Having paid too much money to play Doom 3, I've been wondering what could (do?) games like this do with a player controlled flashlight that would actually be -interesting-, unlike Doom 3. Ie. Some monsters are scared of the light, some are attracted to it. You get different types of light (red coloured light etc) to avoid disturbing certain creatures.

I don't think I've seen this idea explored before. It seems like a good one.

A few little tidbits I can offer follow:

In Abyss, the main character has to disarm a bomb by cutting a wire with a green stripe, and NOT a wire with a white stripe. Unfortunately, he's deep under water, and the only light source he has left is a green glow-stick. Both wires look the same. Tense.

Metroid Prime uses an array of vision types, from normal to heat vision to X-Ray vision and a "scan" mode. These can all be used to solve puzzles.

The military uses red lights because red light doesn't have as great a nullifying effect on a human's night vision as white light does. Hunters also used this idea for a long time, but found that red lights made following blood trails almost impossible. So they switched to blue lights, which also preserve night vision, but allow blood to stand out starkly.

Tactical lighting systems are used by police and the military for a wide array of purposes, from room illumination to signalling to temporarily blinding adversaries. However, a light, like a laser, points both ways, and so users are trained to use the light in short bursts, and to hold it away from their body. A cone of light has a chance of showing your opponent to you, but it will definitely show you to him.

I've only played Doom 3 a little bit, but it looked to me like the flashlight was part of the rendering system, like a filter over the screen rather than an actual light source. Halo 2 looked that way as well, but the light in that game was far less critical to gameplay. There were times in Doom 3 where a realistic lightsource would have been far more useful than the filter method was, and it hurt my suspension of disbelief. Also, that light was useless at any range. I carry a Surefire 6P, and I can tell you that it will fill a room with light, especially if it's pointed at a white surface (like a ceiling).

Ideas about other characters reacting to different types of light are going to have to evolve as you decide what you want the gameplay to be like. If you're going for stealth, then having different spectrums alert different enemies would be terrific. Maybe an infra-red illuminator for your night-vision goggle will look like a signal flare to monsters that can see those wavelengths, while a bright blue beam would be totally invisible to them.

Some puzzles could be solved with different lights. A UV lamp might show evidence, or a secret could be hidden in the reflection map of an object's shader, to be revealed with a bright directional beam.

Cool. You could follow Pitch Black's idea that monsters are afraid of light, but it's in limited supply; or even a vampiresque sort of system where light burns.

One major problem I can see is that most of the world will be uncomfortably dark. I tend not to play in such game worlds because of inevitable eye strain problems.

I don't think I've ever seen a game where enemies react to the presence of your light, like police might if they saw light in a store after dark (assuming you needed to be stealthy). Then the spread of light and direction would matter ("not on the windows!!!") I played a game with a friend once where he thought this was the case, and enjoyed it much more so until I spoiled things by explaining coordinate tracking and pathfinding.

Hmm... uses of light. This isn't a very well exploited aspect in gaming outside of ambiance and atmosphere. There's Theifs use of dynamic lighting for the purposes of skulking around unnoticed. The new Alone In The Dark series have creatures of darkness that are hurt by light (and naturally won't come out in the light either, but they spawn anywhere anyway), so the player gets things like phosphorus rounds and such, more of a premise than an actual use.

I think it would be cool to have light have various uses, the idea's in the movie Pitch Black could make a game in themselves. ;D

Of course the creatures in Pitch Black were burnt by light...

They ended up collecting bioluminescent creatures which was cool.

I think it was the original Unreal Tournament that had the spotlight based DM maps. I don't remember what they are/were called though. Given that they were just run around and frag in the dark the concept it's exciting but the game play was pretty fun, nonetheless.

P.s. I concur that Doom3's flashlight stunk.

You have moved into a dark place.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

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Original post by Feral I think it was the original Unreal Tournament that had the spotlight based DM maps. I don't remember what they are/were called though.

DarkMatch I think. Nice idea but no one actually used the lights because it gave away your position. Don't know why they took it out though.

And Luigi's Mansion included ghosts that you had to stun with your flashlight before sucking them up. :)

Quote:

Original post by OrangyTang Quote: Original post by Feral I think it was the original Unreal Tournament that had the spotlight based DM maps. I don't remember what they are/were called though. DarkMatch I think. Nice idea but no one actually used the lights because it gave away your position. Don't know why they took it out though. And Luigi's Mansion included ghosts that you had to stun with your flashlight before sucking them up. :)

Ah yes that does sound right, thank you, now I can stop wondering! (=

The point of DOOM3's flash light was to shit you up-it worked as a cheap shot as if you spot an enemy you had to switch to a gun.

Prime did a superb job with the scanning and visor system.