Why does Darkplaces look so....dark

[PapaSmurf]

This is the first thing i notice about darkplaces. It's very dark and the contrast is very high. Even turning up the brightness, the game still has very high contrast, so bright explosions (annoying), and very very dark shadows. Sounds like a great client, but these first impressions aren't helping it any.

[Canadian*Sniper]

Leaving brightness alone and turn up the GAME BRIGHTNESS to 3

do that and post a SS of what you see in the start map. Example, here's what I see.


This is a part of my config that modifies my brightness:

r_hdr_scenebrightness "3";
r_shadow_realtime_world_lightmaps "0.500000";

everything else that deal with brightness/contrast/gamma is set to default.

[Baker]

If you are using one of the latest DarkPlaces, I find that adjusting the "Game brightness" and the gamma correction are helpful, but I agree the high contrast and intensity of the lighting is a little distracting.

Not quite on topic with the above, but at least an optional feature that would be very nice to have is to have an option of having the player model/gun model have a minimum lighting level like in GLQuake.

Explaining what I mean:

In GLQuake, your view weapon model never goes fully dark. There is some code to this effect.

More importantly, player models (client entities) never go fully dark, but in DarkPlaces they do and this is a major disadvantage to using DarkPlaces. There are spots in the DM3 red armor room, spots on DM2 and DM4 and many of the single player maps where an enemy will become full black and -- as a result -- virtually impossible to see. This does not happen in GLQuake or other clients, and really puts DarkPlaces using players at a disadvantage at times.

This is the engine code in GLQuake I am referring to about the view weapon model/player models:

GLQuake - glrmain.c - R_DrawAliasModel

// allways give the gun some light
if (e == &cl.viewent && ambientlight < 24)
ambientlight = shadelight = 24;

GLQuake - glrmain.c - R_DrawAliasModel

// ZOID: never allow players to go totally black
i = currententity - cl_entities;
if (i >= 1 && i<=cl.maxclients /* && !strcmp (currententity->model->name, "progs/player.mdl") */)
if (ambientlight < 8 )
ambientlight = shadelight = 8;