Nights

[Coach (DayZ) 0]

GIGABIT, I understand your opinion. I don't like this dark, but this is part of the game.

I think it is for developers to decide what game should we play: casual or hardcore.

And one more thing.

If we remove dark part of the night, then flares and chemlight will become useless.

Is this what you want?

As for me using any source of light in the dark night is a part of in game atmosphere and its great.

[GIGABIT 1]

GIGABIT' date=' I understand your opinion. I don't like this dark, but this is part of the game.

I think it is for developers to decide what game should we play: casual or hardcore.

[/quote']

So you're saying we should just sit in a corner and think "Well this sure is bullshit. But I guess I just have to deal with it because the developer has made it like this."?

Because I think that is so wrong in so many ways.

Why should we stay quiet if we know something is wrong AND that it can be fixed? The developers want our criticism and feedback. We are their playtesters.

And one more thing.

If we remove dark part of the night' date=' then flares and chemlight will become useless.

Is this what you want?

[/quote']

I've said about three or four times now in this thread, that I don't want to be able to see EVERYTHING, I want to be able to see SOMETHING.

Adding just a _tiny_ bit of light in the night sky to illuminate just a little bit of the environment. Or make the player character emit a bit of "personal light". Just so you could actually tell if there is a meter high pipe or fence in front of you. Why is that so damn hard to understand?

Flares and chemlights would NOT be useless. You would still need them to see properly, You just wouldn't have to use them to know if some black object 10cm away from you is a box, rock, fence, pipe, zombie, human, tank, building or just ground, because currently, you cannot tell the difference between a hill and a house if they are both right in front of you.

There is a line where a gameplay mechanic stops being atmospheric and becomes just plain stupid.

[Njordin 0]

nobody wants to understand i think @ gigabit

making it a bit brighter wouldnt break with any gamemechanics, it would be like before... except you could see at least 3m or your own feet / hand.

[Aryaa 5]

Actually if there is no moon and no lights around the night is actually that dark

Your eyes adjust a bit though to take in more light

Its pretty much 12 AM here where I am now.

No moon, lots of clouds.

If I were to walk out in a forest, I would be able to see the ground, the bushes, the fucking MOSS, rocks and what not without any major issues.

In arma 2, you cant see jack shit during night, only the sky.

You cant see anything but your weapon and the sky. Which is dumb as shit.

[Morinav 2]

As a person who grew up in rural, mountainous areas, I have never seen nights as black as the ones in DayZ. It's absolutely ridiculous. A good lighting model would be one that allowed you to see things somewhat close to you, but not stuff far away

What really happens is that your eyes take some time to adjust every time you transition between light and dark regions. So you could throw a flare and get a good look at your surroundings, but the subsequent light is going to ruin you night vision for a while (and be blindingly bright for a few seconds). Chem lights wouldn't be as harsh on your vision, but also provide less light. I think there's a military flashlight or something in the game that gives off a red beam of light. Those're used to preserve nightvision, I believe, and it would give them a neat gameplay function.

Areas that should be extremely dark are things like the interiors of buildings, so if you're moving around indoors, or hunting on the ground for loot, you'd need a lightsource, otherwise you'd literally be fumbling in the dark. That I'm cool with. A cloudy night on a new moon could be a neat, rare occurrence, but it's far too common right now to make night playable.

If the super dark nights are to be kept, zombie aggro behavior needs to be modified to only depend on sound in those instances. Like, even if you agroed a zombie, if you could sneak away silently they'd have no idea where you are. Their eyesight seems to be far worse than a living human, and if I can't see in the dark there's no way they should have a chance of seeing me.

[GIGABIT 1]

Thanks to all the people giving real-life examples. Really helps to know how things should be in the game and stuff.

Morinav's post is pretty much perfect. I totally agree.

Here is also a demonstration of the "personal lighting" feature, that was discussed earlier. The game SCP-087, even if it is a totally single player game, implements personal lighting beautifully to induce a frightening atmosphere and an easy way to bring light to dark areas.

