More Awesome Than You!

Hi all.  Been lurking a bit, first post here, figured I'd make myself useful.  :P

So as the topic indicates I've been working on creating files to update the last version released of Gunmods Radiance lighting to incorporate the new lights and windows in OFB and FFS.  As you probably are aware he stopped working on this about 5 months ago and left his last build to the public domain to be 'completed'.  The last released unofficial beta (posted on MTS2 by Chocolate Pi here (http://modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=133383)) included a 'shader wrapper' he had coded that apparently performs specular highlights in realtime on all surfaces except walls and floors.  I was using that last build for a bit, but realised I wasnt getting any bumpmapping at all.  It turned out, as some of you know, this was because in order for his 'wrapper' to have any effect the 'boolprop useshaders false' cheat has to be set in game.  His wrapper however does not perform bumpmapping and by disabling shaders one disables the game's native capacity to do so.

So I went ahead and eliminated the wrapper and the cheat.  What happened next surprised me though.  I was only getting bumpmapping on Sims in CAS and in the game only when a sim was outdoors.  Inside any closed room, there was none whatsoever.  So this led me into an investigation of everyone of these files to see exactly what was happening in the mod.  It seems that for some reason Gunmod globally changed indoor lighting to be ambient only, where the games default is ambient+2 directional sources.  This wouldnt be immediately apparent because he literally adjusted every single light and window through NL to suit this.  The hole in this is that for whatever reason the game engine cannot render bumpmapping unless there is at least one source of directional light.

So anyhow... I went ahead and created files for the OFB and FFS /tsdata/res/lights folders (which are just nulls anyway) and ported Maxis' settings for the OFB/FFS lights and windows into Gunmods framework.  I have zipped up two versions: One with Gunmod's shadder wrapper (and awesome realtime specular) , and another without that and with my variable tweak to add directional light (and bumpmapping) back in.  I am planning to upload this to MTS2 as 2.2.beta2 but well... I have never publically submitted any kinda of mod, even though I am a seasoned PC gamer I've always been more of a 'consumer' of mods.

This forum is relatively private and is frequented by some of the most clever and talented modders in the community and I was hoping I could get some input/feedback from you all before I throw this out there where I may have to answer questions from totally inexperienced newbs.  So I'm gonna go ahead and attach these .ZIPs here and hope you all are interested in this.  :-\

A few things:

1)  BACKUP YOUR LIGHTS FOLDERS... for all your installs before overwriting with these.  I have all the original files in case of total emergency but I'd rather not be the bandaid.

2)  After you backup, cause you did, these files go right in the paths they are archived with.  My reccomendation would be simply renaming your original 'Lights' folders and then letting these files make new ones.

3) If you try these please leave feedback here.  I brought these here as a MATY exclusive because I need to be sure it works well, and so I could get some thoughtful responses. 

4)  Don't share these or repost them.  They are almost entirely gunmod's work and I intend to let MTS2 continue to be the public host & distributor of that.

Thanks very much for your help.

-Chesspieceface

Hrm...I'll definitely check this out tonight and get back to you if I see any problems.  Thanks.  :)

A-ha! Can this be the cause of the incredible darkness inside which Gunmod's release (and the 2.1 beta) suffers from?

I will definitely test your update later and come back with results.

Actually the shader modifications he did didn't enable the specular highlights. That's why he was using the 'boolprop useshaders false' cheat; he had gotten a cease and desist letter from EA and he was using that cheat as a way around that (he never released his specular enabled shader to anyone, including me while I was working on it with him).

From what I remember, the letter said something about releasing a special Xbox 360 version with that feature enabled (at least that's what GunMod told me, he didn't elaborate very much and I kind of doubt it), but from looking at OFB and FFS, it looks like it's already been enabled by Maxis. I don't know if you removed it or not, but that shader package has an optimized censor remover (it prevents the game from even making the call, so it runs faster than other mods that hide it) because he never got around to updating the package.

A lot of the information is gone now though, since he deleted his forums. I still have some of our chats though (it was pretty early stuff, may not even be relevant anymore).

Edit: I found all the beta's he did on my hard drive (most not made public)... beta5.rar though RLS_2.2_Beta_Version_78.zip

I'll definitely give both of these a try.  I'll try the native one on my main game and the other on my laptop.

Well that's great information Argon.  I've been posting in the beta thread at MTS2 asking for anyone who worked with him to please respond and well... that line is dead.  ;)

I've not in anyway modified his shader package.  I did remove it from the bumpmap version as for all I knew it did nothing otherwise and I have Quaxi's censor remover, as does most everyone I'd imagine.  His package must be doing something more than just that though, as something must be causing those pool effects, right?  Yes, I'd agree that the engine does indeed appear to be doing spec highlights on its own now;  I particularly seem to notice it on kitchen countertops and such. 

So you are suggesting that regardless of its other functions, even with 'useshaders true', that package can replace Quaxi's?  I'll try that out, but it's kind of hard for me too imagine that large of a fps boost except for on very low end machines or someone running a nudist colony.  :D  Plus if whatever else it does is overriden by the game's native shader effect wouldn't that waste just as many cycles as the censor improvement saved?  My machine is far from high-end but even with AA & AF cranked I only get real slowdown when I have WAY too many Sims on a lot (like 12-14 lol) or when I have fewer but lots of hacks/scripts are active (macros, clothes changing, controller objects, service NPC's etc.) 

Of course part of that is because it seems the game LOD's textures as a last ditch effort no matter what.  Even after completely modifying the graphicsrules.sgr in every folder it still seems to 'optimize' textures trying to regulate performance after it reaches critical mass on custom textures and VRAM....As an aside if anyone knows how to absolutely block that, I'd love to know how.  ;)

Thanks for the input Argon, please let me know what else you've got on the subject.  And thanks to those of you who've already checked this out.  I look forward to a discussion of how best to do this. 

EDIT: Well unless I have some file which I am unaware of, it does indeed appear that Gunmods package removes the censor blur.  If you test it for that, and still want bumpmapping be sure to delete the userstartup.cheat file that is in the Gunmodshader version.

EDIT2: It occurs to me that the above may be unclear.  The Gunmodshader version above does not have the adjusted variable to reenable indoor bumpmapping.  So if you wanted to use the no censor/water effect package WITH bumpmapping, you'd need to use the nativeshader version but replace Quaxi's censor.package (if you are using it already) with the RLSshader.package in the Gunmod version. :o  I will get that sorted out though, especially as it would seem that if Argon is correct there is no reason to be disabling shaders at all; I will unify them as a single package shortly.

I played for a couple of hours last night with the native version installed, so here's a couple of observations for you:

1) Be sure to warn folks installing this to re-install CEP afterwards -- otherwise any object that relies on CEP appears dark, almost black in the game. 

