Left 4 Dead Developer Illuminates Lighting Choice

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
Left 4 Dead developer Randy Lundeen talks about the lighting choices made by Valve during the development process of the game. You can see a before and after image below to give you an idea of how the game was changed:

"While sudden zombie attacks were inarguably scary, they were also frustrating--players weren't being given the information they needed to react," said Lundeen. "They wanted that 'Here they come!' moment, and we weren't giving it to them. The solution? Light-colored fog."
Click to expand...

For those of you that missed it, our Left 4 Dead image quality and gameplay performance evaluation can be seen here.
 
This game is a masterpiece.

It's not the best game ever made but it's well designed and is fun to play.

While playing you can't miss all the great thinking that went into this game.
 
Doom3 had that same issue, where you never seen the monster till it was knocking you across the room. then a ton of flashlight mods were made to alleviate this issue. This game looks great, now if only I had some free time other than the random flyby posting on [H]
 
a very smart choice imo , gives the player a feeling that they have control of the situation until you miss the zombies around the corner and all of the sudden those well lit guys are running towards you from behind.
 
I'd like to give it a shot with a mod that sets it back the old way, that would be interesting.
 
i think valve should make light-colored fog an option to turn off and on. turning it off IMO would make the game more scarier and more interesting to play :)
 
When playing FPS's, immersion is the key, i think adding the fog should be an option as well due to "if it were real life" then there would be no warning except the sounds of footsteps outside of the flashlight's beam or whatever ambient lights are available. Just my 2 cents...
 
Kind of reminds me what they did to fear, in the demo stuff happened randomly, it was pretty scary. but in the retail game they changed it towards were it warned you before anything weird was gonna happen, that sucked.
 
I like it, I am sick of games that are completly dark and then I cant see shit. There are other ways to make a game scary.
 
some people thought the game was too easy, so they forced everybody to use the "easy" button?
 
lol, i meant
some people thought the game was too hard, so they forced everybody to use the "easy" button?

thanks for no fucking edit button :mad:
 
It's generally a smart move, but it seems like they took the easy way out.

I wonder if they had experimented with making the darkness a game mechanic instead though. Perhaps the Source engine cannot deliver my vision at an acceptable framerate:

1. The light emitted from other player's flash lights are rendered on other player's screen. Probably the most taxing thing I could ask for, but I would love to see it done eventually.

2. Use of flares, fires, headlights from cars (alarms), and typical light housings to bring light to dark areas.

L4D is pretty fast paced though, fumbling around with flares, starting fires, and such to get light might be a bit frustrating as a hunter pounces you, smoker snares you, etc. Would be a neat mod though.
 
Kenai said:
Doom3 had that same issue, where you never seen the monster till it was knocking you across the room. then a ton of flashlight mods were made to alleviate this issue. This game looks great, now if only I had some free time other than the random flyby posting on [H]
Click to expand...

While D3 did employ the flashlight in a dark room gameplay, it's nowhere near as dark as L4D. You can barely see in the dark. At least D3 had shadows you could see through.
 
Well, my Steam page is telling me that I've logged 30+ hours in Left 4 Dead just in the last two weeks, and I've been playing it since the beta launched. I have a pile of unfinished PC, 360, and PS3 games waiting for me and all I can think about is versus mode and how hard I can grief the other team as infected, or how fast I can make the finish line as survivor.

I'd say Valve is doing something right.
 
mjz_5 said:
both pictures look the same to me,
Click to expand...

Look in the top right quarter of the before/after.

I didn't notice it either... I was focusing on the zombie close up, not the ones in the right-background.
 
SPARTAN VI said:
1. The light emitted from other player's flash lights are rendered on other player's screen. Probably the most taxing thing I could ask for, but I would love to see it done eventually.
Click to expand...

Why wasn't this done in the first place?
 
Roliath said:
Why wasn't this done in the first place?
Click to expand...

Perhaps too hardware intensive when done via the Source engine. 4 roaming flash lights is better than 1 and would likely have solved part of their lighting issue.
 
Roliath said:
Why wasn't this done in the first place?
Click to expand...

Multiple light projecting, shadow casting light sources provide a huge huge performance hit. We're talking about an exponential hit every time you add a light. It would be cool to have but it would shut out too many customers if they did that. Valve, like Blizzard, are smart in that they build their games to run on the widest range of hardware possible. Valve is able to go even further in optimizing their games to run on a wider range of hardware since they collect user hardware data via Steam.

Its one of many reasons why games from both companies are played for many many years by millions of gamers. A game can't build momentum when it requires bleeding edge hardware (or beyond bleeding edge in the case of Crysis) when it is first released.
 