I think something like this would be an awesome feature for DayZ. It would make the game much less tedious to play during night time and still keep the need to use flares or chemlights.

[bjarnidk 9]

Game would be perfectly playable at night if the zombies were NOT attracted to light at ALL. It simply shouldn't affect their aggro at all.

[Runefox 1]

I don't have a problem with the nights being super dark, per se. When people turn their gamma up, I imagine that's what the night would look like when your eyes adjust properly. Frankly, after a period of time, I'd prefer it if that happened automatically. It isn't game breaking - Even with my gamma and brightness cranked, I still can't see straight through a pitch dark night, and especially not fog or rain, and especially not identifying friend or foe, but at least I can see mostly where I'm going rather than staring at black.

The biggest problem for me is, night seems to take up a great majority of the day with very little in-between. I signed on last night and the server time was around 7:30PM - Pitch black. Same deal this morning when I signed on with a server time of around 8:15 AM.

One thing I find helps combat the dark night is the HDR Lighting setting - Turning that onto High or Very High lets you see more shades in the darkness, which is absolutely essential. I went from seeing #000000 black with specks of #111111 all over the place for grass to being able to see blades of grass and other details.

[Nasher 0]

DayZ is based on Arma 2 which a sim, so it's as realistic as it can be. They may not be able alter the parts that control day/night and lighting. But tbh they should just speed up the day/night cycle if they can. Or just give all characters flashlights :D

A lot of people who always lived in/near towns probably don't know actually how dark it can get. I live in the countryside with no streetlights and most people don't leave outside lights on, you can't even see your hand in front of your face on a dark night with no moon :P

[bjarnidk 9]

I've been hiking long hikes through forests in PITCH BLACK darkness in real life. I've done it many times and any soldier has. Did we like it? No it was nearly impossible at times. I once got a twig up my eye socket while running in the wood in darkness like this. These were only patrol hikes around our camp for a few hours. When we got back, another patrol would take our spot and we would go to sleep. But it was only this dark when you are inside a thick forest on a cloudy night.

If it is true that you can see during a clear sky in this game (I've never experienced a night where I saw a damn thing) then I'm all up for that..Remove clouds during nights. Also gives us a chance to exploit that north star more.

[jonesinator 1]

The nights are not always dark. If there is a full moon in game it can actually get fairly bright. I am not sure if the servers are synced with the actual date but if they are then you can expect the nights to get brighter as the days go by. Right now the moon is 1% full so it should be as you say dark as fuck.

[GIGABIT 1]

One thing I find helps combat the dark night is the HDR Lighting setting - Turning that onto High or Very High lets you see more shades in the darkness' date=' which is absolutely essential.[/b'] I went from seeing #000000 black with specks of #111111 all over the place for grass to being able to see blades of grass and other details.

I think it's stupid that you have to change your settings to be able to play. It really takes away the realism from the game.

DayZ is based on Arma 2 which a sim' date=' so it's as realistic as it can be.

[/quote']

This is just plain wrong. Arma 2 is certainly not a perfect game.

A lot of people who always lived in/near towns probably don't know actually how dark it can get. I live in the countryside with no streetlights and most people don't leave outside lights on' date=' you can't even see your hand in front of your face on a dark night with no moon :P

[/quote']

Thanks for not reading any of the other posts previously posted in this thread. I really appreciate it.

Many people have already agreed, that even in the total absence of artificial light, the human eye adjusts enough to make out most things, that are very close to you. The night sky emits quite a lot of light in reality.

you can't even see your hand in front of your face on a dark night with no moon :P

That's just the thing. In Arma you can't see anything even if the sky is perfectly clear and you are in a completely open field. This is just plain unrealistic.

I understand it could be totally dark if it started raining during the night or if you are in the woods where the trees block most of the sky. But not in some completely open field.

