OK people I’m going to bring up a topic that I think goes all to often unnoticed. Night time. In most industrialized place in our world today we’re accustom to being able to see relatively well even at night. This is normally do to our love of electricity lighting up the skies. However before we had all that fancy technology the world was a pretty dark place. Literally. It was very difficult to see and dangers could lurk around every corner. Night time was not safe. Many games reflect our modern day ability to see in the dark like skyrim and oblivion where even though it’s night you can see pretty far and things really didn’t hide so well. So how dark will our beloved kingdom come be?
The perception of darkness is very individual. I know people that are almost blinded by the flares of street lanterns, while others barely see a thing, though.
So it might be kind of hard… For those who want it as dark as they are used to, maybe there is some brightness to be regulated… ?
Also, there might be some nightly watch patroulling in (larger?) villages and settlings, too, with torches and maybe even some kind of camp fire lightens up the darkly, darkly night skies.
Do not forget the light of moon!
The nightly brightness in Skyrim (which you mentioned) might as well respect that there are two (and for our persepction relatively large) moons. But I also had some baaaad daytime weather that couldn’t let me see more than a few meters front. Again you could’ve regulated taht a little via brightness and gamma setting, I guess…(aye, just guessing, haven’t tried it yet, you just got me the idea with your post´… )
I can’t comment for Europ but, again if they are going for realism, in English towns and citys the vast majority of people where not allowed out on the streets at night after a certain time, and if they where discovered they would have been arrested.
That being said if Warhorse do add thid concept into the game it would make for interesting play, having to sneak around the streets and avoid guards etc.
As far as how dark it would be, again depend and where he is, pooers districs I would imagen would be the darkest as there could be as little as two to three feet distance between the houses and several familys living in one or two rooms, so not a lot of light to be had there natural or other wise.
The richer the area the more room/space and so natural light there would have been, they would have had more money to spend on candles etc. so there would be some light cast out close by.
The country village could, ironicly, be a lot brighter due to natural light and lots of wide open space, as the other poster above me pointed out, there is a lot of natural light on a cloudless night.
There where no forms of street lights at all, naked unwatched flames and wooden closely built houses, as we saw in Londons great fire, equal disaster. So if they are going for realism it would be very quiet on the streets at night after curfue, and dimly lit if lit at all on a cloudly night.
To me that is what would make sneaking out at night fascinating and all part of the fun.
As far as I would like really “dark” nights (at least in the wilderness with bad weather/clouds for example) I fear that there is another problem with that which isn’t often discussed: monitor tech.
It’s sadly a fact that most gaming monitors and even TV devices have still problems with displaying black scenes (or really dark scenes).That’s not only a problem of a lacking black level but also a problem of responce times and latency. Ghosting and other effects are often more recognizable in dark scenes and most games tend to have problems to display fine gradiations of black.
I don’t say that you shouldn’t make nights dark (and full of terrors) I just want to add that to the considerations. It’s one thing to have a nice feature on paper and a completely different thing to be able to display it in a way that enhances your gaming experience.
I agree with you Madaras. But I’ve lived out on the countryside in Norway. And when it’s nighttime and cloudy in the winter(when it’s little to no snow) It’s freaking dark.
But belive me - the stars and the moon light up very well. Your eyes adapt to the dark after some time, not as much as our city lights, but very well.
I used to take walks in the forests near me many times in “pitch dark”, at least it was when I stepped out of my house, But a good 15 - 20 mins and I was all good.
But I agree that Skyrim and even Oblivion takes this to some extremes, espesscialy in “dark” dungeons.
I hope for a little “darker” nights in Kingdom Come, but maybe not so much that you hope to see?
I think you’re thinking of the same darkness as me. Especially when it comes to dungeons with no light. Of course we have the moon which can be very bright when it’s full. Though when we have new moon it’s near pitch black. So perhaps lunar phases can play a role in this ^_^. Imagine a thunderstorm during a new moon. It would be terrifyingly dark except for flashes of lightning
The darkness should really be dark, but as was mentioned- every screen displays a bit differently, so it would probably neeed some proper adjustment options in the settings menu, so that everyone can customize it properly for their own hardware.
