It’s absolutely insane what the game’s engine is capable of doing, as so many features have been hiding under the hood this whole time before we got the Essence Editor. The lighting options in AoE4 are no different — they’re extremely strong, and, in the capable hands of skilled modders, I can already envision tons of creative game modes, maps, and content coming off of it.
Just wanted to share this with the broader community to shed some light (heh) around how lighting works in AoE4, and spur some ideas on how we can use these in mods for the future! I’d personally love a game mod of a day/night cycle during the game, with some mechanics around that.
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thank you for the amazing video. i think we will see some of our wishes fullfilled by the modders, maybe by the devs in 2022.
the pup have some got potential and i had some good fun with some mods and maps just yet. and your lightnings mods are so good, hope to see them as tuning 
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I hope custom camera views will be utilized to get the most out of cinematic lighting, like during scenario intros (if those are possible).
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Great video, thanks for sharing. There is hope!
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I hope we can make scenario intros. Also it would be amazing if they allowed for dialogue audio with subtitles.
Unit Visibility option. That is huge. I wonder if it’s possible to mod and make weather FX. I can picture a blizzard with gusting winds and bending trees, or heavy rain. That would be siiiiick!
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wow didnt know relic sacrifice zoom for a simple clouds. lol
No the fog can be tweaked to allow more zoom out. 
We don’t know their exact justification on that matter.
No problem. The Modding community on Discord actually have two devs on it - so we should be able to get some sort of progress soon hopefully.
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i just saw the video and in ealy minutes it shows that when you force zoom the clouds scenario fog the player vision
Yes, that’s me showing the current maps and how they were set up. Any map we generate can have its fog tweaked (or turned off completely) depending on how you tweak it. Hence, technically speaking, we can clone every generated map in the game right now, remove their fog in their code, and launch the game using those versions. Zoom out, and you won’t see fog anymore.
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yup ik it can be done in editor but why not in an official match or the regular gameplay
further zooming out will eventually obscure the distinction between units; ESP if you start messing with the lighting as well.
so now (or in a future) we can choose all these things’? I am still confused about this tool. Or are people gonna develop this like if they were devs? I cant figure out the real advantages of this yet