I did, however, have a problem with one object (the 'toddler blanket' that lets toddlers sleep on the floor -- I think I found it over on MTS 2, but I'll have to check).  It's always dark, even with CEP re-installed. The pattern is visible, but the object itself is gray-black.  I'll try to get a picture and post it so you can see what I'm talking about.

2) The morning twilight period is either very short or non-existent -- it just goes from dark to light.  The evening twilight is ok, except that the transition to dark seems more abrupt than it did under Gunmod's 2.1 version (I never tried the 2.2 beta). It seems to just suddenly change from twilight to dark, rather than twilight fading out.

3) On the plus side, the lighting does seem better than 2.1 -- not as dark. This is particularly apparent in rooms with windows or wall lights.  Other than what I mention in item #2, I'm overall very impressed.  This does seem a lot better than the last 'official' Gunmod version, and I look forward to testing it out some more.


As more info, the only mods I have that affect lighting that I'm aware of are Dizzy2's Smart Lights and JMP's 'commlightson'.  I also have all three EPs on my main computer.

I mostly agree with jsalemi's post. A great improvement on 2.1, with some small issues.

As a side-note, do you know of a way to change smart-lights2 by dizzy2 so lights are turned on in rooms without windows even during daytime? With the light mod installed these rooms become too dark.

here's a shot of what I'm talking about with the toddler rug; it's on the bottom of the picture. In the daylight, it's the same color as the crib and changing table, but under the lights, it becomes very dark.

(http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/203/snapshotf0872fc5715d01898dn.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)

Not a big deal, but I figure it's worth mentioning.

Sorry about that, feel free to pelt me with rocks since neither Daan nor JadeElliot really did anything on the project (I suspect they just wanted an early release of the files) and I've been pretty quiet...


Yes you are correct, it does the pool effects (he was planning to change the texture on the pool walls to make it match a little better). It's been a while and I don't have any of the text for that file, but I think it does something with soft shadows as well? I can't remember if he got that working or not...

The fps boost isn't all that great, it'd run the same speed as if the Sim was in normal clothes. The game is actually pretty limited by the cpu as it is, you can have a great video card but it will never be used to it's full potential (the fps will never go above a certain number because the cpu has to run all the instructions). The useshaders false cheat actually forces the game into DirectX 7 mode (the reason this cheat was made; to provide backwards compatibility with older cards) instead of DirectX 9 like it normally is with more modern video cards. I don't think GunMod ever realized that, so the bumpmapping pixel shader would never work anyway since DirectX 7 doesn't support Pixel Shaders 2.x (only 1.x).


It uses LOD textures because of all the TXTR files (10-11 zoom levels, the last 2 largest point to LIFO files). It would be possible to force these larger textures by recreating every TXTR inside the packages, but it wouldn't be very smart and you'd have no real way of distributing it.

EDIT: Just so everyone knows, the daytime lighting was never worked on during this beta. He was trying to get the night lighting correct before he did anything else, so Windows and doorways will be too bright during the day. There were a few issues with getting the right light definitions for some lamps as well (one of the candle things was too bright last time I looked at it).

Found this snippet in my notes, I don't think I've ever tried it...

the sims2\tsdata\res\lights\lighting.txt

change day-night transition duration : change the 2 instances of
"transitionTimes 2 100" to "transitionTimes 30 100"

Note: the day/night transition button in build/buy mode will be affected as well as room lights.

The above quote is straight from my notes but I don't know who first posted it or which site.

There's more lighting info here: http://www.tnlc.com/eep/sims/sims2.html

Thanks to all of you who've posted thus far!

@jsalemi:  This modification makes no change at all to the CEP, in fact it even has the proper line in the lighting.txt to enable the optional *.nlo's.  The only thing might be that if you're flat replacing your lights folder you'd be moving away the \CEP3_CustomLights\ folder as well.  Mine is empty, but if you had stuff in there and didnt recreate that then you'd lose those effects yes.

I do not have that blanket object, if you'd link to it I'll check it out.  But as I've not observed this behavior on any other object (yet),  I'd wonder if it were not some property of that object set improperly?

The morning twilight works fine in my game; It lasts the full hour between 6 and 7am.  Perhaps you have your gamma set too low to see the difference, but I can post screenies if necessary.

@jsalemi & jordi: Regarding smartlights-nl... Gunmod initially had recommended this and then retracted and insisted it not be used at all. I can't figure out why as it seems to work.  The only time I observe it acting oddly is if a Sim both enters and leaves a room under the influence of an action.  For example JMP's macrotastic cleaning.  For good meagure though I have renamed it to "z-smartlights-nl.package" to be certain it loads after any other hacks to avoid conflict.  Of course all my hacks are in one folder, if yours arent you need to make sure its in the last folder as well.

@Argon:  I appreciate the feedback.  My following observations indicate that the RLS-shader.package does not remove the censor blur on lots thats have not first been loaded with Quaxi's.  It does strangely seem to maintain it, but on a fresh lot it does not work.  Any thoughts?  Also regarding the LOD issue please see my other new thread in Peasantry and tell me what you think.

Hmm, I didn't move the lights folder, just put the existing files into a .zip for backup before installing this.  Yet most custom objects (especially paintings) were very dark, like the blanket in my picture, until I re-installed CEP -- then the paintings were fine.  Only the blanket had problems that I've noticed so far.

Here's the link to the toddler blanket: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=144547&c=1&page=9&pp=25  It's supposed to use the same mesh as the standard crib, so there's no reason it should be dark like that while the crib is properly lit.  Maybe you can  find something in the file itself that's causing the problem.

As for the am twilight, I'll keep a closer eye on it, but I have no problems with the evening one, and had no problems with the morning one under Gunmod's 2.1 version on the same computer with the same settings. The am twilight just seems to 'blip' by.  I'll pay more attention and see if maybe there's something I need to adjust on this end.

Hmm, I know we were having problems with the transition time, but now I can't remember what it was... something to do with buy mode and the neighborhood area around the lot and the inside of the lot not changing like they should... I do remember having problems with it taking forever.

The toddler blanket does not use the same mesh, it uses the same textures. There is a major difference there.

That's weird about the censor thing... it worked right away on fresh lots when we were testing it. Maybe Maxis made some changes since Nighlife that would cause this?

I paid close attention to it last night and today while I was playing for a while, and it seems to be somewhat lot-dependent. On most residential lots, the morning twilight seemed to be functioning, though it's much more subtle than the evening one (which is why I probably missed it).  But when I went to Sim State, it didn't work at all at the dorms.  Haven't tried at a house on campus yet, but it was obvious there was no AM twilight in the dorms.

