Glowing dyes

[Hebruixe]

I don't know if this is possible, but I bet it would be wildly popular if you offered players dyes that glow in the dark like neon signs.

[Mubrak]

I don't know if this is possible, but I bet it would be wildly popular if you offered players dyes that glow in the dark like neon signs.

 

Technically possible, but a lot of effort, so it's very unlikely they would implement this:

 

Dyeable surfaces are either determined directly in the armor's 3D-model, or defined by a helper texture that marks which parts of the object are affected by the primary or secondary dye-color. When a color module is present, the render engine just gives those parts an intense hue of the dye-color. This is why some textures that are originally black look dull when you add a black dye: The dark shades of grey that once gave the texture details are now black as well.

 

All the dye module does is setting the RGB values of the model's primary and secondary color hue. To create the illusion of glow you need a helper texture that determines parts of the object that are not darkened in a dark environment (or even brighened). For models that don't already have glowing parts, the glowmap would have to be created first.

 

Same for metallic dyes: to create the illusion of metal the game needs a helper texture that determines the specularity behavior of the object, a reflecting surface needs yet another helper-texture with an image of the allegedly mirrored surroundings.

 

So the neon/metallic dye module would need to come with replacement textures for each armor model. This means a lot of work to create the textures and a big increase of the game's size, and additional programming effort to enable the engine to swap textures and toggle glowing / specularity on the fly.

Edited December 18, 2015 by Mubrak

[Hebruixe]

You clearly understand the technical issues better than I do. Thanks for explaining it.