I've been wondering this for quite some time, but I always thought it was because my computer had a crappy graphic card. Even turning the settings of Lights and Shades to ultra, still nothing.
I'm talking about the Lights in the editor and Lights in general: they do not seem to affect anything at all!
I've followed the tutorial about WC3 DNC colouration. I'm satisfied with the result, but my lights do not work at all!
If you suspect your video card isn't very good, the likely outcome is that even by telling the game to set those features to ultra the card itself lacks the commands to follow through with those settings and it can't even try.
Two questions:
In the campaign map with the infested terrans attacking at night, does the ambient lighting change at all for you? It should.
Well, what video card do you have? Even something from like 4-5 years ago outta be able to do some basic light changes in that map unless its an especially plain card such as a low end laptop's integrated graphics.
Thanks alot for the reply! I was losing hope :)
My video card on this pc really sucks, I'm either getting a new PC (since vista eats half the RAM) or a new video card.
Anyway it's an ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO.And it sucks, I know.
I'm now going to check the campaign map you said, editing this post later. Thanks alot once again ;)
Aye definitely not one of the better suited gaming card around but they do claim to fully support DX10 which would imply they should at least be *trying* to display all those beautiful lighting effects the game is capable of if you ask them to. At this point if you don't see those effects its going to be a matter of increasing those graphics settings in the options menu. I can't remember precisely which mode unlocks which but I seem to remember the settings themselves try to give you an idea of what they're doing. So tinker with those until you see 'em or your card barfs, which ever comes first (my money is on the barf :P)
Indeed ensure the next system has a stronger card, I highly recommend take a look at some techie sites like even tom's hardware and check out their charts & benchmarks to get an idea of what any card is capable of. Really helps in giving you a nice idea of what to expect from them before you buy 'em.
Once you get above roughly the 2ghz dualcore/2gb of ram threshold Vista, XP and win7 perform identically as gaming platforms, advantage to Vista & win7 since they support DX10, triple SLI and x64 architecture better as well. I used Vista as a gaming platform for about two years and never had a problem vs XP and enjoyed its adoption of those previously mentioned features, I now use win7 but that's mostly because it was both free for me and my profession somewhat dictates I keep in touch with new windows OSes.
The general consensus is that Vista was a terrible platform for gaming. Ive only ever mostly seen bad reviews/benchmarks of it in gaming compared with Win 7.
Agreeably the performance difference may not be huge enough to be of consequence. Making OS choice more a thing for "enthusiasts" perhaps, When it comes to max gaming performance.
Aye and that stigma about Vista continues to perpetuate among the community, its much like ye ol ancient winME in that it was an OS with much tighter rules on how drivers were to be written and many problems associated with it stemmed from the hardware makers not following the spec and just relying on the lazier 'the OS will handle this' approach that XP had allowed them, to their credit they were also facing a whole new architecture as well so one can only blame them for so much.
A second big-diss factor was how Nvidia and ATI were entering a fresh competition of performance vs cards and so they played fast and loose to gain the edge and whenever that failed to work you'd get your classic BSOD because something couldn't take the heat so to speak and the blame was falsely put on the OS rather then the card & its driver in question. The other diss for Vista which actually ended up in litigation was how a certain CPU maker's division head coerced a situation where the 'ready for vista' sticker was applied to quite substandard chips that couldn't really handle it despite the protests from the respective companies' engineers. So between the shoddily written drivers and other general hardware makers sketchy practices Vista was doomed from the start.
Initially things definitely sucked when using the OS but as driver makers followed in line things improved drastically, these days its yah far more stable and capable then initial release. Fortunately win7 got to benefit from that era of driver vs OS dropping backward compatibility happening before its arrival. Sorry for the book, just whenever I see reference to 'vista sucks' it bugs me since it was never really given a chance to thrive. That and I enjoy rooting for the underdogs ;)
I'm sorry to bring up this thread again, but I feel the urge to in order to not open a new one.
I've found out why my lights are not working...I discovered my decalmania decorations are not working either!
It seems that the editor uses bad quality settings, even if I have those set to high!
The fact is, I'm now on that uber pc capable of handling the best without any trouble. The video card has a memory of its own and it's imba.
But it seems that the editor is not affected by the settings specified in the game, and so the question comes fast: how the heck do I affect the editor's quality settings?
Thanks again, I hope for a fast answer :D
P.S: Also found out all lights and models are completely fine ingame. It's just the editor's bad settings.
Its all held under the View table at the top, you can edit those values to show more and more detail as you want along with control other things like showing you pathing etc. For instance if you set the Show Lighting to Game instead of Editor it'll draw it as good as you see it in game with your game settings.
Ouch. For some reason those are gray to me, that's why I never cared about those before. I can't click on them nor do anything.
Any reason you have in mind?
EDIT: Nevermind, solved it. Thanks alot for all the support you gave me so fare mate :)
Try File->Preferences
Don't know what it was under, but there's a certain place at which you can set graphics settings for the editor. My computer can't run the game smoothly at high/ultra settings (5-10 FPS...) but it can run em, so i play on low but have the editor on high/ultra since i don't care whether the terrain editor has crappy FPS...
Hope i didn't completely miss your question ;) i should get to sleep
I've been wondering this for quite some time, but I always thought it was because my computer had a crappy graphic card. Even turning the settings of Lights and Shades to ultra, still nothing. I'm talking about the Lights in the editor and Lights in general: they do not seem to affect anything at all! I've followed the tutorial about WC3 DNC colouration. I'm satisfied with the result, but my lights do not work at all!
