Torches . . ?

[Thrud Grudthruster]

Is there any way of getting torches in-game?

It's fun to cruise about, exploring the many un-used corridors, passages and caves around and about the PlaneShift world . . . but some of these are dark.  Which makes you want to explore them *more* . . . but which is difficult, when you can't actually see what you'r doing, even with Dwarven vision.

Is there any way of getting your hands on a torch, or lantern, that you could fire up at these times?  If not, such could be a nifty quest reward.  And would look damn cool at night, when a few people are wandering about Harny's shack in Hydlaa, and someone strolls up with a lit torch . . .

So I guess I'm not saying 'where can I get a torch from' . . . but more, I'm saying 'hey devs - wink wink - wouldn't it be really cool in-game if we could run around with torches - wink wink . . . '

But then again, have never really been one for subtlety.

[Karyuu]

Torches are a very common wish/suggestion, but we don't have any at the moment. We'll definitely look into some with time, probably as soon as we figure them out :} In the meantime, if things are looking rather dark you can try adjusting your monitor's gamma setting, or run the game with the -fullbright option. (This eliminates shadows and washes things into a rather bland but well-lit... light. To use this option, right-click on your PlaneShift shortcut, and in the target line add -fullbright at the very end, with a space between it and the previous text.)

[John80sk]

What exactly do you have a problem with when it comes to torches?

[Karyuu]

As far as I can remember, there have been problems with attaching a light source to an item. With the CrystalSpace engine, it is (was?) impossible to bind lights to the .sprs items are stored as, and movable lighting can be very performance-intensive. Torches were brought up on the internal dev mailing list many months ago if I recall correctly, but the idea wasn't chased further. Maybe I'll do some poking to see if this suggestion has become any more feasible.

[Thrud Grudthruster]

 . . . yay, please do.

Because it's just unfair that the two Kran in the graphics header in these-here boards both get to look cool carrying torches around whilst dungeon crawling, whilst we don't.

:sulking:

[Mirashi]

This is why I doubt you'll ever make it into public with crystalspace. You should change and use a different engine, it'll make it so so many years of developement would get you to open-beta instead of pre-alpha. Seriously, you guys've been around longer than any other game as I see it, yet you're still in PRE-ALPHA. All other games by now are open-beta, or at least closed-beta. With crystalspace (or maybe just a system where you test bugs yourselves instead of release them straight into the game with new updates and screw it up and slow yourselves down even more) you'll be lucky to get beta or even normal alpha in another 3 years.

[Karyuu]

We work very closely with the CrystalSpace team, and they often develop features just for us. Instead of abandoning partners that have worked with us since PlaneShift began and start all over, I think it would make much more sense to stick through and help them through testing the features they make.

Plus, you guys are the testers and so you will always remain. If we try to test all bugs ourselves before "releasing," you would have to wait years. And we're not here to have closed development, to work in secret until we're ready to "unleash the awesome product". We're a bunch of people who want to keep up this fun hobby, and not rushrushrush. If it'll be another 3 years before we hit beta, who cares? Who are we racing against? We are doing this because we are having fun, and learning in the process.

[Induane]

Actually there is alot of good development going on in CrystalSpace at the moment. Also it is by far the best community supported engine I have ever dealt with. Its easy to get in touch with the devs, the devs are helpful informative and very open.  These are qualities that make development work farrrrr easier.  Comercial engines cost, plus you really only get support from "trained specialists" as its hard to have your developers sit and answer the phone.  With crystalspace you can pop into irc, see what they are working on atm, join discussions, make suggestions and if its worth while people actually listen... not to mention you are interacting directly with the people doing the code.  As crystalspace advances, so will planeshift.  I used to think as you did, but time has changed my mind.  Expirence has changed my mind.... and well.. genmeshanim2 has changed my mind D

As for moving light sources I think it is possible as CS does support dynamic lights.  The best thing is, allowing a spr to bind to a light source is probabily a change that the CS coders will be willing and able to implement.  They have several fantastic devs.

And here is a nice screenshot of some of the new abilitys of genmeshanim to to drool over:

[Baldur]

This is why I doubt you'll ever make it into public with crystalspace. You should change and use a different engine, it'll make it so so many years of developement would get you to open-beta instead of pre-alpha. Seriously, you guys've been around longer than any other game as I see it, yet you're still in PRE-ALPHA. All other games by now are open-beta, or at least closed-beta. With crystalspace (or maybe just a system where you test bugs yourselves instead of release them straight into the game with new updates and screw it up and slow yourselves down even more) you'll be lucky to get beta or even normal alpha in another 3 years.

"Prey" is an example for a game that would far surpass Planeshift in development time.
Crystal Space works fine, we don't want any "industrialised" development, "hand made" fits me like a glove.

[LigH]

Induane - as long as it still works fast enough on a GeForce 2 GTS, I won't mind such effects in PlaneShift. But I would not enjoy if I could not play the next version without any FX Class GPU.

Scalability usually worked well with CS. I hope it "always" will (to some extent). At the moment, some decent T&L is a minumum requirement, and it is quite fair IMHO.

[Induane]

Genmeshanim actually performs far better than cal3d - the developer of it claims 70-90% better in fact, plus supporting bump mapping, light maps, vertex lighting, etc...  like standard genmesh but better   plus lighter2 is going to be comming online and thingmesh will be going offline   All good news imho.