This has probably been discussed ad infinitum already, so my apologies.
The other day I started my first Siptah game after having played the Exiled lands for quite a while. It is my understanding that people were complaining that Siptah was too bright and that several months ago Funcom created a patch that makes it darker.
I presume that there are two camps on this. For my taste it is really much, much too dark. In bright daylight I have to use a torch in the shadow of a tree. Clouds? I stay inside and do things in my base because it is too dark to see anything outside. If I get attacked I have to locate the source by sound, swing wildly and then attack the health bar that becomes visible.
I really like the graphics on Conan Exiles, I think they are gorgeous. But on Siptah I can’t see them. Not enough light.
Would it be technically possible to create a settings option that switches between the old light (which looks great in the videos on youtube) and the new light that we have now? That way people can choose which they prefer.
Complete agreement (though I’d go a step further and say there is too much contrast between light and dark, and it changes between them too much as well). The lighting on Siptah is the biggest reason that I don’t wish to go back to it - the Exiled Lands just require so much less eyestrain, and the graphics feel far more visible.
You are right, the contrast between light and dark is too much. It is almost as if there is no albedo on Siptah (albedo = ± degree of reflectance of light of various materials). In other words, if it isn’t in direct sunlight it is completely black.
Realistically I doubt anything is going to be done about this so I too will probably stick to the Exiled Lands.
One of the reasons I only played IOS briefly. I love the redwood forests and built my base near a lake and waterfall, but the constant eye strain was too much, and I had to keep adjusting my gamma slider.
I have been digging through my AMD Radeon control panel and have found that I can adjust brightness and contrast for specific games. So right now I have Conan Exiles Testlive Client for +33% brightness and -33% contrast. Much better but probably could use a little more, so I am going to try it at 50%. So far that is making it much more playable for me and it is changed only for the Conan Exiles Testlive Client.
Bad news. More testing required but increasing the settings beyond about 25% to 33% don’t appear to make much of a difference. It is currently at 75% but looks pretty much the same as it did at 33%.
Unfortunately for me, I’ve not been able to find equivalent settings for Nvidia (I can set stuff for individual games, but no sign of brightness or contrast). But please do keep us updated on anything you find, as any improvement is a start
Strange, I have no problems in terms of illumination with Siptah, except for the southwestern island with volcanic activity, but it should be so. I got used to running around it with a torch.
I’d say that I found the two southern islands the most consistent - one consistently dark (as it should be) the other fairly consistently light. But elsewhere I found to constantly flip between the two (with an overall feel of too dark, but also moments of blinding brightness). I’ve got a theory that graphics settings may play into it - particularly shadows, since one thing I noticed was just passing in the shadow of a tree for a moment the entire screen would noticeably darken (and then brighten again coming out the other side). To some extent, of course, this is realistic - but also our eyes adjust in the real world, where they can’t adjust so quickly to changes that only affect the monitor and not the light levels in the room. It’s possible that higher (or lower) quality shadows might change this, but I need to get the new machine functioning before I can really test it.
Sorry, I completely forgot that I reduced the storm time in the game … during a maelstorm all over the island, except for the southeastern island and the coasts, it also gets dark, and you have to run with a torch … (((
Certainly true - but even with the storm fully switched off I found the problems persisted for me. During early access I thought I was going to find it impossible to play on Siptah - but I managed to cope with it enough to get through and ‘finish’ the playthrough once full release hit. In the end the storm was almost better (like the dark island) because at least it was more consistent. For me, I think it was the contrast that was the biggest problem - straining to see when it’s darker then it suddenly gets brighter - I had quite a few migraines playing Siptah, and couldn’t play for the same sort of durations that I normally would on EL.
Yes, I agree it is the contrast. This is my first game on Siptah and not knowing much about it I accepted the first starting location that was offered, the south east. Not counting my initial little hut near the beach my current base is in N9. Pretty, but the shadows are so dark. When the sun is low much of the place is in shadow and dark as night. Cloud in front of the sun? Instant night time. Might try to make my way to the west, because I understand that there are more open plains there.
Aside. I am looking at one of wak’s live streams from back in July on youtube, which I think (but am not sure) was after the change we are discussing here. The shadows seem fairly decent for him. How does he do that? Does he post-process his videos to make them easier to watch?
To be honest, I started in the southwest and found much the same problems - the beach itself was ok (except for clouds as you mention), but the river was often shadowed by being in a valley. I think you’re right and there are more open areas on that side though - the redwoods area is definitely one of the more shadowy parts.
A good question - I remember KiahOnFire mentioning at some point that she had difficulties with Siptah videos because they were often quite dark. But I believe Wak also has a very good machine, which may help matters.
I hope you don’t mind @Wak4863 but you’re probably the best person to answer this if you have the time - do you have to use post-processing to brighten your Siptah videos or are you not experiencing the same sort of lighting issues that we’re discussing?
Any livestream would not have post processing. I do run the game on ultra settings but I’m not sure that would make much lighting difference. I have not tested it. Rarely do I add any post processing or color correction / brightness and contrast. I feel like when I do it’s not noticed so I stopped.
As for Siptah most of the time I lock the time to noon with the admin panel to give me a best consistency in brightness for video. Obviously this isn’t a solution in most cases. If I was on a server that I didn’t have the setting I would like play with the gamma to try to find the sweet spot where I didn’t have to change it back and forth in day night cycle or just not go out at night and do some chores in the base.
Sorry I don’t have a solution, just an explanation of why my videos may be brighter then others.
As it goes, for me that actually might work as a solution (singleplayer) - having the light fixed overhead might improve the shadows situation enough to make it more eye friendly (your videos generally look much better in that respect, so if that’s all you’re doing, it could work for me ) - I hope so; there’s a lot of fun stuff on Siptah.
But you’re right, it won’t work for those on servers - sounds like the things @CeeDee is testing may be as good as it gets, unless Funcom can be persuaded to look into it.
Thanks for the insights - useful information to have