And I also noticed most of the overhead lights in the dorms were way too bright -- they almost washed out the details, especially if there's anything white in the room (like tables in the cafeteria). If there's no white objects around, or the lighting comes from wall lights, the level is fine.


Thanks -- my bad.  I'm still sorting out this mesh/texture thing (which is why *I* don't try to make any of these wonderful CC objects :)).

Well.. at least 26 people have downloaded a version I posted,  and 5 have posted here, 3 with impressions.  I guess I'm not surprised, but I suppose no news is good news.  ???

After some more testing I have gone back to the default lighting files with regret. The game is just too dark with the lighting mod installed (any version), unless I play with all lights on all the time… which breaks the illusion.

I can confirm the problem with the toddler blanket, in one house it worked ok, in another it is dark inside the house no matter what lights it is near, but is fine outside on the deck!

I really love some of the lighting effects you get with this and the details that show up on some objects is fantastic.

However, I think I will have to agree with Jordi, even when I get the lights figured out and looking good in a room, I go to take a picture and have to move the lights around to get the sims face light enough to make a decent picture.

Maybe I just suck at using this, does anyone have helpfull tips on light placement and which lights work better where?

I am getting an odd blue tint on some objects depending on the camera angle.

I don't have that problem, but it may be because of the video card (ATI X700 Pro) or the system (1Gb RAM, 3Ghz processor). Except for dark bathrooms in the daytime (still can't quite seem to get Dizzy's smart-lights-nl working right, though it may not be all that compatible with OFB), the lighting looks mostly OK to me. The only real problem I have left is the washed out/too bright night lighting with certain light/furniture combinations.  It's particularly apparent in dorm cafeterias, with the cheapest overhead lights. In some dorms the light washes out so much detail that I can't see an empty white plate on a white table.  I'll try and get a screen shot of this and add it here.

Ok, here's an image of what I'm talking about with the washed-out lights.  This is in a sorta quickie mart I built for my game a while back.  It's the most extreme example, which seems to occur with the 'orbs of whatever' lights.

(http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/4563/snapshotd1282d9031628bfa5zy.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)

As you can see, the detail is so washed out I have to hover the pointer over a sim to figure out who it is.

Thats pretty wild, Gonna check a few things out and be back. Thanks.

Jordi, I haven't tested these beta versions yet, but have you tried increasing your lighting settings in the game? I found it made a huge difference in how bright everything was, you don't really get the light coming through windows when it is set to low. I had this problem when I installed it on a friend's computer, and once I increased the lighting, it pretty much solved it.

This is true, as well as adjusting your video card's gamma setting for the 'overlay'.  TS2 is sorely lacking a brightness/gamma slider so you need to do it on the hardware side.  I can't say I find things too dark at all, and well jsalemi's screenie above is just :o whoa.

The bitch of it is, it only seems to happen with certain overhead lights, and the occasional wall light (i.e., the new vanity lights introduced in OFB and the really cheap wall lights).  Pretty much anything that's just one or two steps above a bare bulb, or contains bare bulbs.  I haven't noticed similar issues with table or floor lamps. And most of the wall and overhead lights are ok if they have some kind of lamp shade on them.

And since you mentioned it, I haven't played with the gamma on my video card/monitor  -- that's pretty much at the default ATI settings, with all the graphics options (except shadows) in the game set at high. Screen is 1024x768.

Ellatrue: I play with all on high.

Chesspieceface: that's probably it… gamma. My monitor is too dark even with brightness and contrast at full (recommended for any CRT), and unfortunately TS2 blatantly ignores the vidcard gamma settings.

Well JS, Those lights don't do that in my game:

(http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b361/adam858/snapshot_eda007fa_3163666b.jpg)

So all I can suggest is that you have some hack/mod that is altering lighting behavior in some manner.

The one cheap overhead light called 'Lunatech' that is the little black can, is broken.  Gunmod couldn't make it function normally so he modded it into a pinpoint spotlight.  Other than that I've not seen any issues.

With that blanket I was wondering if it might be that it has some invisible component above the ground level that would be blocking the light.  Again, I've not seen issues like these in my game at all.

Hmm, interesting. Ok, the only lighting hacks I have that I'm aware of are:

1) Dizzy2's smart-lights-nl -- don't think this is the problem, though...
2) commlightson -- a hack to automatically turn community lot lights on at night. This is part of JMP's Director's Cut, but I suspect this one may be the problem (or at least influencing the problem). 

I'll disable these two and see if I still have this issue.

One other question about your files vs the defaults.  In my The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Lights directory, I still have these original files:

CAS_lighting
CAS_lights
LightRig
LotLights
Lighting (however, this is not the original -- it's the gunmod modified version).

Any of these I should get rid of?  Is it possible the Gunmod version of Lighting is conflicting with your RLS-* files?

Commlightson is Pescado's, from the DC zip.

Yea, I edited my message just now -- did a search on my disk for the original, and found in in the DC.

Ok, now this is a D'oh! moment -- I think I found my problem. It wasn't the two hacks I mentioned above -- it was the fact that I still had the original Gunmod version of 'lighting.txt'.  For some reason it didn't get overwritten when I copied all of your files into the directory; maybe I hit 'no' instead of 'yes' when Windows asked if I wanted to overwrite the file.  I've put your version it, and I'll bet this solves the problem.  :-[

joe bangs head on desk: "Stupid, stupid, stupid..."  :P

Funny.  Do you also have all the RLS-*.txt files in there?

Yes, I double-checked and they're all there.  Using the right lighting.txt fixed the 'excessively bright' lights problem, but did nothing for the toddler blanket -- it still looks dark gray/black under any lights.  But that's a minor thing. And the morning twilight is as pronounced as the evening one now.  Can't believe I did something so dumb... :P

On the other hand, now that I'm seeing what this is really like (still banging head on desk :)), I kinda have to agree with Jordi somewhat -- this seems  a bit darker in the daylight than Gunmod's 2.1 did. Not a lot, but noticeable in some rooms, especially those with only one window or the small, high windows (like bathrooms).  Still, I'm going to keep using it for now while you tweak it some more -- I do like the effect.

the 2.1 version had brighter nighttime lighting because I kept bugging him about it (and got support from other people); he did a poll, people said they wanted brighter night lighting, and he went with it. Later he ignored the previous poll and went back to his "realistic" and impossibly dark night.

At one point I suggested he make the downtown lighting brighter since that area would have more light around it (city setting), I can't remember how that turned out.

Just wanted to say that these two symptoms are surely not related to this mod, because I get the odd blue tint and the dark toddler blanket without using any lighting mod :o

Maybe it's just the graphics configuration or maybe something wrong in the lot, but these things happen with the default configuration.

