Friday Facts #168 - Nightvision Nightmare

[tehroach]

PS I would like to enquire about this line in the FF168

"there exists a single python script for creating sprite sheets."

Is this available to MODers?
and if so
Where can I get it?

[golfmiketango]

IMO This is by far the best rendition of what night vision should look like in Factorio
+>9000

In my hundreds of hours of Factorio play, I have chosen to equip the Nightvision goggles once and then promptly put them in the box next to the pistol!
Never to be used again

The green idea is OK for an FPS but is just a gamey effect.
Modern NVGoggles will appear black and white rather than green.
as the green ones lie in the same box of reasons for why the first computer monitors were green.

This green effect is just not warranted for Factorio IMO

+1

[cybersteel8]

What about, instead of "night vision" why not use "light goggles"? These goggles illuminate darkness instead of using a green effect. It's a little sci-fi, but it works kinda how it does in the original Doom game. Instead of green, it just basically goes back to being daytime. You could add some effects to it to distinguish the goggles from normal daylight, but using the concept of "light goggles" instead of night vision could result in a much more visually pleasing result.

Just food for thought. Glad you guys considered the look of night vision at all! Y'all are doing a great job

[bk5115545]

This effect is fairly easily implemented via a shader provided there's a lightmap already in GPU memory. I'm not a GLSL expert so here's a Python version (assuming intensity is the lightmap and maxes at 255). This should be pretty easy to do with a fragment shader.

Code: Select all

for x,y in screen:
  r,g,b = pre_lighting_rgb[x][y]
  average = (r+g+b)/3
  r = (r*intensity[x][y]/255+average*(1-intensity[x][y]/255))
  g = (g*intensity[x][y]/255+average*(1-intensity[x][y]/255))
  b = (b*intensity[x][y]/255+average*(1-intensity[x][y]/255))
  draw_pixel(x,y,r,g,b)

[CLion]

Although I agree with some of the new night vision criticism--it could use some work--I really like the thinking behind it! Rewarding placement of lighting is an interesting idea, and other optic benefits could add to the usefulness of researching and wearing night vision goggles. Here's my stab at a night vision concept:

Normal Vision.png

Night Vision.png

Maybe you could upgrade your optics to get thermal vision:

Normal Vision_1.png

Night Vision_1.png

Great Friday Facts, as always!

THIS ONE PLEASE

[Killcreek2]

Here's another test example. I reduced the greyscale to %80, and made the biters stand out a bit more:

Normal Vision

Normal Vision_2.png

New Night Vision and Thermal

Night Vision_2.png

It works really well with some of the other mechanics, like rail signal color, fire, headlights, and so on. Not all the images I edited turned out very good though, so I decided not to share them

Sorry to say, but this^ is much better than the devs nightvis as shown in the FFF. [That 3rd green picture is imho simply awful and worse than the current ingame one, though the 2nd is tolerable & better than ingame] Really hoping the devs agree and abandon the green tint completely.

I would definitely use MiloRKs version all the time if it was implemented, and the thermal highlight is a great research idea addition.

As somebody mentioned earlier: why is the nightvis module so huge? Surely it should be a 1x1 or 1x2 tile, as the 2x3 is almost as big as an exoskeleton. Maybe have the greyscale nightvis and the thermal biter highlight as separate 1x1 [or 1x2] modules.

Keep up the good work devs: you have made an awesome game that just keeps getting better. Thanks!

[FrozenOne]

Only now i noticed a funny thing

Trees have shadows at night.

Towards a lamp.

[Uxi]

When you're done tweaking the night vision effect,
could you then please make the required inventory space smaller.
A 2x3 slot for night vision goggles seems large, compared
to a robo port that only takes up a 2x2 slot.

/Uxi

[stootachtig]

Oh wow that version of MiloRK is both beautiful and very useful. I'll take that any time over a green overlay.

[giustizieri25]

I think I like the second picture but with greyscale instead of green and with termal detection, like in the last sample above; from which, I took the liberty of editing the sea, making it even more black-ish, because if you think about it, you cannot see a body of water at night.

What do you think?

NightVisionBlackSea.jpg (132.17 KiB) Viewed 8836 times

[CrushedIce]

Sorry but i can't agree that the third picture looks "pleasant". Imho it's worse than what we currently have. The second one is really nice. What i particularly like is that the lightened areas look normal and not green shaded.

If you really want to use the third one please add either an auto turn off option when you enter a lightened area or a hotkey for toggling nighvision on and off.

[torham]

Although I agree with some of the new night vision criticism--it could use some work--I really like the thinking behind it! Rewarding placement of lighting is an interesting idea, and other optic benefits could add to the usefulness of researching and wearing night vision goggles. Here's my stab at a night vision concept:
*removed awesome pics to save space*
Great Friday Facts, as always!

