[Suggestion] Abstract away interior lights

[Oduglingen]

First off, let me say that I have only completed the campaign mode so maybe more experienced architects can point out why my suggestion is a bad idea.

So I fail to see the justification for having indoor lights be an actual entity in the game world. The light they spread and their placement don't seem to be affected by interior walls, so you just need a general coverage of them (as evidenced by the fact that I never placed any indoor lights by hand, the auto-placement when building a foundation did the job good enough). And I find it a bit annoying sometimes to have a layer of entities that are "above" the others in an otherwise very "flat" game (sprinklers and underground stuff excepted) and they get in the way when you want to select other things.
Since the game already places "connections" from lights to electrical cables, I would suggest the following:

Any indoor area within X tiles (either in a straight line or path-finding around interior walls) of an electrical cable is automatically lit.

The gameplay would remain basically the same (place enough electrical cables under a building so that it is completely lit) and you would remove something that for me is basically just an annoyance.

I guess that power draw would have to be changed from powering a light to lighting a tile.

Finally let me say that this suggestion is for indoor lighting only, of course decorative lights outside buildings and along paths should still be place manually.

[bobybojunior]

I think the main reason why the light is an object is for the fact that it uses electricity in the power station. some people might want to get rid of some lights to keep the power station from overloading. if it is like you suggested, you wouldn't be able to dismantle it

[5hifty]

Agreed. This is what I was talking about in my other post. There are many "small" elements to this game that basically could be absrtracted away. Interior lights are. Great example - 0 effect on gameplay, uses resource in an almost pointless amount.

These small elements should either be brought to the forefront by some gameplay means (for example - lights decrease mischief) or abstracted away for sake of gameplay/performance.

[aubergine18]

It would be nice if they improved Environment around them; or more specifically reduced the rate of increase of prisoner Environment need.

Personally I quite like the lights. I can spend ages arranging them nicely and on occasion have even bulldozed walls and reshaped rooms to lay out lights in a pleasing manner. But then again I do get quite OCD in computer games.

[Trixi]

Well, since a few version you can chose on building a foundation if you want to place autolights or not.

I really barely uses the autolight, because in most cases they are at false positions, so i add my lights afterwards at the positions i want to light the area with as less lights as possible. Another thing i dont use autolights is that i very often use the clone tool, that clone lights to. This in combination with autolights ends up in placing 2 lights next to each other.

[Brento666]

But then again I do get quite OCD in computer games.

-This & auto-lights placements suck !! Gotta work out some variations of lights sometime, should be fun to have some others to play with...

+I hardly even bother about all the green boxes and lines... these days, usually the prisoner underneath will be selected by default... mostly!

[aubergine18]

I already tried working on variations of lights (there are some sprites already available) - main problem is that it's not trivial to get them to actually emit light. So you end up with lights that, when it goes dark, it really goes dark because they aren't lit. I have some ideas how to work around that issue, eg. by putting lights in slots and fiddling with RenderDepth so custom assets appear above them, but it just seems like a futile effort.

[Brento666]

Did you try giving the base light a new range of sprites (that's how I'm modding the door and keeping that access intact whist changing models/colors)

That was pretty much my play, if that's not possible I'll move on... Or maybe suss out if I can get at and spawn a base lightemitter, like I stumbled onto the smokegenerator

But playing with lights is low on my todo list... I'd rather find time to do a Halloween thing with ghosts or something else more exciting after doing all the doors!!

[aubergine18]

If you do find a light emitter object, let me know. It would be very useful for any object that has indicator lights. I've even considered attaching fire objects to slots to generate light lol.

[Brento666]

Hmm...Animated fire torches on walls could make my dungeon look just that bit better So many possibilities with this game and my twisted mind !