Adding Coronas to the Quake engine?

[Bloodshot]

Would it be possible to make Mapper-defined coronas for light sources in the Quake engine sort of like Unreal? (using sprites)



Maybe let the mapper set the fade distance, color, etc.

I think a simple feature like this would make even stock quake without any textures or anything look a lot better, It's a simple yet effective effect. Ironically, it looks better than most engine-generated corona effects in modern engines like CE3 or UE3.

[gdiddy62]

I like the idea to spruce up basic Quake.

[MH]

Coronas are easy; they're just billboarded sprites with a few properties set (you could even add them with pure QC, a sprite entity, and external texture support).

The only problem is visibility. Coronas need depth testing switched off otherwise they'll intersect with geometry, but if you switch off depth testing then they'll shine through where they shouldn't (especially through brush model entities - like the floor in start.bsp). Some kind of occlusion query on the point source would be required before deciding whether or not to draw them.

[Bloodshot]

Could vis be used to determine where they are visible from? Or is it a lot more complex than that.

[MH]

More complex because we don't have vis info for areas that brush model entities should block.

[Bloodshot]

Just uploaded these screenshots for more examples, and just because they flat out looked cool, from Terraniux and ISV-Kran respectively:





Also, if you check out the BF3 multiplayer in the nighttime section, it seems like they are also using sprites instead of procedurally generating their Coronas for lights, which is a pretty smart idea as it doesn't really take up performance, while doing it with the engine, as was obvious with games like Crysis 2, takes away from performance, while not even looking as good half the time.

The applications of this effect would be obvious, and on top of that it would make it a bit easier to give Quake a more atmospheric looking levels.