Dungeon Master Forum

While testting my dungeon, I noticed something very odd. When I cast light spells, they seem never to go off but last forever. Even a LO FUL spell lasted an entire testing session of about three hours. Is there a way to configure that light spells go off after a while?

Are you sure this is the case? I've not seen this behaviour before. Perhaps you have some other settings overriding it -- what is the ambient light level?

I have two levels in the dungeon, each of those has the ambient light level set to 0, the minimum to 5, and the maximum to 100.

What;s the difference between minimum and ambient? If it's a floor level for darkening spell, then would it being above the ambient light level cause a problem?

You'll have to give us something more to go on if you want us to help. Tell us more about what's in your dungeon... Have you put any light objects in your dungeon? If you've turned on some lights and you don't turn them off, then magic light spells won't make any difference and light will be on permanently.

I have some wall lanterns, associated with light objects, that produce light when you go near. That object that looks like a light bulb on the RTC editing map.
They seem to work correctly, because it gets dark again when you move away from the lanterns. Also, there are monsters that produce darkness as a kind of attack. That darkness also works quite fine.

Would it help if I just upload the .txt file?

Perhaps. I'd also wonder, as I said earlier if the fact the lowest darkness level is higher than the amient light is a problem. Effectively, your darkness firing creastures are firing low level light spells all the time!

Yeah, that sounds like it could be the problem. Temporarily remove those creatures and test it again.

I'd adjust the minimum to 0 myself

Leslie wrote:I have some wall lanterns, associated with light objects, that produce light when you go near. That object that looks like a light bulb on the RTC editing map.
They seem to work correctly, because it gets dark again when you move away from the lanterns. Also, there are monsters that produce darkness as a kind of attack. That darkness also works quite fine.

Would it help if I just upload the .txt file?

i had the same problem, it occured while placing those light emmiting bulbs on squares on the dungeon floor. it seems to affect levels above and below as well, so using those lights is a problem unless you leave a bunch of blank levels in between or use a 100% fixed lighting on the levels above and below it. could not find a way to fix it. i mentioned it to GG but at the time i wasn't able to describe it well enough. i think it's a bug. too bad, because like you leslie, i had a torch level that had to be scrapped, it was the theme of the level.

I've never had any problems with the light emitters. They are also used extensively in the RTC DM2 dungeon without any problems.

Perhaps if you made your TXT files available, I could take a look, but I can't promise anything -- I don't work with RTC anymore having switched over to the DSB engine.

EDIT: Actually @Leslie, hang on a minute -- you can't set the ambient level to lower than the minimum. Doing that probably messes up the calculations as Beo said. What happens if you set your ambient light level to 6, just above your 5 minimum?

Problem solved!

I set the ambient to 5 and the minimum to 0 and also removed the light objects. Then I got darkness. Tomorrow I'll have some more time for testing, then I'm going to place the light objects again and see if the light levels alone did the job.
Thanks for all your tips!

Cool. What value did you have in your light objects out of interest?

I had them set to 300, but I guess the light output was capped by the maximum level off 100...?

Aha, that was your problem! Don't make light bulbs brighter than the dungeon max, or it will be permanently bright... set them to around 50-70 or so, if your max is 100.

It's not that they're "permanently bright".
When you use a value over 100, the light value "bleeds" onto the nearby tiles (so 110 would result in THAT tile gaining 110 light, and the surrounding tiles gaining 10).
Having too many 300 strength lights in one place would "bleed" out a whole lot of extra light (200 to every surrounding tile... then those tiles would also "bleed" to the tiles around, and those would also become 100... and think... that's PER LIGHT!).
This effect also stacks upon itself. If a tile, that already has 100 light, gets more, then it "bleeds" off the extra going further and further outwards until it hits a square with lower than 100 light (this is why RTC sometimes has a fit when you activate too many lights at the same time... there's a fair few calculation cycles involved).

To see a good example of this kind of "bleeding", look up an old game called "Chain-Reaction". You add 1 point to a given tile at a time, once a certain square reaches a given amount (by memory it was 5), it "detonates" causing 4 of the 5 to be spread to the 4 surrounding tiles (1 stays where it was). The way to take an enemy square is to cause your "detonation" to effect it. Once the game board has had a large number of points played, you start getting chain-reactions going on (where 1 "detonation" causes another to happen, then another, and another, etc) and it eventually gets to the point were every single move starts a massive chain-reaction... hence the title.

I know how it works, I was just using a simpler term that would be understood

I see. You know me... I can't help but explain things (usually until I end up rambling... like in the above post )

that all makes perfect sense, but i still don't know how it bleeds into levels above and below, which it most certainly did. even with 0 ambient max and min light on the levels above and below. has anyone else experienced that? it mave have been an older version, around 3 years ago. hope it all works out for you leslie

Leslie wrote:While testting my dungeon, I noticed something very odd. When I cast light spells, they seem never to go off but last forever. Even a LO FUL spell lasted an entire testing session of about three hours. Is there a way to configure that light spells go off after a while?

Hi, hope I found the right Thread ...

I am just playing DM (RTC) and in level 2 or 3 when I casted a lot Light with "Ful" Spells the walls are even brighter than normal. This Brightness will last forever and even the strongest Darkness Spells "Des Ir Sar" have no Effect.

I am using the actual Version 0.49 without any Modification.

I started and saved a new game for testing and the Light fades out normally. Only the derived saved Games have that annoying Brightness.
Example SaveGame: http://maxinf.de/DM/DM.SV7

Perhaps you have a SaveGame Editor or a Debug-Screen that I can repair it.
Or it is a Bug and the above SaveGame can help to fix it.