Anyway, it would be really great if they managed to handle the issues of lighting and darkness (along with the corresponding NPC ability to see you) to create some authentic sneaking-in-the-shadows experience in the game. It may probably sound as too much to want it competing with games like the Thief or Splinter Cell, but still… 8)
Playing with your Brightness and Gamma correction screen settings can then be a form of cheating. In Witcher 1 you can turn the Brightness all the way up and then you do not need to bother with cat potions.
This is something you can’t really avoid, I think. Some people would always decide to misuse it that way, but it’s better to have wider options to choose from rather than having it pre-set in a bad way… Take Skyrim for an example, once again. You can only achieve some more realistic lighting by getting a mod and then toying with it for a while.
Those that want to improve the atmosphere and RP experience from the game can easily set the levels of darkness as they see fit and the suckers that only want to make it a bit easier for themselves… well, they will always find a way to do it anyway.
Well, “cheating” in a single-player games is totally up to you. If you want to do so why not? Nobody else will get harmed in the process…
I find my ability to see when walking in the open in the countryside at night is fairly good. I can’t really see my feet, but I can tell where a footpath runs, by looking at the boundaries. I can tell where the footpath heads by seeing subtle differences in crop/grass heights ahead and to the sides. (At least up until I am completely blinded by some idiot in their 2 ton devils chariot with electric lights).
In the absence of bright lights it is relatively easy to see anything that rises above the local horizon (standing people, trees, hedges, fences, buildings), though not to see things which have objects behind them. (e.g. standing people near a tree, a building, in a valley below a hill-slope etc).
With clear skies and moonlight, visibility is excellent, and you can make out nearly as much as you could in daylight, in the absence of brighter point sources.
All bets are off inside woodland though, the broken light, and moving patterns of shadows and light are quite disorienting, and I find keeping a consistent direction a challenge even on a medieval ‘greenway’. Not so much that I get lost in the wood, but enough that I might momentarily leave the made route, and possibly step onto a bank or into a ditch.
I do a reasonably large amount of walking in open country at night, and apart from very slow adaption of one of my eyes to passing traffic (it basically blinds me on one side for 20-30 minutes, and reduces my clear vision in the other eye for a minute or two, it gives no real limitation on following a known route, whether that be a made road (tarmac, greenroad, byway) or an informal route (footpath across fields). Finding a particular footpath, when the alignment is unclear and unknown, using a map alone can be interesting though. Crossing the field with a single sided offset, and then walking the boundary to the path is often the fastest method in that case.
Basically while “dark is dark”, the eye is also capable of considerable adjustment if not interfered with, and in moonlit or even clear starlit conditions there is ample light to see (and in the former case read by).
You must also take into account that some people are better at seeing in the dark than others and generally as you age your ability to see in the dark gets worse. For example I was at my grandmothers home a few years back and there was a city wide blackout. I could see relatively fine, but it was most certainly dark…like get killed by an alien hiding in the shadows dark. However I knew my way around the place I believe that knowing allowed me to see better because my eyes were prepared to see what was around. My grandmother couldn’t see at all though. She was wondering around the laundry room looking for her bed room so I guided her there. Point being sometimes we see better because it’s an environment you’re used to. Or at least we’re perceiving it better, though there could have been hundreds of creatures in the shadows in my last example. So adding those three things
Different people see better in the dark based on their eyes.
As you age your ability to see well in the dark weakens (this could make sneaking past “older” people easier)
Knowing your environment well can aid i “seeing” (since we don’t have the characters “senses” we can convert that to better eyesight)
On another note as someone said we need to have this so that darkness effects NPCs reasonably. Where players can make a game darker if they wish it only has the effect of making it harder on the player leaving the NPC completely unaffected. I also agree with the statement you can’t worry about people cheating in a single player game. The only person they’re cheating is themselves. Also some people need brighter settings in order to see the game properly. Even I’ve found a need for that on occasion. The two reasons I believe this really should be stressed is
1.) The Oculus Rift Experience (scary, cool, immersive)
2.) Assassins & Thieves
I think we are quite leveld yes!
I agree on most of your points. But I also want to have the little part that keep telling me “this is a game” and not a simulator
True, I personaly am blinded by a moderate amount of sunlight and am having to wear sunglasses now the weather brightening up here in the UK, and I have always been more or a night owl or more comfortable with story over cast or foggy days, as it means my eyes do not hurt and I can alk up straigh without having to hunch over stairing at the floor.