THE Night is TOO DAMN DARK Thread. Others will be deleted etc.

[Holic 0]

Hi.

So i was trying yesterday the hole day to connect to a freaking server (but no way i did, but i understand why), then today after a few hours i managed to connect to a Blackhole(yes a massive blackhole), its freaking nutts asking players to connect to a game like this and play...do you even think about what problems people can get on their vision after playing a long time, or maybe we wont, or at least i wont because if i want to play blind folded games i go to bed and play them with my wife :P lol...just kidding ( AM I?)

PS: And its Crazy because like some people said, i work during day/night, but others only have time at night so, it always be dark for them, wich i say its unfair, like i think the US players will have a better time to play than Europeans. I belive all i said its true and Honest, i bough Arma2 (which a consider a crappy game) just to play this mod, and really i am a little surprised by the overrated reviews people are making of this mod, its not a final mod its only an Alpha, it means the Dev Team can change what is wrong about it, and when i say wrong i mean what everybody complaints about it...

Go Dev Team i really hope you get this Mod in the right direction, otherwise the hype will die sooner than we expected.

[dallas 5195]

^^Don't like ArmA and don't like DayZ, I think you'll fit right in!

[Booya 1]

you want me to explain how raising gamma settings makes the game brighter? lol. I can do just fine at the default setting' date=' by the way. All these complaints of 'a black screen' are bullocks. There are stars, there are landmarks visible against the night sky, there is visible water reflecting light from said stars. Enough to follow the coast all the way to a city.

So what? you want the default setting brighter and then what......people jack up their gamma and hdr enough so that nobody ever needs flashlights or flares at all??? get real people.

[/quote']

no, i want you to explain why jacking up the gamma to make the game brighter is okay, but just making the game brighter in the first place on the development end so you don't HAVE to jack up the gamma, making the game look super ugly in the process, is not. I'm not sure how you got that out of my post

[MasLegio (DayZ) 0]

try this at moonless night with some clouds in the game

gamma at 1.0 = unrealistic darkness not even able to separate the trees from the sky

gamma at 1.4-1.6 realistic darkness with sky "shimmering" and you see the skyline and object between it but you cannot see objects below skyline

[Overdriven 1]

But' date=' it's actually darn realistic. In the army when I was, patrolling the camp, on an overacast moonless night - the same shitless shitty black is what I saw.

[/quote']

i live in the country and decided to get some proof of my opinion, so i walked outside on an overcast night, no moon, and i could see ar better than this game's night time. I'm surrounded by woods and trees too. but i could still navigate and see a good 5-10 feet in front of me without a problem

Unless your country has a country wide blackout, you will still have a lot of light pollution.

Look it up, it should be known, because it sucks.

Been camping in the middle of the lake district up on a mountain in the middle of nowhere? There is no light pollution, yet I can still crawl out in the middle of the night, navigate round a river and rocks and find a decent place to take a piss without even a struggle. Even in the damn rain on a cloudy night.

DayZ night is unnaturally dark. Turn gamma and brightness to around 1.3 and that is far more realistic. Still fing dark and only basic shapes but far better than what we have now. Though even that only really allows you to see horizon objects better. You should be able to see at least some of the ground immediately infront of you.

[Landen 2]

for people saying sleep at night. most people dont sleep at 9, and wake up at 7,thats just not when night is.

night needs to be more accurate in time, and in level of darkness.

lastly, a lot of people have night shifts, thuse, they play at night on their times off......

the ignorance of some....

[-AoXo- 24]

I don't play at night for obvious reasons and I see no reason to. The first time I played it was at night and I couldn't distinguish a zombie from a building from the trees from the ground it turned out I had been looking at. Yes I used flares but it wasn't worthwhile for me to fumble through such darkness like that. I didn't find it rewarding and I haven't bothered to go back because it's just simply too dark for me to (want to) play.

Take that as you will.

[Jikfive 34]

Easy Fix. Alternate the day/night cycles every 7 hours.

Then players will be guaranteed to have a variety of in game darkness/light.

It is just silly to penalize people who have day jobs to fumble around in the night all the time.

[Serged 0]

The night is absolutely amazing in this mod! It's like how it's in real life.

I don't want some sort of "you see almost as good as in daylight, it's just a tiny bit darker" night like in other games.

