LEGO Rock Raiders Lighting in video recordings

[Lair]

Hey uh, odd question and I'm not sure if this is the right forum for it but, I was planning on doing some Rock Raiders videos since I finally got it working with proper shading and coloring (insert snarky comment about AMD thread here) and I was wondering what I should do about the lighting feature in the game. Should I turn the brightness up to maximum to make everything easier to see like a lot of videos do, or should I keep it at the default/turn it down to keep the more moody atmosphere and have to depend on the cursor spotlight and the radar function more? If I were playing without recording I'd do the latter but I don't know which would be preferable for other people watching, or which would be better for preserving the feeling of the game in video format.

[lol username]

Meh. I never adjusted any settings when playing the game as a kid, but I always turn up the brightness and game speed (and disable automatic game speed) when playing it now. I find the default brightness annoying rather than moody, personally.

[emily]

I like the moodiness of the low lighting personally but I don't really mind full brightness either. I can't remember how I set it most of the time when I played the game myself.

[Cirevam]

Default lighting makes it easier to point out things to the viewer, but they can only really see a small portion of the screen at once. But there's a mouse cursor so maybe that doesn't matter... I prefer to make everything bright as you already know. It's easier on the viewer.

[PeabodySam]

Just entirely in terms of personal preference, I generally stick with default lighting in Rock Raiders precisely because of the mood and atmosphere.  Sometimes, not being able to see everything so brightly and so clearly is an intentional part of the game's presentation.  For example, you can certainly play Half-Life 2 or Black Mesa with "fullbright" set to 1, making everything bright and clear to the viewer, but it really loses a lot (see the screenshot comparison here).  The darkness in Rock Raiders does make you feel that much more isolated in the depths of an alien planet, like you're playing a Metroid game.

 

True, it's been years since I've played Rock Raiders so I don't remember how different it looks or feels with increased lighting.  But, I do remember how cool it looked when your cursor was not near a building/vehicle, and therefore the lights on said building/vehicle were allowed to stand out and shine through the darkness.  Small touches of detail like that go a long way, in my opinion.

 

I suppose another factor is the purpose of these videos.  If you want to present Rock Raiders as-is to the viewer, "This is what the game is and this is what it's like", I'd stick with default lighting.  But, if you did want to specifically showcase the game in such a way that full lighting would specifically be beneficial to the presentation (say, showing off units that are spread out across the cavern rather than all in one place where they can be highlighted by the cursor), then I suppose increased lighting could work.  Alternatively, there's nothing to stop you from going to the OPTIONS![/chief] menu and switching between default and maximum lighting whenever you please.  That way, you could turn on full brightness when you need it and keep it off for the rest of the game.

 

Just my two ore.

[Cirevam]

44 minutes ago, PeabodySam said:

For example, you can certainly play Half-Life 2 or Black Mesa with "fullbright" set to 1, making everything bright and clear to the viewer, but it really loses a lot

 

No one actually likes to play in fullbright mode (insert snarky comment about AMD thread here). I think Ringtail is talking about increasing the spotlight's radius using debug key 5.

 

This is what the game looks like with the biggest spotlight:

Spoiler

 

This is what it looks like with -ftm enabled, which also has the effect of disabling the spotlight entirely by disabling all dynamic lighting:

 

Spoiler

 

But I agree that being able to see the lights on each vehicle and building is neat. Maybe the darkness would look better with the game's resolution increased with Cafeteria. 640x480 is so small that I feel cramped without turning the lights up. 1920x1080 would be fine with the spotlight bumped up a tad. The dark is still there and you can see what you're doing.

[Lair]

4 hours ago, Cirevam said:

No one actually likes to play in fullbright mode (insert snarky comment about AMD thread here). I think Ringtail is talking about increasing the spotlight's radius using debug key 5.

aside from Terrev you mean? and no I'm talking about turning the brightness up to maximum in options. I didn't have any plans to use debug keys.

 

5 hours ago, PeabodySam said:

If you want to present Rock Raiders as-is to the viewer, "This is what the game is and this is what it's like", I'd stick with default lighting.

this is sorta what I was going for yeah. the consensus I'd gotten was that turning up the brightness made the videos better to watch, so I'd started recording like that, but after your comment and Cire expanding on his previous one I'm not sure any more.

 

I don't know anything about cafeteria, thought it didn't work well, guess i should look into it. edit: it doesn't work lmao