Yippee38 Posted April 4, 2015 Posted April 4, 2015 In my install, I've gotten to the point of installing CoT. The instructions say to install just the main files. Looking through the guide, I see that a couple of mods impact the lighting in the game. I love ELFX, but I've never used some of the other mods (like CoT) before. When I play the game, I like dark areas to be really dark. I mean, if I'm wandering around the forest at night with the moon hidden by the clouds, I think it should be very dark; almost need a torch dark. The same for underground. I want the dark areas underground to be almost pitch black. If there is ambient lighting, it obviously shouldn't be that dark. However, some of the dungeons have areas where no light would reach (tunnels and stuff). Those areas should be almost pitch black. I want to have to use a torch/lantern. Does SR:LE achieve those levels of darkness, or should I install one of the darker options in CoT? If I do install the darker options of CoT, will that conflict with (or be overwritten by) later mods?
Aiyen Posted April 4, 2015 Posted April 4, 2015 Are you going to use ENB or not? The main method to get a personalized interior darkness level is to use that. In general you never ever want to install the CoT interior parts... they are a really crude way of making things darker that in my opinion causes more immersion breaking than it provides. I could make a large rant about why near pitch black ambient lighting is a bad idea but I will save that for another day! In short... the game was made with an engine that (almost) only does ambient lighting, hence you need ambient lighting to see anything at all. If you remove it stuff will look bad in a large number of ways. But again... if you use ENB you got the power to easily adjust the brightness in a consistent manner across all interiors at once. (might require that you know how to use notepad++ to write to many files at once but that is about it.)
Yippee38 Posted April 4, 2015 Author Posted April 4, 2015 (edited) I will be using Vividian Vibrant. I normally use SkyRealism because it provides, IMO the correct level of darkness in dungeons, and is better than most at night outdoors. It also has, IMO very realistic coloring. However, I'm going to use the guide as it is set up. I can deal with oversaturated colors from Vividian Vibrant, but dungeons being too bright, I can't abide. I've tweaked the ENB settings in SkyRealism to lower the ambient lighting levels indoors at night. However, I don't want to make everything darker, just the dark areas (shadows mostly). Can I accomplish that with just the ENB tweaks? Edited April 4, 2015 by Yippee38
Aiyen Posted April 4, 2015 Posted April 4, 2015 Depending on how much work you want to put into it, and how much you want then sure. The Vividan shaders are quite flexible in that regard. As long as you just want general changes and not weather or location specific ones it is quite easy to adjust. In general it just sounds like you would need to slightly adjust some tonemapping a bit to make darks, darker. Should be doable or at least provide the options of a decent compromise.
Yippee38 Posted April 4, 2015 Author Posted April 4, 2015 Ok then. I'll go with the suggested installation. If I have any questions about darkening it up appropriately, I'll post back here. Thanks for your input!
Neovalen Posted April 4, 2015 Posted April 4, 2015 Dark means dark with a default installation as written. I think you will be pleased. :)
statmonster Posted April 4, 2015 Posted April 4, 2015 (edited) Vividian comes with three levels of brightness. The normal level (which is recommended for SRLE) makes interiors quite dark and you will need a torch or the like in most dungeons except near a light source such as fire or a hole in the ceiling. There is an even darker version which I assume is even more extreme. I have actually switched back to using the Bright version which is maybe only slightly darker than vanilla on average but has dark shadows and corners but most areas are modestly well illuminated - while I concede a darker version (like Vividian normal) would be more "realistic" I find them less enjoyable to play and I miss seeing all the textures etc. My guess is you will find either the install suggested by SRLE or a simple change of installing the Vividian dark setting to be suitable to you. (BTW, you can create multiple ENB profiles wit the ENB Manager so you can quickly swap between one and the other - I would suggest setting one up as Vividian normal and one as Vividian dark and see which you like.) Of course Aiyen knows a whole lot more about lighting than I do so I would recommend you listen to his advice... Edited April 4, 2015 by statmonster
Yippee38 Posted April 4, 2015 Author Posted April 4, 2015 (edited) Dark means dark with a default installation as written. I think you will be pleased. :)Cool. Thanks guys! Sounds great! I will continue and check it out. If necessary, I'll try to Vividian dark. I haven't gotten that far in the guide, so I didn't know there were multiple versions. Edited April 4, 2015 by Yippee38
Yippee38 Posted April 20, 2015 Author Posted April 20, 2015 I'm very happy with the darkness in dungeons and interior spaces without any tweaks to the SR:LE install. Outside at night is a bit bright, but I can live with it.
Yippee38 Posted July 19, 2015 Author Posted July 19, 2015 Apparently, Vividian 7.0 doesn't use the same level of darkness that the 6.x version did. My interiors and nights are pretty damn bright. The shadows are great, but the non-shadow areas are too bright. I'm gonna try the Dark Nights and Interiors file and see if that fixes it, or just makes everything too dark at night.
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