based game.

Again, the option to disable shadows is quite justified from how i see it.

That is because you suffer from a fundamental lack of understanding of how shadows currently work in factorio. Adding an option to remove them would still be a huge amount of work to serve some tiny fraction of players who care. The only chance this is ever going to happen is if they decide that it might be benefitial to low-end systems to save some vram by removing the extra shadow layer. I.e. for performance reasons.

[mrvn]

You do realize that factorio has more than one developer, right? They can work at multiple things at the same time. And they can't all work on the same thing at the same time without getting in each others way. On top of that they don't all have the same qualifications or areas of work.