Any help is rather welcome :)
If you suspect your video card isn't very good, the likely outcome is that even by telling the game to set those features to ultra the card itself lacks the commands to follow through with those settings and it can't even try.
Two questions:
In the campaign map with the infested terrans attacking at night, does the ambient lighting change at all for you? It should.
Well, what video card do you have? Even something from like 4-5 years ago outta be able to do some basic light changes in that map unless its an especially plain card such as a low end laptop's integrated graphics.
Thanks alot for the reply! I was losing hope :) My video card on this pc really sucks, I'm either getting a new PC (since vista eats half the RAM) or a new video card. Anyway it's an ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO.And it sucks, I know. I'm now going to check the campaign map you said, editing this post later. Thanks alot once again ;)
Also, Drop Vista for XP or Win7.
Yeah, my other PC has Win7 and an NVDIA Geforce that is just hot. Anyway most of the doodads involving light do not work for me, unfortunately.
@Marauderz: Go
Aye definitely not one of the better suited gaming card around but they do claim to fully support DX10 which would imply they should at least be *trying* to display all those beautiful lighting effects the game is capable of if you ask them to. At this point if you don't see those effects its going to be a matter of increasing those graphics settings in the options menu. I can't remember precisely which mode unlocks which but I seem to remember the settings themselves try to give you an idea of what they're doing. So tinker with those until you see 'em or your card barfs, which ever comes first (my money is on the barf :P)
Indeed ensure the next system has a stronger card, I highly recommend take a look at some techie sites like even tom's hardware and check out their charts & benchmarks to get an idea of what any card is capable of. Really helps in giving you a nice idea of what to expect from them before you buy 'em.
@EternalWraith: Go
Once you get above roughly the 2ghz dualcore/2gb of ram threshold Vista, XP and win7 perform identically as gaming platforms, advantage to Vista & win7 since they support DX10, triple SLI and x64 architecture better as well. I used Vista as a gaming platform for about two years and never had a problem vs XP and enjoyed its adoption of those previously mentioned features, I now use win7 but that's mostly because it was both free for me and my profession somewhat dictates I keep in touch with new windows OSes.
@BumpInTheNight: Go
The general consensus is that Vista was a terrible platform for gaming. Ive only ever mostly seen bad reviews/benchmarks of it in gaming compared with Win 7.
Agreeably the performance difference may not be huge enough to be of consequence. Making OS choice more a thing for "enthusiasts" perhaps, When it comes to max gaming performance.
@EternalWraith: Go
Aye and that stigma about Vista continues to perpetuate among the community, its much like ye ol ancient winME in that it was an OS with much tighter rules on how drivers were to be written and many problems associated with it stemmed from the hardware makers not following the spec and just relying on the lazier 'the OS will handle this' approach that XP had allowed them, to their credit they were also facing a whole new architecture as well so one can only blame them for so much.
A second big-diss factor was how Nvidia and ATI were entering a fresh competition of performance vs cards and so they played fast and loose to gain the edge and whenever that failed to work you'd get your classic BSOD because something couldn't take the heat so to speak and the blame was falsely put on the OS rather then the card & its driver in question. The other diss for Vista which actually ended up in litigation was how a certain CPU maker's division head coerced a situation where the 'ready for vista' sticker was applied to quite substandard chips that couldn't really handle it despite the protests from the respective companies' engineers. So between the shoddily written drivers and other general hardware makers sketchy practices Vista was doomed from the start.
Initially things definitely sucked when using the OS but as driver makers followed in line things improved drastically, these days its yah far more stable and capable then initial release. Fortunately win7 got to benefit from that era of driver vs OS dropping backward compatibility happening before its arrival. Sorry for the book, just whenever I see reference to 'vista sucks' it bugs me since it was never really given a chance to thrive. That and I enjoy rooting for the underdogs ;)
I'm sorry to bring up this thread again, but I feel the urge to in order to not open a new one. I've found out why my lights are not working...I discovered my decalmania decorations are not working either! It seems that the editor uses bad quality settings, even if I have those set to high! The fact is, I'm now on that uber pc capable of handling the best without any trouble. The video card has a memory of its own and it's imba. But it seems that the editor is not affected by the settings specified in the game, and so the question comes fast: how the heck do I affect the editor's quality settings? Thanks again, I hope for a fast answer :D
P.S: Also found out all lights and models are completely fine ingame. It's just the editor's bad settings.
Its all held under the View table at the top, you can edit those values to show more and more detail as you want along with control other things like showing you pathing etc. For instance if you set the Show Lighting to Game instead of Editor it'll draw it as good as you see it in game with your game settings.
Ouch. For some reason those are gray to me, that's why I never cared about those before. I can't click on them nor do anything. Any reason you have in mind?
EDIT: Nevermind, solved it. Thanks alot for all the support you gave me so fare mate :)
Try File->Preferences
Don't know what it was under, but there's a certain place at which you can set graphics settings for the editor. My computer can't run the game smoothly at high/ultra settings (5-10 FPS...) but it can run em, so i play on low but have the editor on high/ultra since i don't care whether the terrain editor has crappy FPS...
Hope i didn't completely miss your question ;) i should get to sleep