I'm liking this quite a bit so far, although I've mostly been playing a challenge lot with no walls, which gives a rather different effect. Some observations, somewhat in response to other posts:

1) 
With directional lighting (like the sun), some surfaces are in shadow and can appear grey or bluish. This actually happens in real life but our brains automatically color-correct . . . most of the time, that is; in one of our bathrooms, the white fixtures pick up the color from the walls, so that they look as if they are the same color. But if you take a sheet of white paper and look at it under an incandescent bulb at night, and and really look at it, you will see that it actually looks yellow, which is the color of the light produced by the bulb.

2)  In houses with walls, depending on my monitor settings, the light can seem a bit dim, even during the day. Again, this is realistic, but I find I sometimes turn on the lights in order to see better. This is partly a function of having turned down slightly the contrast and brightess on my monitor in order to reduce the brilliance of white objects in direct sunlight. I can't really give any guidance in this regard because every monitor is different and as CRT monitors age, they lose brightness. BTW, it is not true that brightness and contrast should always be maxed out on a monitor (or that the color temperature should be 9300°K)—my relatively new Samsung CRT is so bright that I have it set at about 9 out of 100. Many folks set their monitors too bright! "Brightness" is really setting the monitor's black point (the point at which true black will not display any darker); "contrast" adjusts the monitor's white point (after you've set it in hardware, preferably at 6500°K). For more than you really want to know, try these links:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/11/10/the_secret_sauces_of_thg/
http://www.alpenglowimaging.com/monitordisplay.htm
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/Calibration/monitor_black.htm

In any case, without a calibrated monitor, getting good results using someone else's recommendations is pure luck. Properly calibrating our monitor(s) is something we should all do, even if it is with something as basic as the Gamma applet in Photoshop (I think this is available even in the old Photoshop 5 LE). From what I've seen, most people's monitors are way out of calibration (just like their televisions!)—too bright, and with an inappropriate white point (the typical factory default of 9300°K), and most folks don't have a color profile for their monitor installed on their PCs (go to Display Properties>Advanced>Color Management to see what profiles are installed; you should have one for your monitor and one for each color printer you use. Color profiles for monitors can usually be downloaded from the manufacturer's Web site.).

BTW, I am using Dizzy's smart lights and it seems to work alright, although I may take it out in the interest of being able to see the entire interior better at night.

3)  For whatever reason, when I installed the native shader version plus the RLSshader.package in order to have both bumpmapping and no censor blur, I got the blur, so I took out the RLSshader and reinstalled Quaxi's censor.package, a combination that seems to work. I will say that I do not have the games installed in the default locations and therefore had to copy the mod files to their appropriate locations manually; I am fairly certain I got everything in its place (I extracted the zips with full paths and then just moved the files from the various Lights folders into the game Lights folders). Do I lose any lighting features by not having the RLSshader.package installed if I am using the native shaders (OFB version)?

I'm betting that GunMod's fix for the "bright green pillows/newspapers/etc." can be removed, since that only affected Nightlife and it's been fixed in OFB and FFStuff.

I got Dizzy's smartlights working by adding a 'z_' to the front of it and having it load last.  That resolved whatever was keeping it from working reliably.

@Hegelion Your points about Monitor Calibration are right on, its a concern I've had about putting this out but I didn't really know how to discuss it.  I have a 6 year old Viewsonic CRT and I keep it at 75 bright and 90 contrast with 6500K whitepoint.  It is very common for non-artist/photographer PC users to not consider whether they are receiving colors as intended by the artist.

@Argon  Well thats an interesting point.  You are the only person I know who'd be able to identify that though, and I'd like to keep the mod compatible for those w/o OFB and FFS as well.  If you mind doing me a favor and looking at that beta release thread from Chocolate Pi @ MTS2... woodchuck has posted some video samples and I'm not sure what to make of them.

Yo Chesspieceface, does this increase game performance like GMRL 2.1 did?

I couldn't really say one way or another. I suppose its possible, but it would depend on whether or not you were already playing the game with maxed settings, as this mod does very little without that.  I wouldn't advertise it that way though. :)

I've noticed that with all RLS versions, when you go to try to build a community lot, because of the way the lights are set you can't see anything in the building.  Is there some way to fix this?  Or is it just a side-effect of RLS that has no workaround?

OTOH, with more and more LCD monitors out there, you don't have as much control over these things -- especially with the new fully digital monitors. I don't think my Dell digital LCD has a color temp setting at all.  Brightness and contrast are about it.

The lines I'm talking about have comments that tell what they do, I wouldn't know how to fix them though.

I can't see the difference between the two bumpmapping videos either.

Thanks for looking... my curiosity was mor that he is claiming that the shader package is doing those spec highlights, where you said that hadn't been implemented.  Whaddya think?

I can say for certain that it's not the shader package that is doing it, that's why the cheat was there in the first place.

 :( I hope this isnt abandoned!
is there anything else?

Shit. For some reason I can't find the file to put this in (Yes, go on, point and laugh).

Its not under my documents. (Gumod had an Auto install, that's how I got away with it the first time)

Could you give me a step by step install?

Jesus, I may sound very dumb, I'm sorry for pain this may, and probably will cause. :/

It actually goes in the game directories under Program Files, not in My Documents.  If you just unzip it it'll write all the files in the proper places.  If you look at the zip file before unzipping it, you'll see the directory structure so you can backup your originals first (always a good idea) before installing these.

More specifically, you're looking for the directory string .../TSData/Res/Lights under each respective game episode you have.  So the original files are in:

C:/Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2/TSData/Res/Lights

And for Uni they're in:

C:/Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2 University/TSData/Res/Lights

and so on.

I've tried "correctly" calibrating my monitor before, but the result is that everything that I actually USE it for is invisible. Ever try playing Bloodlines on a "correctly" calibrated monitor? You may as well be playing it with the monitor off! It's not until you turn the gamma to about 15 or so (WAAAAY above the normal settings you can even set in the config, you have to open the console for this) *AND* jack your monitor brightness all the way to the top before anything displays in the game!

Just because your MONITOR may be set to display correctly doesn't mean any of your programs will care!

Hell yeah. I wish I'd never been so stupid to calibrate: it is nearly impossible to get my old settings back!

I now have to use some weird gamma correction in my display drivers to actually see anything.

Re: Bloodlines — did you know they're now up to version 2.3 with the unofficial patch? The game is almost bug-free now…

Yep. The issue of improved or more realistic lighting has also been played with in the Morrowind modding community.  To highlight the application-specific adjustments, there is a large array of lighting adjustments/settings within morrowind.ini.  Obviously, this means that the default lighting configuration is loaded each time the game is started.  You can then use the game's editor to adjust any light source within the game as you like.  I haven't bothered to check if Sims 2 even uses an ini file, not many apps these days do. 

