#1
31st Mar 2013 at 12:34 AM
Last edited by Mootilda : 31st Mar 2013 at
12:46 AM.
Making nighttime brighter for the user.
From posts #1499-1515 in
this thread:
Quote: Originally posted by gummilutt
I want a mod that makes night be less insanely dark. I hate that 10 hour out of the day are totally dark, because between young Sims going to school and parents often working during the day, I feel like I always play in darkness. Maybe I am just half blind, but it really bugs me.
Best would be one that adapts light hours according to season, but I was told that is not possible, so I would settle for one that just means night is more like day.
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We were able to find two different ways to set the night lighting to be identical to the day lighting. I'll try to copy some of the conversation here, so that we can continue the discussion in a better forum.
Quote: Originally posted by neriana
Looking at the files, it appears that brightness is stored in .txt files and should be a quick fix. Look in c:\program files [or wherever you installed the game]\EA Games\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Lights. The Lighting.txt file appears to be the one that controls brightness at night. Make a backup of it before doing anything else. This is the important bit of code:
lightingState night
environment (0.5, 0.5, 1) 0.7 # override environment lighting state
end
If you want night to be as bright as day, try changing that (after making a backup!) to:
lightingState night
environment (1, 1, 1) 1 # override environment lighting state
end
If you want night to be brighter, but not as bright as day, try numbers between 0.5 and 1 -- 0.75 might be good. I think you'll have to change this file in the folder of every EP and SP you have. Let me know if it works, and if not, I'll dig around some more.
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neriana, you have the right file and the right section of that file, but changing the environment line isn't adequate.
I tried copying the entire section for day over the entire section for night and there is no obvious difference between day and night with that change. However, each line in that section controls something and they all need to be modified in some way to make the change. It's not a simple change unless you just want daytime and nighttime to look identical.
Skylight appears to be the skybox. Light sun is likely the spotlight and light sky the ambient lighting. I haven't gotten much further, but it would be nice to know how to modify all of the parameters so that nighttime was twice as bright as it is right now.
Spookymuffin has a mod which
enables the dusk / dawn lighting, so that might be another good reference point for the lighting parameters.
Unfortunately, setting dusk and dawn to be longer doesn't actually work very well, because it affects the day / night button in the game. For example, I set the transitionTimes for dusk to 60 from Spooky's original value of 2 and changing from night to day in build mode became an incredibly slow process.
That said, extending the dusk and dawn is the only way that I know of to extend daylight hours. If you're willing to put up with the limitations, I'd recommend downloading Spookymuffin's mod, copying the entire DayTime section to both Morning and Evening, and then increasing the transitionTimes.
Quote: Originally posted by gummilutt
Crazy nice of you to look at it for me. Really, thank you!
Unfortunately, I am slightly confused. The file you mention, Lighting.txt in base game folder, does not contain that line for me. I had a look at some of the ones in EPs and it seems very uneven what has what. OFB/AL/Seasons all have only a # in the file, and Uni has something weird about EP1 specific stuff should go there. Nightlife, Freetime and Pets does have the line you mention.
Should I just change it in those three, or what do I do? =O
EDIT: I now see Mootildas reply. Honestly, I would not mind night and day being identical. Better light and sunny always, than how it is now =P
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Then you should just need to change the lighting.txt file for your latest EP. You need to keep the line "lightingState night", but just copy the entire daytime section to night and you'll get what you want.
Be sure to
backup before changing the file. If you need any help, let me know.
[update:] Ah, you're using Gunmod's lighting mod. You can't make this change without getting rid of that one, because his mod deletes the contents of the lighting.txt file.
Quote: Originally posted by gummilutt
Alright. I will uninstall Gunmods lightning mod, and give it a try. Just to be sure, when you say EP you mean EP, right? Not latest game motor? Cause I know M&G adds some things and therefore should be edited instead of AL, just wondering if this is one of those cases.
EDIT: Also, to be sure I understand, am I to take this
"lightingState night
environment (0.5, 0.5, 1) 0.7 # override environment lighting state
end"
and copy what is between "lightingState day" and "end" and place it instead of the environment thing?
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Quote: Originally posted by gummilutt
I decided to just try it and see what happened, and editing AL file doing exactly what I said, does make night and day have no difference, so I guess it worked. And yes, what I copied is all that is there under lightningState night, when looking at AL-file. Did not look at the rest after uninstalling gunmods lightning mod, so it may be that others have more stuff.
So, for now I have successfully eliminated night. Thank you to both of you for helping me =) If either feels like continuing to take a look at it and try to figure out how to actually change the level of light, I would love to help out in any way I can. Would be crazy neat to be able to edit Gunmods lightning mod, since I do like the effects it has, but I imagine that is a lot more difficult and probably not worth the time =P
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That's funny. I just made the change to the base game lighting file and it worked in my M&G game, but when I changed just the environment line in the M&G file, nothing changed.
Quote: Originally posted by gummilutt
That's really weird. Sounds like it works no matter which lightning file you edit =O I wonder also why it's not enough to change the environment thing.
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If I've missed anything important from the conversation, please add it in a new post.