There's a big ass opening to the outside yet it'd remain pitch black? Only if it's night with no moon out.

Either way glad they did this, now I just wish they'd not fuck my fonts up whenever I remove the game from the system!
 
Im kinda disappointed with this game. Dont get me wrong, its the only thing I play now, but it was way too ... buggy and glitchey for a release, and Valve hasn't done a thing to fix the easy problems.

On the note of lights, why are there car lights on? They are going for realism, in a world 2 weeks after infection, why are there car lights on? Or any lights? They should have moved towards more of an underground railroad idea with lanterns and signal fires guiding the ways, because thats what we'd use at that point in the time line. Emergency lights or a building, maybe, because theyd be on a hard line and power may still be up (but not likely). But no vehicle lights, that kinda sucks from the game because only one or two vehicles in a whole map would have their lights on, the rest would all be off.

I am kinda mad at Valve for dropping so many of the first ideas for this game ( Merit system was a major plus, WTF happened to that? Play testers said it hurt their feelings, so Valve scrapped it! AHHHH! ) and taking the easy way out with this lighting issue. They could have upped the immersion so much by sticking with darker scenes. Having to always watch everywhere would be more realistic and hella scarier than,
"hey look, its a zombie taking a nap against a car way up in the foggy distance in this abandoned subway tunnel, some one snipe him with your pistol."

They were looking for a way to let players know of zombie attacks coming in, wasnt that the idea behind the mood music? Every action in the game has music that plays before it happens, and each boss type has a sound, isnt that enough?

they wanted that "Here they come!" moment, and we weren't giving it to them. The solution? Light-colored fog:
Click to expand...

Valve taking the easy way out and bowing down to the less than average gamer. They should have atleast left the option to disable these "fixes" as they make the game so much less than promised.

I love left for dead, but can you imagine how cool it would be if they left it the way they said they were? It'd be a hardcore gamers dream for years!
 
no edit...

damn them for doing this, because I bet most of this wouldnt have happend if it didnt have a console port. I have a hard time associating anything with a console port as a success. So many things get dumbed down for console ports, and things are getting to easy for console gamers.

Dont notice it? Aim at a group of people with a smoker, I bet your tounge wont hit the guy you wanted to, the guy by the ledge, no, you hit the guy closest to you, because console boys needed auto aim to keep from getting owned
 
DeathCloud said:
I like it, I am sick of games that are completly dark and then I cant see shit. There are other ways to make a game scary.
Click to expand...

Dark passages, rooms and corridors are great fun and creepy as hell. Especially if you're given audible cues that something very nasty is lurking in the shadows ready to disembowel you. :eek: Unfortunately, in games like Doom 3, it can get overplayed. The sheer repetition of fumbling around in the dark (except for flares or flashlights) detracts from the adventure and grows tiresome after a while. Valve on the other hand seems to have found a happy medium/balance.
 
Vaulter98c said:
no edit...

damn them for doing this, because I bet most of this wouldnt have happend if it didnt have a console port. I have a hard time associating anything with a console port as a success. So many things get dumbed down for console ports, and things are getting to easy for console gamers.

Dont notice it? Aim at a group of people with a smoker, I bet your tounge wont hit the guy you wanted to, the guy by the ledge, no, you hit the guy closest to you, because console boys needed auto aim to keep from getting owned
Click to expand...

Most FPS for the console is laughably dumbed down. For me, it's a vivid reminder that when I game on a console, I'm just playing with a toy.
 
I love Left 4 Dead and all the little details Valve puts in to make this game fun and enjoyable.

Okay moving on.

Where's my Episode 3 news!?
 
Vaulter98c said:
Valve taking the easy way out and bowing down to the less than average gamer.
Click to expand...

Several people have called this the "easy way out" now, but how so? It isn't any harder for Valve to have left it dark - they already HAD it that way. Play testers didn't like it, and I agree. It is incredibly annoying to not be able to see where you are going. Real life is boring, that is why we play games. "Realism" is overrated. And play L4D on Expert if you want a challenge, no one is forcing you to play it on easy :rolleyes:

There is a difference between difficult and frustrating. Having it be all dark so you can't see what you are doing (like Doom 3) doesn't make it difficult, it makes it frustrating.
 
ICOM said:
Most FPS for the console is laughably dumbed down. For me, it's a vivid reminder that when I game on a console, I'm just playing with a toy.
Click to expand...