The fact that what you end up seeing can be adjusted at your monitor, or video card, or the card's driver, or the application itself, is probably the reason Maxis went for the lowest common denominator approach.  There are way too many variables to ensure a consistent result.  The discussion here amongst a dozen or so posters all with varying results reinforces this.

If you're going to continue this project and I think it would be worthwhile, it may be an idea to consider doing it as a 'lighting tutorial' rather than a 'mod'.

If you haven't already tried, monitors should have a 'factory default' or reset option hidden somewhere.

Yea, it uses quite a few, actually -- some are in the program directories, and there's two in the My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Config directory.  But the user settings that you adjust in the game are stored in the UserProps.xml file that in the same directory.

Thank you. (However, does it matter that it was installed when I don't own OFB or FFS?)

And lastly, the native shaders do not support the realtime specular, such has the waves, right?

No, it doesn't matter, since the majority of the lighting changes are actually in the original Sims 2 base game directory.  The ones in the directories for the EPs and SP just affect new lights and windows added by those add-ons, if any.  So if you don't have a particular EP, the light files in this won't do anything but take up some disk space. :)

Thanks, again I'm too lazy and on the wrong pc to check sims2, but here's the chunk from morrwind that deals with quadratic lighting (or not) and the settings.  The ini file then has a range of adjustments for each of the weather conditions in the exterior game cells.
don't know if it's relevant to you.
Improved lighting in MW comes by turning on quadratic and setting it to 1.7

[LightAttenuation]
UseConstant=0
ConstantValue=0.0
;
UseLinear=1
LinearMethod=1
LinearValue=3.0
LinearRadiusMult=1.0
;
UseQuadratic=0
QuadraticMethod=2
QuadraticValue=16.0
QuadraticRadiusMult=1.0
;
OutQuadInLin=0

The issue that Gunmod had with Dizzy's Smartlights2 was that some people were reporting loading issues with corrupted pool lights when they used the mod.  I was one of those people that had the problem.  Dizzy stated that it was fixed, but I could never get it to work.  I'm going to try your files and see if they show any improvement over the 2.2 radiance lighting that someone else posted at MTS2.  Thanks for working on this.

I was wondering..  could Chocolate Pi's mod and your native shaders work together in the game? Is it possible? (to get the waves to appear ingame)

I'm using Chesspieceface's native shaders version, along with the RLS shader file from Chocolate Pi's version. I get the nice pool waves as well as bumpmapping, and it looks pretty good!

But would  Chocolate Pi's mod mess up any codes for the native shaders?

I believe that the code would be from this version and the shaders.package for the water would have little to do with the rest of the lighting.  I think I'll check this line of inqury out to see if it works.

The RLS-Shader.package never had any effect AFAICT on the overall light settings. It is all controlled by the various text files.  The 'native' shaders that are enabled are simply the ones built into the game.  I don't know enough to assess what exactly gunmods shader package DOES do, but what it doesn't do is control anything regarding indoor lighting.

FWIW this project was not abandoned per se, simply done.   I fixed the files, they work for me, and for everyone who used them and bothered to report back.  I didn't have anything to add at the time and got distracted by other gaming interests.  I never posted this on MTS2 because well... I didn't ultimately feel like it.  I decided that if I did I'd feel responsible to support it, and I knew I wasn't going to follow through on that.  I find it a little more than disheartening that in a post where I specifically asked that people who download the files post any kind of comment on its performance less than 10% of the downloaders did so.

Thanks to those of you who have participated in the discussion it is appreciated, and I'll continue to contribute what I can.  I'm not a coder or modder of any kind really; Just a guy who started reading a bunch of text files and pasted them back in a revised order, and then tried changing a couple numbers in a logical fashion to restore a lost result.  Glad it worked, cause I was pretty much out of ideas at that point. :)

The lighting with your changes looks really good.  Gunmod's shaders seem to set up a different texture for the water waves than the Maxis native shaders.  I think he was trying to match the texture of the pool sides.  It seems purely cosmetic as to which one is better, frankly.

I'm having a problem though.  I don't think it is this mod as it only happens with large, fully decorated lots.  My game is blue screening out when rendering and doing it so much that my screen actually shuts down while the game is on.  This means that I'm currently not able to test for very long periods of time.  I just installed new drivers for my video card so I'll see if that helps.

One thing I noticed after using Radiance Lighting is that it is nearly painful to go back to the maxis lighting.  It seems that this "update" is working fine otherwise. Thank you for updating it.

By 'bluescreening' do you mean reverting to the Maxian GreyBlue background or do you mean Windows BSOD?  Video drivers should help, but I would be very concerned about your case temperatures in that situation.

I mean Maxis blue. It it was the blue-screen-of-death I would have known exactly how to fix it... haul my system into the computer shop for a full look-see.

It only does it in sims2.  None of my other games cause this. My CPU is running cool, but some of the meshes I must have in my game have to be high poly because when I use bunches of them my CPU clocks to 100%.  I'm taking those meshes out.  The house I was having problem with was huge.  I've gotten rid of it because it was just unplayable.

I think I'll make sure the vents and case on my computer are clean though.  I've got a long haired cat that sheds like a german shepard, Haha... 

TS2 is gonna slam your CPU no matter what you do, all that Simming is very calculation intensive. It's not the meshes in any case, those will affect framerates and texture swapping more than anything else, and thats largely videocard dependent.  The only time I've seen the Maxis Bluescreen for any extended period is immediatley after either a resolution/refreshrate change or immediatley after returning to the game from being alt-tabbed out of fullscreen mode.  Sounds like something is resetting your display somehow. Odd.

Thanks for updating the light-mod for OFB and FFS.

To be honest i like the pool effects from maxis better than gunmods, so i will stick with the native version of the mod. The censor blur is not removed by the RLS-Shaders.package you still need quaxi´s file.

I play the game with "boolProp bumpMapping false" in the userStartup.cheat file because with bumpmapping the performance is bad on comunity lots. my pc is amd 2800 barton, gf 6800 128mb, 1gb ram by the way. and i see no or no big difference in quality with bump mapping enabled or disabled. just much more performance like i said, especially on comunity lots.

so to get max performance i recommend putting
boolProp bumpMapping false
and
vsync off
in your userStartup.cheat file (My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Config)

disabling the Morning and evening lights will give even more performance i noticed (especially on comunity lots). If you have much RAM it should be no problem (2gb or more).
to disable it again goto (\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Lights\Lighting.txt)
look there for:
setb morningEvening true/false

I also recommend deleting the file Groups.cache (My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2)
and all files in the folder (My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Thumbnails) if you have problems with dark objects and thumbnail pictures.
Sims 2 will create new files on the next restart of the game.
All thumbnail pictures in game will be generated with the new lights again, so expect higher loading times when you load the game and start playing. But after a while all the thumbnails will be cached again in the thumbnails folder and you should see no loading anymore when browsing through the build or clothes catalogue.

