This was the first room for Improved Lighting, and was also where I started testing the high poly models for the first time. I'm revisiting this area with some new techniques, as it's now possible to have a good flashlight interaction without an increase in the poly count.
Since Improved Lighting a lot of things changed, the LIT was simplified and it's now more consistent. The previous LIT had multiple light entries, and lots of groups to deal with crashes caused by the excess of geometry, it was made with that high poly SMD in mind.
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| Vanilla |
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Improved Lighting 1.05
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In the old setup the CAM had multiple entries calling different LITs, adjusting the draw distance for each area in order to keep the game running and squeeze performance, but that's not needed anymore. It was also possible to simplify the main lighting into a single LIT group, with less bloat and less size. The other two LIT groups are only used for cutscene purposes as it will be explained later. The good thing is that the triggerzones are still there, so it's still possible to tweak the draw distance if needed.
Some of the light sources were disabled while other ones were added or repositionated. I took the liberty of disabling certain lights that made the area too bright. Some of the torches still have clipping issues for Leon though. The flickering light in the "Draining Room" was edited to only affect the intended models. The Castle Sewer now feels darker and scarier than ever.
The effects from the novistadors remain untouched for now, so it will look brighter in contrast with the area as it was meant to be used with the vanilla lighting, where every corner is bright and lit.
In conjuction with the main flashlight there is a traditional type 6, working as indirect lighting. It may bring back again those artifacts of low poly geometry as it still vertex lighting, but the main flashlight pointing down is not that useful, needing a complement when looking up and around, it fills the area the main one is unable to reach. Btw the texture used for it was also changed and has softer edges than the previous version, may be ported to other rooms.
A new metal grid was added in the beginning of the area, where there's light coming from above, originally it was a 2d model, but now it's fully 3d. The candles also received a new bloom effect, it clips a little but overall improves the visuals.
Each water pool now have a reflection effect (the same as in r102), although not perfect it looks nice in motion. However the effect is very GPU intesive and can break the game if too many are present at the same time, when a checkpoint is reloaded it start showing errors and missing textures then suddenly crash. To avoid that some EAR triggerzones were added and the effects split into multiple Effect Groups, not sure if the issue is completely gone. The metal grids are now 3d.
Some small changes in the sewer tubes.
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The central pipe was modified again and now features a different setup when looking up, it also received the 3d grid.
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| Vanilla |
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| REvamped 0.08 |
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| The new tubulation |
The water effect was changed to a new one. It may not have the physics of the original, but is visually more convincing. Still missing the water splashes when shoot in the locked area before its drained, as some things in this room are scripted I've run into issues when trying to add some water effects.
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The treasure chest model we find the Butterfly Lamp was replaced by a new one, the goal is add some variety and unique chests for each room, so it don't feel the same. The generic chest is very repetitive through out the game whe seen for the 10th time.
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The advantage of the old approach is that gameplay wise it's better. The use repetitive models can not only save memory by sharing the same texture, but also conditionate our reflex to shoot a red barrel or notice a treasure box among other models.
In older games this was very common for interactable objects, such treasures or progression related content. So the downside is that the player may not easily identify the new chests in the environment as in the original.
Now about the cutscene, there are a lot of tricks and things going on in order for it to work properly. The "draining water" cutscene was completely remade with AEV and EFF that is triggered ON/OFF.
The valve model was added to the EFF file as an effect, so when the prompt is used it will rotate. Originally the valve was just a static SMD model, and the cutscene skips to the water being drained, now it has animations.
Some dust effects were added while it still rotating and after the valve stops, what follows is a camera showing the water level dropping. A new audio was made for the sequence, that now differs from the original in length.
The first take uses the bio4evt which is the scripted camera, while the second one uses a local wav in the room .xwb. A MDT line was added so the player can't skip the sequence which would cause some issues.
Not only the water is drained, but there are also a series of water splashes effects. Theses splashes don't seem to move the Z axis, so a timer was set and the effect was replicated in three phases. Each phase has a lower Z axis value, and as soon as the first one disappears, the next ones pop-up.
There was a strange bug where the effect was being triggered again even after the sequence was finished, but seems to be gone. This was probably due to the EAR not being the size of the entire room, so when stepping in and out the triggerzone it was calling the effects again.
I thought about recreating the pressure indicator with EFF, instead of a static model. After using the prompt it would change its position to indicate less pressure, but maybe in the future.
When the water is finally drained we can see some new details, there are now marks of dirty in the walls and other models.
The Don Manuel ganado in one of the cells was replaced by a Zealot ganado, which makes more sense. The village one was moved to a room that will be showcased later. Blood textures were added and a water reflection effect together with some candles to lit the area, instead of the white bulb light.
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Some changes were made to the environment textures, including ETM metal doors. This gives the area more identity and the look it deserves. The new textures helps to bring the idea of an abandoned sewer, where the humidity deteriorates the walls and objects.
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Due to "shadow cast" issues (flashlight related) some of the barrels were disabled or moved. This can be mitigated by seting values in the range offset of LIT but may cause pop-in-out for ETMs or even not reach them at all from a certain distance.
The area with the ladder before the Pendulums with two barrels has now some cloned boxes. At some point a heat effect was added to all ETM torches but due to crashes it was discarded.
The Pendulums area received those custom textures and some blood details in the axes and the ground. The chains of the axes are now 3d and a little different.
The item placement of the area was also changed, now it has a few gems that can be shoot and will fall. There was some CUE issues related to that first scary sound of the area, as soon as Leon uses the first ladder. The problem was that every time a gem was shoot it was triggering that same Novistador sound. A new AEV and XWB/XSB setup was made to avoid that, gems will now make proper sound when shoot and hit surfaces. I hope the custom setup doesn't bring new side effects.
After the Pendulum are there is now some candles in the ground to lit the area. As most of the ambient light was removed, these candles were added to avoid the place to become pitch black. Special thanks to Free3d Models for theses, unfortunately YouTube seems to have banned his channel.
The last ladder now has proper animations to climb down, instead of Leon jumping from a high altitude. Barrels were removed and new models from r20e were ported to fill the empty space.
While testing this room DXVK was crashing a lot for some reason, the dx9 seems to be much stable but CPU performance is worse. When restarting checkpoint too many times it become more noticeable.
In general the area has more details, a better lighting, less items and feels more challenging than before. There still a few remaining issues but overall it's a great update for the room, compared to its state since Improved Lighting two years ago.
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