I love this. This would actually make the nightvision usable. I don't really like any of the official versions in the FFF, but a neutral gray looks ok.

[AnarCon]

I'm pro heat vision myself, factories not in idle would show up with heat as well as biters ofc and maybe darker bluefish to the rest in various degrees, or perhaps two sets of "night vision " goggles unlocked in same tree branch, so u can puck n choose or if change from one to another

[thykka]

Compared to the currently implemented nightvision, I dislike all of the versions in the blog post, sorry

I'd really like to have a hotkey-toggleable NV, with a drawback of making lit areas too bright to look at. This would make it most useful while raiding alien bases in unlit terrain and counterproductive to run around with NV goggles everywhere during day and night.

As for the idea of highlighting enemies, perhaps there could be a tiered upgrade for thermal vision, which would show aliens and dense factory areas brightly, along with an even better upgrade; Augmented NV, which would highlight and outline enemies for instant recognition during day and night, and through trees too.

[DeathMers]

Looks awesome!

[IronCartographer]

Sorry to say, but this^ is much better than the devs nightvis as shown in the FFF. [That 3rd green picture is imho simply awful and worse than the current ingame one, though the 2nd is tolerable & better than ingame] Really hoping the devs agree and abandon the green tint completely.

I would definitely use MiloRKs version all the time if it was implemented, and the thermal highlight is a great research idea addition.

As somebody mentioned earlier: why is the nightvis module so huge? Surely it should be a 1x1 or 1x2 tile, as the 2x3 is almost as big as an exoskeleton. Maybe have the greyscale nightvis and the thermal biter highlight as separate 1x1 [or 1x2] modules.

Keep up the good work devs: you have made an awesome game that just keeps getting better. Thanks!

Breaking up the night vision into multiple modules that apply different filters would be a nice and creative solution, but probably increase the item count too fast for the minimalism the devs have in mind with the recipe list.

Given the poor cost:benefit ratio of the current nightvision, I don't use it very often either. It needs to either have an upgraded version with much higher visibility and/or functionality, or lose the extreme green tint. At 2x3, it has a lot of ground to cover before it's worthwhile.

[Hinanawi-sama]

Sadly, that 'Black and White' effect isn't actually night-vision, that's Heat Vision or FLIR (Forward Looking InfraRed). FLIR offers White hot and Black hot modes for a reason.
True night-vision merely enhances the light the sensor picks up and the green hue was an intentional choice as the human eye is more receptive to green light. The green hue may be 'gamey' but its a desired effect, even today.

As for game implementation, I'd be game for the NVGs to be an upgradable module that adds more viewing modes, bound to a hot key (INSTEAD of auto-on as dusk.)
Teir 1 would be basic NV, Teir 2 would have enhanced NV with basic FLIR (Gen I White Hot,) and Teir 3 would have enhanced FLIR offering more sensitive white and black hot modes.

[Zaflis]

I'm just reminding that night vision is a module in power armor and you don't want to keep swapping it on and off. So while having it on it needs to feel like an improvement to vision in all areas of the game. Majority of the play is while building, so that's what it should be most optimized for. It should look better (easier to see all things clearly) with night vision goggles than without it. "all things" include trees, rocks, aliens, not just structures, belts and inserters.

[Rythe]

I like MiloRK's second round, but I also think there should be some green tint and light source bloom to sell the 'night vision' effect - make it distinct from normal vision and interesting.

So going back to the FF, it'd be picture #2 there, plus the light-source bloom of pic #3 and a faint greening of well lit areas via color shift rather than color overlay. The color overlay has to be super light if it's going to be used as it muddies up details with any significant strength/weight/opacity, which is a lot of where 0.14 night vision goes wrong and FF pic #3 goes wrong.

I kinda have a problem with the Biter thermal, in that to be consistent, your factory should be a huge, overpowering red blob too. What's being displayed by MiloRK for 'thermal' is less thermal and more advanced optics with a sensor suite behind it IDing and colorfying Biters specifically.

[Xterminator]

Although it isn't technically night vision, I really like MiloRK's version. I would much prefer that instead of night vision. His version is actually really cool looking and I would be excited to use something like that! Especially like the highlighted biters, makes them much easier to see and just looks cool.

I know that it might be more realistic to make the night vision with a green tint, but regardless of how it's done, if it still see green, I would probably never use them, just like now. As others have said, NV has come quite a long ways, and doesn't have to be green to be realistic.
Plus, hasn't the realism factor kind of gone by the wayside already sense you can carry rocket silos in your backpack, and use tiny fusion reactors to power an Iron Man like suit? If we have the tech to build portable fusion reactors, surely we would have the tech to make non-green or at least good looking night vision.