I have been playing at night a lot because it makes the game very interesting. At first it's hard but when you get used to it a little bit it's absolutely playable at night!

Just use your ears and go slow. Use flares and chemlights, but wisely because it will give away your position/light you up if you pick them up. And when you get more gear like compass, map, flashlight etc. it will be even easier. I would not recommend a total newcomer to play at night, but if you have some experience at the game, you will be surprised how you will learn to navigate even in almost complete darkness. AND it's even more of a tense experience than this game is at day.

And if you REALLY don't want to play at night you can always join some server on the other side of the globe or some special server that has reversed time.

Also turn up gamma and brightness a bit and set HDR to high or very high. Seems like at normal the nights are a lot darker. Only found this out recently.

[nexerius 0]

I kind of dislike the guys liking the night.

"Hurr, use flares and chemlights cuz taht cool lol, it feels more realistic and scary lol. I dont give a sheit if i suddenly walk into a zombie and die lol cuz i sit on my ass and looking at elektro and killing people in the flare light,durr"

[masacrualex 6]

Night missions in Arma 2 were fine because of night vision and you'd mostly use the laser sights if you'd be with the squad but they are still WAY too dark, I never play at night in DayZ. Too dark :P

[Landen 2]

The night is absolutely amazing in this mod! It's like how it's in real life.

I don't want some sort of "you see almost as good as in daylight' date=' it's just a tiny bit darker" night like in other games.

I have been playing at night a lot because it makes the game very interesting. At first it's hard but when you get used to it a little bit it's absolutely playable at night!

Just use your ears and go slow. Use flares and chemlights, but wisely because it will give away your position/light you up if you pick them up. And when you get more gear like compass, map, flashlight etc. it will be even easier. I would not recommend a total newcomer to play at night, but if you have some experience at the game, you will be surprised how you will learn to navigate even in almost complete darkness. AND it's even more of a tense experience than this game is at day.

And if you REALLY don't want to play at night you can always join some server on the other side of the globe or some special server that has reversed time.

Also turn up gamma and brightness a bit and set HDR to high or very high. Seems like at normal the nights are a lot darker. Only found this out recently.

[/quote']

the problem is that night isnt as dark as it is in this game. you have a lot of ambient lighting from the night sky to see IRL

[Bandage. 3]

Alright. I've had enough of this stupid continous reading about "how awesome darkness is and should be left alone", or "how unrealistic it is and how unplayable it is".

Now we need to move on to something which we used to call 'solving the problems'. We need to plan how to make a good balance between light and darkness to keep everyone happy by their own side.

The main problem is that there's people who like the complete darkness in a way or an another. And then there's the people who can't seem to enjoy it at all because it's scratching the edges of unplayability.

However, most of the dark knights still adjust the settings during the night, which means it's too dark for the both sides in fact.

So what we need to do is to increase playability by doing something which does not ruin the experience of the night people, nor ruin the playability for the other people.

I'll present this little simple solution to the darkness by pictures:

Approx 40-60% of us do NOT want the darkness to be like this:

This is what we are NOT trying to achieve by lowering the darkness level:

This is how it SHOULD be to keep the darkness in a playability level

for both night assassins and dayfairies:

(Image source link)

Notice how you can actually see a bit around you, but just barely to figure out the different obstacles and items laying on the ground.

It should be very limited to prevent it making flashlights and flares all useless. You can see just a bit over your feet to notice the slightest obstacles, not to completely reveal a small area around you to make it way too easy.

Also, as we've discussed about how human eyes can adjust to the darkness in about minutes or so, you won't be seeing a thing for a while after you've seen some actual light for a while. It would take about 10 minutes before your eyes are fully adjusted to the darkness, so you could see a bit better over your feet. This should apply for 2m^2 area, maximum.

This way you can't be sure if you'll suddenly hit into a zombie just because you couldn't see too far from you.

And you can still play silent dead on the ground while others pass by you :)

[Kolchak (DayZ) 5]

^ FOR GOD'S SAKE LISTEN TO THIS MAN!

[blaf 63]

Well, i logged yesterday for first time and it was very dark, yet i found it quite realistic as this is exactly what i see at moonless nights IRL :)

[jan_f_w 23]

^^Same here as above post, first time login @8 pm CET and it was way too dark - was not able to find daylight servers so my first adventure of dayZ has pretty soon ended! Too bad :/

Such dark nights are ok but should not be so long, maybe just have them shortened and not begin so early.

