[0.10.2][slpwnd] blocky lights when zoomed out

[boro]

I get blocky light effects often, mostly after playing a while it seems, when zoomed out. I have my options set for high quality, tried different MSAA levels. Game still runs at high fps at this point. Also had this with 0.10.1 but not with 0.9.8.



VS

[sillyfly]

I think this is intentional.
See here: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =41&t=1942

Although I agree this takes away from the aesthetics of the game...
Maybe in the future there would be a solution which would be pretty as well as fast.

[boro]

I think this is intentional.
See here: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =41&t=1942

Although I agree this takes away from the aesthetics of the game...
Maybe in the future there would be a solution which would be pretty as well as fast.

I'm not sure this is related to that.

It also happerns when zoomed in , it's just less noticable. It also occurs when my flashlight is the only lightsource on screen.

I have a geforce GTX470 with 1280MB video ram.

[arl85]

I think it is caused by

Reduced slowdowns when drawing many lights (lamps, accumulators, etc.) at night (light can be a bit pixelated).

[FishSandwich]

I think it is caused by

Reduced slowdowns when drawing many lights (lamps, accumulators, etc.) at night (light can be a bit pixelated).

Then it's a bug introduced by 0.10.1. I've recently noticed this problem as well and doubt it is intended as the many lights do not cause slowdowns for me.

Also as boro said, even when the flashlight is the only light source it still happens. It is not a smooth arc as I remember, but blocky jagged lines.

[Rahjital]

Then it's a bug introduced by 0.10.1.

It's not a bug if it's done intentionally.

Personally, I'm really happy they did this because even just a few lights started slowing down my computer in 0.9.8 and standing near 20 or more working furnaces made the game run at half speed, this makes everything run much smoother for me.

The problem here is that Factorio draws lights using sprites, which is a pretty slow solution. The devs might switch to shaders in the future to make lights both nice and fast. Alternatively, they could add another button to Options where you could choose between Fast and Nice lights. (possibly even turn them off completely).

In the meantime, this should be moved to Known Issues.

[FishSandwich]

Then it's a bug introduced by 0.10.1.

It's not a bug if it's done intentionally.

As I said I don't think it is intentional. And if it is intentional then that is ridiculous.. Why should those of us that can run the game fine have to suffer because some people get slowdowns from the lights?

Fine, you get slowdowns. But if devs want to introduce this then it should've been introduced as an option in the graphics settings, not forcing everyone to use it. That way those of us that can run the game fine can ignore the option, and others that get the slowdown can enable it.

I think this should instead be added to suggestions. I want my smooth lights back, and an option for other people enable the jaggy horribleness if it slows them down.

[Rahjital]

Here's a quote from the link sillyfly posted:

we can just lower the resolution of the lightmap temporary bitmap to be 1/4 to 1/64 of the size of the actual screen to allow 4 to 64 times faster drawing for the price of slightly blurry lightmaps.

In fact, arl85 quoted the exact changelog line that would be responsible for this.

Is it really such 'suffering', though? Sure, the lights aren't as pretty as they were, but it's hardly something painful to look at. As for the settings, that depends on what do the devs plan to do with it in the future. If they want to replace the sprite-based lighting system with a shader-based one that would run for everybody while still being pretty, adding options would be just a waste of time because it would have to be ripped out soon after.

[FishSandwich]

Maybe suffering was the wrong word. What I meant is that we are basically being 'punished' for someone else's problem. My computer ran the game fine when doing the lighting, so why am I forced to look at a downgraded version of it because other people had slowdowns?

And honestly, getting the game to check if an option is selected when doing the lighting is a 5 minute job. It wouldn't kill the devs or take their time away from other things to put it in, or subsequently remove it when they decide to change the way lighting is done.

[slpwnd]

Yeah the lights look blocky when zoomed out. And yes it is the fix for the slow lights rendering bug that is responsible. It turned out that rendering was slow simply because too many lights had been drawn on screen. We scaled down the bitmap to which the lights are drawn and we stretch it afterwards to fit the screen size. This speeds up the rendering significantly, but also creates the blocky effect.

Maybe suffering was the wrong word. What I meant is that we are basically being 'punished' for someone else's problem. My computer ran the game fine when doing the lighting, so why am I forced to look at a downgraded version of it because other people had slowdowns?

Punished is a bit strong word, but I agree with the point.

And honestly, getting the game to check if an option is selected when doing the lighting is a 5 minute job. It wouldn't kill the devs or take their time away from other things to put it in, or subsequently remove it when they decide to change the way lighting is done.

Yeah, this is a simple solution we can do for 0.10.3. Having an option for rendering lights in lower quality. We will think about the alternatives and if nothing else comes out this will be done.

[FishSandwich]

Thank you. and yes, I also thought at the time that punished was a strong word but I couldn't think of anything else to describe the situation as I saw it.

[Rahjital]

And honestly, getting the game to check if an option is selected when doing the lighting is a 5 minute job. It wouldn't kill the devs or take their time away from other things to put it in, or subsequently remove it when they decide to change the way lighting is done.

Eh, to be honest, I'd rather see the devs spend the time on some other '5 minute job's that have been there for a while, like some of the modding interface requests... Not that it matters now that the devs have decided, of course.

[slpwnd]

There will be a setting for this in graphics settings in 0.10.3.