If some of you people still somehow think pitch black nights are realistic' date=' PLEASE read this post here:

It Can Only Get So Dark

Before proceeding, it is worth noting that the s.a.a. thread so far seems to contain the implicit notion that you can find darker and darker sites if you get progressively farther from anthropogenic sources of light. This is not true, particularly from a practical standpoint. The Australian Outback, the coast northwest of Perth, the Chilean observatory sites, and isolated places in the US Southwest, plus many others have sky brightness negligibly different from the natural background, which sets a fundamental (and more-or-less inescapable) limit on how dark a site can be. The main contributions to the natural skyglow are: the zodiacal light, the night-airglow ("permanent aurora"), and scattered starlight in the atmosphere. There are also contributions from such things as scattered extragalactic "cosmic" light, but these are so small that even now their actual values are known only as upper limits.

Despite the fact that many folks have not seen the zodiacal light, much less the gegenschein or zodiacal band, it is the main contribution to the natural sky brightness even the ecliptic poles. The night-airglow varies considerably due to solar activity on the time scale of minutes/hours as well as over the 11-year solar cycle, and can greatly compromise the darkness at a site on any particular night. The zodiacal light, zodiacal band, and gegenschein are prominent features of the night sky at true-dark sites. They are not tests of visual acuity, but of sky brightness. The night-airglow is also easy to see at dark sites, at least where there is little scattered light from atmospheric dust and aerosols. There are many reported visual sightings of the rippled structure in this phenomenon, looking like banded very thin altocumulus clouds. This light is visible mostly from a forbidden line of ground-state oxygen which emits at 5577A, where most light-pollution filters have their red cutoff. Gordon Garradd has some nice photos of structured airglow at his Web site:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~loomberah/agw1.htm

This is the sort of thing you never see except at a "true-dark" site. The main night-sky brightness contribution---the zodiacal light---is of course just scattered sunlight, and thus is not improved by light-pollution filters.

Source: http://www.astropix.com/HTML/L_STORY/SKYBRITE.HTM

The nights are not always dark. If there is a full moon in game it can actually get fairly bright. I am not sure if the servers are synced with the actual date but if they are then you can expect the nights to get brighter as the days go by. Right now the moon is 1% full so it should be as you say dark as fuck.

Many people have said something like this and I really hope it's true.

I joined a server at about 1.00AM and I couldn't see the moon anywhere. I ran on a completely open field and at 2.00AM the moon still wasn't up and it was still completely dark.

If the moon cycle really is realistic, and the nights will actually make sense, ALMOST all of my complains will be pretty useless. (Which is a good thing). It remains to be seen how much lighter the nights will become.

[m3anmarin3 0]

I for one enjoy the darkness. learn to use flares and chemlights tactically, they attract zeds and players, so what? work with it. It's basically a game mechanic, another variable you have to manage.

My first week playing was almost exclusively in the pitch black, and I loved every minute of it. So much tension when you are low on flares trying frantically to find a town or farmhouse to loot for more. To quote R.B Riddick "you're not afraid of the dark are you..."

[nimbus_one 0]

you can easily confirm this by making a simple mission in the editor, and playing with the time settings, an a full moon clear night in the game you easily see fine. So like other had said Arma simulates time and date for moon cycles.

[MurderSurgeon 3]

To me, the point is not if "sometimes it is not perfectly pitch black out because the moon blah blah", the point is that when it IS black, the game is unrealistically black and it affects gameplay. Sure, some of you might claim to like this aspect or defend it, but if there's one thing I have seen championed over and over again, it's clinging to this idea of "realism," and, as it has been stated numerous times, the darkness present in the game - not when the moon is out, but the times when it is not - is not realistic. So to me, this is something that should be fixed. I am not saying "make it like daytime", but the tiniest amount of light would add an edge of realism to the game. It would be *really* cool if the game did account for your eyes adjusting, ie pulling a flare in a dark area blinded you for a second, etc, but let's not get crazy.