OK, having filed this as a bug report, here I’ll give a technical explanation behind the issue, why it “technically” isn’t a bug to the devs, and why it would still preferably be improved (which most likely means little hope of that happening).
In short:
Some graphics in AoE2DE involve alpha (semi-transparent) calculations. These semi-transparent graphics include many special effects, fires, smokes, and Waterfalls.
In AoE2DE, these graphics are not affected by the color grading from Map Lighting.
Example:
The Blacksmith smoke looks the same in Default and Night settings.
At the launch of AoE2DE launch, this choice made sense:
- All Map Lighting settings happened in daylight;
- Fires and special effects are conceptually light sources;
- The colors of smoke are a lot less affected by enviornmental lighting than other things.
The only group of graphics that’s a bit of a problem is the Waterfalls: they are mostly non-transparent except at the edges. To make Waterfalls look less out of place in the Autumn and Desert settings, they are given a reddish hue (the Blacksmith smoke is reddish too, perhaps for the same reason).
And that solution worked.
However, 2 years after launch, the Dawn of the Dukes update introduced the Night setting. Both the Blacksmith smoke and Waterfalls now stick out for being unnaturally bright.
Suggestion:
Add an “affected by Map Lighting” Boolean parameter to alpha objects (or all objects).
Make the base graphics of Waterfalls and Blacksmith smoke more white-neutral in hue. Allow them to be tinged by Map Lighting - admittedly, the calculations required to make this look good is more complex, from my understanding.
Fires and special effects will still be unaffected by Map Lighting. (They often look bad under the Night setting, but that’s problem for another day.)
GAME INFORMATION