PS: You not need to re-install the CEP if you do so you overwrite the lightning.txt in the folder (Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Lights) the line that you need for the CEP to work is already in the lighting.txt you downloaded with this mod. If you one day install a never version of CEP > than 4.1 be sure to save a copy of your lightnig.txt because CEP-install overwrites it with the original settings.

thats the line that is added by the CEP installation but you not have to worrie when downloading the mod its already included.
####################################################
# Support for Custom Lights added by the CEP3
#
wildInclude "CEP3_CustomLights/*.nlo"

EDIT: I noticed something is wrong for me with 2nd floor lights. when i go down to 1st floor, then after a while 2nd floor again, the lights seem not to shine on objects anymore. picking up the light and placing it fixes it until i go 1st floor again. anyone else have problems with lights on second floor or higher floors ?

just downloaded this and thought I would add my two cents to the conversation,

1: evening - this is the time of day I have the biggest issues with. Perhaps it would be easier to play if the light was less 'fluro orange' and more 'gentle pink' or something. I would prefer if this evening colour wash was not quite so strong so you could still see the original colours of walls/floors/furniture/lights coming through. Perhaps another idea would be to change the time of the 'evening' to begin at 7 o'clock, so it coincides with the auto turn on of the house lights. No idea if this is possible, but I thouht i'd mention it anyway.

2: window light - how about making light from windows diffuse further into the room so their aren't so many really dark spots, especially in large or oddly shaped rooms?

Anyway, just a few ideas, but all up it looks great!   ;)

Dewshine, do you have an NVidia card? In all of the cases I've seen where the Maxis bluescreen has been an issue, the graphics chipset has been NVidia. If it's any help, increasing my RAM and using the newer NVidia graphics drivers (84.21) has solved this for me, and many on the Help forum at MTS2 have reported this, too. I had the bluescreen issue before using this or GunMod's lighting scripts and in fact I've noticed better performance since using them.

Yes I do have Nvida chipset.  I have the newest drivers, Beta ones infact.  I am trying everything at this point to solve this problem.  Currently I've managed to get the bluescreen issue down to once in 3 hours play.  This is much better than it was, but it is still happening.    I even went so far as to crack my case open and clean out the insides of my computer.  The cat hair was pretty bad. I've updated every driver I can think of.  I was using the 84.21 when this started.  The 7x.xx series that served me so well for so long started crashing during Fable so I updated.  I am trying 91.31 beta drivers currently, having installed them last night.  I've not played the game yet though.  Well... I might have to spring for another gig of RAM then. 

My moniter is shutting off while the game is playing.  It seems unrelated to the bluescreening issue, as my moniter shut off while I was ordering my sims around last night - mid comand.  I updated the drivers for it as well.  I really have no clue as to why it is suddenly acting up when playing Sims2 but not having problems with my other games.

Yes, I've had wonderful luck with Gunmod's lighting.  The performance does seem improved.  This is why I'm mystified as to what the problem is.  I don't have many hacks in the game aside from those offered here at MATY (The radiance lighting and Gunmod's camera hack are all). Heck I just wiped out my downloads folder and started a new neighborhood with a total of 9 playable sims and a handful of maxis default townies.  *Sigh*

I have the same problem as you but its only windows bluescreen.
try upgrading ram, power supply, graphics driver (If you can't then try downgrading), Graphics card (maybe switch to ATI for better luck)
and if possible,sound card.
if these dont work then I can't help you.

Blah....  Well. One thing at a time, okay. I got my computer specifically to play sims2, and at the time it was a $3000 machine.  I would hate to think that my 2.2 gig CPU and 1 gig ram machine cannot handle a game that has minium specs of 1 gig CPU and 256 mb ram.  I really would.  I mean, it's not a new machine or anything but I shouldn't need to outspec the game that much should I?

I'm just glad it's not the Windows "bluescreen of death".  I took out Gunmod's shader package and am now using the maxis native shaders version.  Guess what?  No bluescreen unless I alt-tab out of the game. So, for me at least the problem might have been a conflict in commands, perhaps?  Or not.  I've upgraded drivers and all, so it might not even be related.

Giggy, do clean out your vents and fan openings.  It's possible that windows is bluescreening on you because the CPU is getting too hot. 

 

 :P I hate to think. a guy vaccumed my motherboard, round my graphics card, my soundcard and the cpu as well. the fan was pretty dirty. I found out later on that it was the anti-analaising (Smooth edges) is causing the problems. ??? I don't get why it decided to not get right with the smooth edges option.
(Stupid card)
Oh, what version should I get so that I have the waves in the pool?

Dewshine, your computer's specs are similar to mine, and I have no issues with running the game, so I don't think that's the problem. Is your monitor's refresh rate set to the same as your driver's? Also, is your in-game resolution the same as your desktop resolution?

neriana,
Oh, my... no they are not.  I'll have to double check the refresh rate because I'm sure those are different.  The resolution is different  too.  So I need to make sure that my desktop and the game have the same then, huh? 

I would have never guessed.

giggy,
either version will give you the waves in the pool, but if you want to see them you need to have your sim outside at sunset or sunrise and place the camera at a shallow slope to get the reflection.  I think Gunmod's version has waves that are eaiser to see, but I just switched to the native shaders and I see waves with those too.

The anti-anlaising was causing your computer to give the "blue screen of death"?  That's scary.  Have you got it fixed?  (there's another thing for me to check, I think.)

 >:( No I havent and I can't update the drivers as I get these
(http://i1.tinypic.com/zipric.png)
(http://i1.tinypic.com/zipu2u.png)
(http://i1.tinypic.com/zipudc.png)

i'm testing it just now.. and it look working grea, but actually i'ven't meeted any bump texture  ::)

p4-3ghz gefo 5700  128megs

a bit too dark the night.. but it's looks good

giggy, those polygon artefacts look familiar- I would recommend trying some different drivers.
dewshine, yes- the antialiasing could cause the bluescreen problem as it is caused in part by memory problems, and smoother edges take more graphics memory to render.
Max, the Ancient Transport Urn is a good Maxis item to view the bumps on, the texture on the pattern area is quite visible with this mod.