Right, and playing a PC "game" enlarges your penis to the same effect as puberty? :rolleyes:
 
kllrnohj said:
"Realism" is overrated. And play L4D on Expert if you want a challenge, no one is forcing you to play it on easy :rolleyes:

There is a difference between difficult and frustrating. Having it be all dark so you can't see what you are doing (like Doom 3) doesn't make it difficult, it makes it frustrating.
Click to expand...

QFMFT

Yes yes and yes. Valve could easily have gone the other way, but they didn't, and they did it for what were tested reasons.

The amateur designers on the internet are frigging hilarious, same BS backlash we're hearing at Blizzard regarding Diablo 3. The designers are both studios are among the best in their industry and they go through a lot of playtesting and experimentation to figure out what the right balance in the game is going to be. All that development time doesn't just go to building the engine and assets and stuff; that tweaking and polish to the rules themselves, whether it is unit damage or distance view, are what separates their games from everyone else's.

This isn't to say that a completely dark view illuminated only by nearby lighting is an inherently bad thing, it just in Valve's view isn't right for this particular game.
 
Serpico said:
QFMFT

Yes yes and yes. Valve could easily have gone the other way, but they didn't, and they did it for what were tested reasons.

The amateur designers on the internet are frigging hilarious, same BS backlash we're hearing at Blizzard regarding Diablo 3. The designers are both studios are among the best in their industry and they go through a lot of playtesting and experimentation to figure out what the right balance in the game is going to be. All that development time doesn't just go to building the engine and assets and stuff; that tweaking and polish to the rules themselves, whether it is unit damage or distance view, are what separates their games from everyone else's.

This isn't to say that a completely dark view illuminated only by nearby lighting is an inherently bad thing, it just in Valve's view isn't right for this particular game.
Click to expand...

Totally agree with you on the Diablo 3 part. Everyone was whining that it wasn't dark enough and that the game wasn't similar to Diablo 2. I am sorry... I want a new game, not a rehash of Diablo 2. If I wanted Diablo 2 I'd go play the darn game. I am anxiously looking forward to D3.
 
Yeah the screencaps looked great, apparantly the IN-GAME experience was different.

I think the game developers know what they are doing :rolleyes:.
 
[H]adouken;1033556386 said:
Yeah the screencaps looked great, apparantly the IN-GAME experience was different.

I think the game developers know what they are doing :rolleyes:.
Click to expand...

Still laughing at this. :D

Yes. It might look great in a still, hell, it might even look great in motion, doesn't necessarily means that its fun to play.

Hell, on the odd occassion I fire up Quake 3, I go back to my settings from the old days, r_picmip 5 baby :D
 
[H]adouken;1033556386 said:
Yeah the screencaps looked great, apparantly the IN-GAME experience was different.

I think the game developers know what they are doing :rolleyes:.
Click to expand...

Closet camping, melee exploits, cloning exploit, switching to survivor team, suicide, then rejoining infected, no SDK, only 4 campaigns, only 2 VS campaigns, overpowered guns and melee, and underpowered infected. The developers were on the fucking ball with this game.
 
Here is a good look into what a color blind person sees, and its nice to see that valve is looking out for all of its customer base.

link
 
And where the hell is the edit button?

Anyways, Valve always whips out fun-as-a-motherf*$&! games, they're developers spend too much time being perfectionists and apparently it worked. Half-Life original? Half-Life 2? How many GOTY awards? Over a hundred on just those two alone? They know what makes games fun and enjoyable, "frustrating" definitely ain't gonna pay their bills.

Stop bitching about how cool the screenshots look, you wanna play screenshots go put Crysis on max and enjoy the slideshow.
 
SixtyWattMan said:
Closet camping, melee exploits, cloning exploit, switching to survivor team, suicide, then rejoining infected, no SDK, only 4 campaigns, only 2 VS campaigns, overpowered guns and melee, and underpowered infected. The developers were on the fucking ball with this game.
Click to expand...
Aw boo hoo the game isn't as pewfect as you want, they're the one making hits not you :rolleyes:. Get over it.
 
SixtyWattMan said:
Closet camping, melee exploits, cloning exploit, switching to survivor team, suicide, then rejoining infected, no SDK, only 4 campaigns, only 2 VS campaigns, overpowered guns and melee, and underpowered infected. The developers were on the fucking ball with this game.
Click to expand...
Wtf do you mean no SDK? Put your panties back on, it's coming out. Downloadable content is also coming out so you can spend your life on more than 2 VS campaigns and 4 regular ones. It's just like TF2, they release content slowly when they feel it's good enough to be released. Closet camping? Rofl, does that piss you off? Underpowered infected? You're playing on easy right?

N00b.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top