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Untwatted SIMPLE.LIT

The greatest unfinished sequel ever!
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Harmalarm
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Untwatted SIMPLE.LIT

Post by Harmalarm »

Apparently the game does not recognize a twatted version of the SIMPLE.LIT file found in the data/reg/LIGHTS.TWT file. I discovered this by accident when I untwatted the TWT file and found that the game was suddenly a lot brighter.

Toshiba pointed me to another .lit file called threeway. When renaming it to SIMPLE.LIT the game gave ended up having a slightly different brightness. It may not be visible in the images, but you really see the difference ingame!

Image

So, my suggestion, get rid of the dull grey overlay of the game and untwat your LIGHTS.TWT to get a nice bright Carmageddon! Pick on of the lit files and put them in a new folder data/reg/LIGHTS/ and delete the LIGHTS.TWT.

SIMPLE.LIT
THREEWAY.LIT

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Toshiba-3
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Untwatted SIMPLE.LIT

Post by Toshiba-3 »

Well I'm not sure the aim is to get a brighter look for the game (not sure anybody wants that heh). But rather to have a more complex lighting that can interact in a more interesting way with special materials. A less boring lighting uh.
That's the way I see it. Doesn't seem to make the game brighter but rather give it a real contrast.

SIMPLE.LIT is indeed a simple lighting apparently (already better than nothing!). THREEWAY.LIT however is more complex, it involves material and model: DIRECT.DAT and PTLIGHT.MAT (none of these are part of the actual game ressources), and then SIMPLE.LIT.
This makes me think about the other existing LIT files (which we don't have): DIRECT.LIT and POINT.LIT (there was also a SELFLIT.LIT).

We should test some more. Seeing PT2 shows us the source of light it should be easy to create a test map. I guess I'll get back to it at some point.

Here's another comparison pic by Harmalarm that I liked:
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Toshiba-3
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Untwatted SIMPLE.LIT

Post by Toshiba-3 »

I looked some more into this lighting stuff. Using untwatted simple.lit or threeway.lit wouldn't be that much of a great idea because it makes everything very bright (I mean too bright). Original tracks and fanmade tracks ofcourse. This is normal as these were prepared for a low lighting environment, so including lights all of sudden makes everything too bright. What should be good is creating a new LIT to replace the light when twatted. Keeping the same dark atmosphere but with interesting contrast.
That can be a pain in the neck for most people though, as it could make things complicated.
BTW it's possible to remove lights completly (LIGHTS.TWT and the LIGHTS folder thus) and then the game has no light anymore (very few).

However I had a look at the light format and actually these LIT files are ACT files. This explains why the THREEWAY.LIT one includes materials and models. They also include the transformation matrix part...

So I'm here, thinking we really should test all that some more. Having a .LIT inside the track ACT file for example, trying to place these lights (by fiddling with either SIMPLE.LIT or the included LIT), checking what everything does (models/materials/colors). Maybe these are just normal actors but the LIT extension makes them a light source. Or simply a byte to change within their attributes.
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Toshiba-3
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Untwatted SIMPLE.LIT

Post by Toshiba-3 »

Here are the replies about these damn LIT files...

C2 simply counts the amount of files present in the LIGHTS folder or LIGHTS.TWT.
They can be totaly empty and named 1, 2, 3, etc. C2 will just create as much standart lights as there are files into that folder. There's no way to control anything.
I don't even think there's a real light source, I rather think it's just a light vector and I guess it's probably easier to calculate shading with an uniform vector than from a point within the universe.

Only weird thing is the fact that lights generated from the twatted file are equal to a half or a third of the lights generated from the LIGHT folder.

Here's an illustrative pic.


There might be something interesting though within that LIT file:

Code: Select all

23000000 [ACTOR type + name]
0D020053494D504C452E4C495400

2B000000 [Transformation matrix]
303EF501C3BF220187BF1BD477BDB656543F279A05BF4029753F5FA0BC3ED3A8663E838
EA03F0000003F4CCCCD41E00000

25000000 [NULL]
00

33000000 [lolwut]
1601FFFFFF404000000000000000000000071C0AAA00

27000000 [END]
000000000000000000
That 33h type is unknown to me. I guess it's there left from C1. It's probably related to the actor material/color/something like that. THREEWAY.LIT also showed that it's possible to load the material via the ACT file instead of within the DAT file.

This is the end of the LIT dream :(
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TTR
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Untwatted SIMPLE.LIT

Post by TTR »

If it could've been designated to a specific area such could help to create darker alleys or dark caves etc. Oh well.
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Harmalarm
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Untwatted SIMPLE.LIT

Post by Harmalarm »

yes I was thinking the same as TTR. Sucks balls that the game uses these files in such a simple way. :( But like I said, for a total conversion it might be nice to choose a more lighter version of the lights. for my dd2 mod, the brighter version comes much closer to the actual dd2 game than a twatted .lit file.
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