 :-\ I don't want to update the drivers as I found a sutible driver for me but anyway if anyone knows how to fix my prob then please tell me as I have a 128mb GeForce 6600GT

Errors like these are caused either by bad drivers, overheating, or a dead video card.

Does the problem occur only after time? If so, overheating. Does the problem occur in ONLY this game, or in all games or even your desktop? If it's ONLY TS2, probably drivers. If it occurs EVERYWHERE, your video card is fried.

I tried age of empires 3 with anti analaising and gives me the BSOD, hmmm. is it overheating. I should stick a thermometer in there one day. it has a fan and I leave my aircon on onto 21oC
(OMG its a memory problem! WTF is wrong with this machine!)
Anyway I tested the native shaders and what I noticed straight away was that the thumbnail is black ?!
(http://i6.tinypic.com/1zcmirt.jpg)
its also the same in daytime.
I also tested it in CAS and the thumbnail is black as well.

i think the ambient inside the house with the daylight is too dark..
it's hard to have a good illumination wihtou turning on the light... and that'w whay i've abandoned the GunMod's Radiance Lighting System
 :-\

giggy, try using the lot debugger found here at MATY in the prez's forum to regenerate the thumbnails, or, delete the cigen. package and let the game generate a new one. 

Max, sorry you find the inside of the houses during the day too dark. Thanks for trying out the mod though. 

Well, I followed neriana's advice and matched up my resolution and refresh rates so that the desktop and the game were the same.  That fixed my problem.  So word to the not-so-wise -- Make sure that those settings match if you are having a problem with the maxis grey-blue screen taking over your game.

I find that the lighting with the native shaders gives me my bumpmaps back, and I still have the sunset/sunrise that I enjoy so much.  I find the updated lighting for OFB meshes well with the lighting that was already completed by Gunmod.  The shaders package that Gunmod provided does make waves in the water that seem to match the sides of the pool better (but that is just one person's opinion).  I can live with that not matching, just to have those bumpmaps.

Thanks for keeping this alive.   

I took it out as only the hack was the problem

indeed to install i usually compress the entire forlder
right click on the Light folder and then select "add to Light.rar"
and then overwrite the file inside.. on this way you original file are safe and packed

 :o opps so thats what I was doing!
 ::) what an idiot

by my point of view the radius of the light is a bit too small...
specially the "roof-light" when turned on must have a more extended range..

eaven this .. i didn't see any bump map :\

can you post an example of bumpmapping as I dont conclude :(

This looks really nice in game, but I find that big square rooms have very dark centers, and it gets annoying to have the lights on at the super market during the day, granted, that supermarkets rarely have windows, but it is kinda annoying.

I don't know, that strikes me as kinda realistic -- pretty much any store has its lights on when it's open.

I must be completely inept. I'm somewhat lost at installation. Where do I put everything? Do I need all of the files, or just the OFB ones?

You need all of the files, since the base game and each ep came with their own lights that this modifies (as well as all the base lighting from the original game).  Just unzip it and it'll put all the files in the proper place.  If you want to backup your originals, just look in the zip and see where all the light files go and put your originals in a .zip or something before unziping this.

Ok, sounds simple enough. Thanks.

Edit: Problems! I'm already using a user startup cheat file, and this new one will overwrite it. I use it to increase my max number of guests from 2 to 8. I see that that cheat is written in there, but it's written slightly different, and it's surrounded by other cheats, so I'm afraid to touch it. Just instructions on how to alter it is fine, I don't need anyone to write a whole new file for me.

Well, you could just add your existing cheats to the file this adds, and eliminate dups, or you could use the version that uses the native shaders, which doesn't overwrite userstart.cheat at all.

What's the difference between the two?

The one with Gunmod's custom shaders gives better water effects, especially in pools.  But I didn't see enough of a difference between the two to bother with it, so I stuck with the native (i.e., built-in) shaders. I have an ATI X700 Pro, and the game looks great with the native version, espeically with the new ATI drivers (well, the Omega version of the new drivers) -- much more 3D than with past versions.

Ok, thanks for the help.

Well, the mod looks beautiful. This is what I expected the lights to look like in the first place. But, of course, I am having problems. The head in the pie menu is pitch black. I tried different sims, and different rooms, but still pitch black. Have I done something wrong? I used native shaders if that means anything.

 >:(
please look afew posts back on how to fix this

Ooh. Altering the sun's color. You mean I could relocate my game to Antares?

 ??? watcha talkin about?

Sorry to bother you giggy.

I tested both light hacks.
the shaders give out more light than the native shaders, Gunmods shaders give the waves in the pool but the native shaders dont. it looked kinda weird!

The native shaders, are called "native" because they are built into the game.  Thats the way the game looks.  The amount of light with or without the RLSshader.package should be identical. 

I don't believe there is any good reason to use the "Gunmod Shader" version at this point.

unless you want more light

There should not be anymore light whatsoever as a result of using that file.  I'll be happy to repeat this again if you require.

 :( ok fine!  >:(

I do believe that this is becoming childish.

Gunmod's shader package really only does 2 things.
1. it makes the waves larger in the pool so that they are easier to see.
2. it attempts to add an additional "soft" shadow, which may or may not fully work as he never finished it.

If giggy is seeing more light with Gunmod's shader package it might be that the userStartup.cheat file is different from one version to another, perhaps?  All I know is that Gunmod was trying to make the headlights on the cars act more realisticly but never completed all the details he was working on.  His shader package should not alter the amount of light, but it might alter the amount of shadows.

 :) thanks for the detail

Dewshine, where did you get the mean looking Riddick sim in your avatar?

I made him.  Follow my link in my sig to download him from my Yahoo group.  He's skinny, in maxis default undies, bald, tan, and with brown eyes.  To complete him you'll need to download the bodybuilder stuff by Marvine and Beosboxboy (at insim.net... I provide links to the forum at my site), any skinhead or shaved hair (Gunmod made one you can get at MTS2), and my "Riddick eyes"  which are also at my site.  The eyes come as genetics or as contacts (under costume makeup). The goggles are also downloadable.

Glad you like him. 

P.S.  the picture my Avie is made from was taken using Gunmod's radiance lighting and Gunmod's camera mod...  This Riddick-sim has a niceness factor of 0, and was deposited on an empty lot.  He stood there glaring at me and punching his fist.  Then again, the sun was in his eyes, lol.

Sweet thanks.  :D

Please tell me that wasn't in your sig before I asked... I am so unobservant...

 :D  Haha... Sorry.  The link has always been there.  I worked for a year to get this version of Vin Diesel.  I've seen others floating around, but hey, mine is the best!  Well, maybe it's better than theirs... Okay, it's alright.  Point is, really, that Vin Diesel has a difficult face to sim, and I managed it using only bodyshop.  There's no extra painted on details, no mask, nothing like you might see used to fake the shape of the face, lips, or nose.  I'm rather proud of him.  Please use him, abuse him, what ever you might want to do to him.   