[william4 1]

Alright. I've had enough of this stupid continous reading about "how awesome darkness is and should be left alone"' date=' or "how unrealistic it is and how unplayable it is".

Now we need to move on to something which we used to call 'solving the problems'. We need to plan how to make a [i']good balance between light and darkness to keep everyone happy by their own side.

The main problem is that there's people who like the complete darkness in a way or an another. And then there's the people who can't seem to enjoy it at all because it's scratching the edges of unplayability.

However, most of the dark knights still adjust the settings during the night, which means it's too dark for the both sides in fact.

So what we need to do is to increase playability by doing something which does not ruin the experience of the night people, nor ruin the playability for the other people.

I'll present this little simple solution to the darkness by pictures:

Approx 40-60% of us do NOT want the darkness to be like this:

This is what we are NOT trying to achieve by lowering the darkness level:

This is how it SHOULD be to keep the darkness in a playability level

for both night assassins and dayfairies:

(Image source link)

Notice how you can actually see a bit around you, but just barely to figure out the different obstacles and items laying on the ground.

It should be very limited to prevent it making flashlights and flares all useless. You can see just a bit over your feet to notice the slightest obstacles, not to completely reveal a small area around you to make it way too easy.

Also, as we've discussed about how human eyes can adjust to the darkness in about minutes or so, you won't be seeing a thing for a while after you've seen some actual light for a while. It would take about 10 minutes before your eyes are fully adjusted to the darkness, so you could see a bit better over your feet. This should apply for 2m^2 area, maximum.

This way you can't be sure if you'll suddenly hit into a zombie just because you couldn't see too far from you.

And you can still play silent dead on the ground while others pass by you :)

I would say something close to what you are saying and showing in the pictures is very true for what most of us want. Only thing i will add is just outside of that small area that you can see well around you i think you should be able to see silhouettes. maybe like 5-10 meteres (about 16-32 feet) outside of that you can see silhouettes of people and zombies. Then farther out have silhouettes of buildings also and trees.

Once again no one is asking for a darkened day time to were i can see everything like daylight but just faded black. What we want is just enough to understand what is going on very close to us. Hell even the backround picture on the fourms have night time as dark with silhouettes of zombies. But even the background on the fourm is much more light then i think anyone is asking for.

[dlorT 0]

I'm tired of all you assholes saying to play on a Day-time server. This is not a solution obviously the majority of the player base server hops until they find a Day server, so obviously this is a problem. The game is entirely unplayable at night until around 3:30AM so there's a span between 9PM-4AM where people wont play on a server. Obviously something must be done about this, because we've already been told the constant disconnect reconnect is hard on the master server. That's 8 hours where things are absolutely useless on a server without NVGs. I've played at night on servers durring that time and yeah you can jack your gamma and brightness all the way up, but that's a pretty ridiculous solution. I don't want to play in the day-time all the time, but the rarity of NVG's(which i'm not complaining about) makes it to where i have to, otherwise i have to find a Weapon with a tac-light, because going without a side-arm is suicide at close range. Flares are great don't get me wrong, but you're saying that In my home as a survivor i have roadside flares and no flashlight? Get real. I don't have flares in my home, i don't know about the majority of you guys.

And yeah night time is unrealistically dark in regular Arma 2, Rocket works for Bohemia, and i also know he's doing this mod for free, but perhaps he could address whether this is a fixable issue for DayZ or if it's tied to closely to Arma 2 for it to be fixed. Some word on it would be nice, rather than some jackass coming in and saying, "Play on a day-time server noob." There's two other solutions i can think of, 1.) Increase the spawn rate on NVG's(which i'm not really game for, i like their rarity, it makes the decision between working with a player that has them, and killing them a tough choice.) 2.) Spawn with a flashlight and decrease the inventory space they take up, i.e. give them their own slot like binoculars and NVGs. You do have straps on your other leg opposite to your sidearm.

Flashlights are generally useful and balanced especially if you find a gun with one on it. I went most of the day two days ago without a sidearm, and just a CZ 550, but the amount of noise the CZ makes almost made that suicide when we finally did aggro some zombies. Luckily a friend was carrying an extra Makarov after we decided that was a bad idea, and scouting from the hills, thanks to the temp system being out of whack at the time was a bad idea since i had gotten sick earlier that day from it.

