DRD Team

I'm getting a strange effect with dynamic lights enabled. The lights seem to somehow "shine through" solid walls. I'm getting this effect all over the place with all kinds of maps and objects. Is this a known limitation of the GL engine? Or a bug on my system?

Example below is from the beginning of Doom 2 Map 19, The Citadel.

Known limitation. The engine doesn't know how to cut dynamic light with world geometry.

To be fair, GZDoom does a better job of it than some of the early 3D accelerated games but, yes, known limitation (it's been reported a number of times).

A couple of work-arounds are as follows:

1. Edit the GLDEFS lump (of lights.pk3 in the GZDooM package, I believe) to reduce the radius of the glow. This will affect relevant light-emiiting items in all wads that you play, unless the wads have their own GLDEFS.
2. When making your own maps, be careful with light-emitting item placement. Adjust their positions so that they don't shine through walls.
3. When using lighting textures (i.e., not light-emitting items such as torches or candles), adjust the radius of the dynamic light to prevent shining through walls. This option, of course, is not available in wads that others have made, unless you choose to edit the dynamic light radii yourself.

Neither of these options truly solves the problem of lights bleeding through solid walls, but they may help to make the lighting seem less unrealisitic.

Rex Claussen wrote:1. Edit the GLDEFS lump (of lights.pk3 in the GZDooM package, I believe) to reduce the radius of the glow. This will affect relevant light-emiiting items in all wads that you play, unless the wads have their own GLDEFS.

There's a way to globally adjust dynamic lights size and intensity without having to edit every single dynamic light definition, it's in:

Options > Dispay Options > OpenGL Options > Dynamic Lights Options

Blue Shadow wrote:There's a way to globally adjust dynamic lights size and intensity without having to edit every single dynamic light definition...

Ah, good to know. Thanks.