Oh, I plan on it. As soon as I get a Yahoo login once I get home...

I used the the lightning for the last few days and I like it pretty much. :)

I have to agree, though, that some rooms turn out a touch too dark, what I find kinda annoying in buy & build mode.
It's probably not possible to make a seperate lightning file for at least the buy mode? Perhaps combined with the day/night changing button, so choosing daylight would show the Gunmod lightning and nighttime original Maxis style?

Or can something like that be archieved with the lightning file cheat?

This was a problem, even with Gunmod's originals.  I work around it by adding a temporary window or removing a piece of wall as the case may be to bring more light into the room, and then restoring things before leaving build mode.  Not a great way to do it, but it does work.

Another way to work around this is to switch to nighttime and buy a light.  The light will be on until you leave the buy or build modes. 

Will it? I didn't know and will try that. :)

Removing and re-doing a wall ... naah, too lazy for that  :D

Just a note, as of my last complete reinstall this version of the RLS mod (with native shaders) works great. Rooms are still dark, but no longer too dark :)

The Gunmod-shader version is still pitch black (but I don't like it anyway, as it disables all bump mapping).

I'm not keen on the result of the gunmod hack (unless there have been any changes since he announced retiring from the project).  I didn't like what it did to the swimming pool mainly, but just all-over I didn't like the look as much as the Maxis defaults.   It was a courageous piece of work, and it was fun to play with for a while.

Yea, I'm starting to agree with you.  I've been playing with various versions of the Radiance mod in my main game for so long that I forgot what an unmodified game looks like.  But after reinstalling it on my laptop after the hard disk fried, I didn't install the mod and I'm kinda surprised how good things look without it.  The latest version of the smart lights takes care of any dark room in the daytime issues, so I may just pull it from my main game for a while and see how I like it.

So which lighting system is better? You're saying the original Maxis?
At this point i'm just confused about which one to use. ):

The Gunmod lighting may be more "Realistic", but it doesn't look very good and makes everything unnaturally dark.

You have to use a lot of lighting to see anything with that mod, in my experience.

(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/CuppaJoe/brightlights.jpg)

If I saw that many lights in real life, I'd be like "AAAGH! THE LIGHT! IT BURNS!".

I don't think you'd survive that many lights!

I had a while ago and took it out. I just put it back in with the new CEP and was building a house and had to throw in a whole mess of lights just to be able to see. The basement was pitch black and I couldn't see to level the terrain without throwing lights all over and then I had to keep moving the lights to lower the terrain since it wouldn't let me lower a square with something on it. :P

You'd at least think they would exclude build mode from the lighting effects but I guess that would be too difficult to do.

I will say it makes some lots look really nice though. That new water park beach lot that Nengi posted over MTS2 looks awesome at night with the light mod in and all the torches.

Well, I'll say that while I was actually playing the game, it looked gorgeous. It was frustrating how windows and lights would not lighten up a room, though. I was always surprised at how dark the pictures turned out, because it didn't seem *that* bad while I took them.

I wish they would have included a flash for the darn in game camera.

I definitely agree that a no-shadow build mode would be very helpful - with or without the mod.

Is there anyway to get the sunrise/sunset effect without having to have the indoor lighting changes? I used to use this mod and since I have taken it out the only thing I miss is the morning/evening light change.

If you use this with Numenor's Smarter Lights as updated from Dizzy's, it's actually not that bad.  I've had to take out some of the lights in some rooms because they were too bright.

[Piratey Translation]

I be really considerin' usin' th' RLS again especially since me earlier game experience be wi' lackin' graphics.
Th' whole `red atmosphere` early mornings be very very nice.. hmmm, but be 't worth th' lightin' electricity bill? :P

(That kid looks spooky in that picture.... "Come into th' liiiight!")

[Original Post]

I'm really considering using the RLS again especially since my earlier game experience was with lacking graphics.
The whole 'red atmosphere' early mornings is very very nice.. hmmm, but is it worth the lighting electricity bill? :P


(That kid looks spooky in that picture.... "Come into the liiiight!")

What is all this pirate stuff all over the place lately?

Yesterday was Talk Like A Pirate Day, apparently. Next week we'll have Swear Like A Sailor Day.

I had an interesting result taking this out of my game.  I use the Omega ATI drivers with the ATI Tray tool, and it has an option to monitor the frame rate.  With this in my game, I was getting a frame rate of between 35 - 40.  With it out, the frame rate jumped up to around 50, and has even hit 60 on occasion. And any lag I'd get with a lot of sims on the lot has pretty much gone away.

So for me, anyway, taking it out is worth the trade-off of performance for not having fancy lighting...

Performance trumps lighting. In my book anyways.

I thought that on the Internet, every day is Swear Like A Sailor Day.

Well who decided it was talk like a pirate day?   Was it one of those official days or just a sims community joke?

Wikipedia knows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_Like_A_Pirate_Day).

Lol!  I see :D

Ah, I get it, although I never noticed a lag when I was testing months back. But then again, it was a while ago.
Now that it has been mentioned, I'm surprised no one created a lighting system soley based on different shades of light during different times.
Like sunset, sunrise (all of which can be found in this mod) and for the hell of it, add the waves to the pool too. That would be amazing eyecandy without the darkness holding you back. Know?

If I knew how to mess around with the nitty gritty parts of the game, that would be one of the first things I would try to figure, despite lacking a good attention span.

Sorry to resurrect this thread, but I've been away from the game a while & didn't know it existed! I've long been a user of GunMod's 2.1 RLS, and recently installed 2.2. I had a house all set up with strategically-placed invisible ceiling lights that helped dispel the daytime interior gloom, but having moved my sims to a new lot, I was unable to come to an arrangement I could live (and play) with. After installing the native version of RLS from this thread, I have to say I prefer it to Chocolate Pi's 2.2 beta version, and again using some well-placed invisible lights I achieved some beautiful lighting effects that made my sims look awesome. At night. Daytime is a completely other story. I wish (but know it is impossible) that we could use the RLS during night hours only, and have the Maxis lights take over during the day! Or figure a way to automatically turn on certain lights in a room during 7am-6pm, and have them either be totally inactive or "auto-lights-enabled" from 6pm-7am. That kind of fixture-specific control (especially in conjunction with the invisible fixtures) would allow for setting one lighting scheme for day & another for night, which could definitely come in handy. For now, I'm going to have to go back to the Maxis lights, much as it pains me to see my lovely shading go bye-bye.