[william4 1]

It would be nice at this point if someone from the Dayz team or Rockect himself would make a statment on this so we can at least get some sort of idea here. Its pretty obvious alot of people have issues with the dark. Just the thread alone should say somthing its grown pretty large.

Could we get somthing from you guys maybe like, "there is nothing we can do to fix the issues because of the engine of the game". maybe, " we could change it but at this point we like it how it is" or even " we are thinking of ways to change this" how about "We have no plans for this issue yet and have not even disscused it " or " we have plans to change this and would like more feedback " i will even take this " it stays the way it is stop talking about it we dont need any feed back on night time anymore".

Simple reason for a word from the team is to see at this point if its even worth debating about. If it cant be fixed due to the game itself then we may as well move on. or even if they say its staying the way it is and no feedback is needed then we can move on. But if they say they want feed back and for us to keep talking then by all means keep the debate going. just give us some sort of clue what we need to do with this topic and if there is at least a point in even talking about it.

[Bandage. 3]

@ dlorT

Try also note the time when some people usually even play anything, just like me. I'm completely free usually after 8:00pm, which means it's nearly always dark when I go into any server. To me that's kind of unfair, since darkness really isn't the easiest time to make great adventures in.

What I'd suggest that the night should be spanned in to the darkest darkness after 0:00am to 6:00am, when the actual night can be experienced while it actually is night time going on locally. It only doesn't make sense, but also makes it fair for those who want a reasonable ping and a playable experience through DayZ, when they actually got their time for it.

[Callist 0]

I remember reading that servers were rigging the time to freeze and this caused issues for zed respawns etc. Under this assumption it would seem the implementation is that the servers are in a time sync with the DB - could there not be a 'real time' and a 'game time' they could both run side by side then? So it would be an option?

[Overdriven 1]

What I'd suggest that the night should be spanned in to the darkest darkness after 0:00am to 6:00am' date=' when the [i']actual night can be experienced while it actually is night time going on locally. It only doesn't make sense, but also makes it fair for those who want a reasonable ping and a playable experience through DayZ, when they actually got their time for it.

Pretty much this.

[dlorT 0]

I think the amount of time it's dark outside is incredibly realistic, the problem here lies with the pitch black levels of darkness. You literally can't play, you can't see your gun in your own hands without turning your gamma and brightness up. NVG's really help but i've only ever had them once. A flashlight is definitely a nice addition and the G17 had one attached to it, but the Flashlight is still decently useless in that level of darkness. I'm all for light sources alerting zombies and other players, that's realistic, what's unrealistic about it is the fact that i can't see a zombie 3 meters in front of me, without raising settings in Gamma and Brightness. This and the fact that i can't see the loot on the ground means i run a real risk of starving to death in the night. Speaking of which i'm pretty sure you can go weeks without eating, that's another issue for another time though. I just feel i shouldn't have to drink a liter of water and eat a whole meal every hour or two.

[peetgamer 10]

There are so many options to light up things i realy dont see problem OP mention.

Maybe some little tweaks here and there for example:

Houses where you can lit up a fireplace with WOOD that also give some light through windows.

Plenty of ways to implement ways to make the darknight more joyable.

But maybe some minor tweaks like a MOON that gives a littlebit more light or you can lit up fires in town.

I realy hope it stays this way, finally a game that have some realism with pitch dark nights.

Dont casual/carebear this game to much devs its fine they just have to adept to hardcore play:)

[WaxMan (DayZ) 0]

I think the amount of time it's dark outside is incredibly realistic' date=' the problem here lies with the pitch black levels of darkness. You literally can't play, you can't see your gun in your own hands without turning your gamma and brightness up. NVG's really help but i've only ever had them once. A flashlight is definitely a nice addition and the G17 had one attached to it, but the Flashlight is still decently useless in that level of darkness. I'm all for light sources alerting zombies and other players, that's realistic, what's unrealistic about it is the fact that i can't see a zombie 3 meters in front of me, without raising settings in Gamma and Brightness. This and the fact that i can't see the loot on the ground means i run a real risk of starving to death in the night. Speaking of which i'm pretty sure you can go weeks without eating, that's another issue for another time though. I just feel i shouldn't have to drink a liter of water and eat a whole meal every hour or two.

[/quote']

For me even with gamma and brightness at max and HDR on the highest setting I still cant see a thing.