Global Light Color [Sector Editing] - One of UDMF's most under-appreciated features

[Note, this is for UDMF Format.]

 

“Most under-appreciated” is a bold claim in a mapping format overflowing with robust features, certainly when viewed with Ultimate Doom Builder's recent explosion of incredible tools, but it is a claim that I feel deserves to be made. Global light colors are a subtle, and powerful option in the map maker’s toolbox. So, let’s take a look at them!

 

In the sector Editing window, under the Colors tab, we find Global Sector Colors with three available properties: Light, Fade, and Desaturation.

 

  

(The Slaughter Spectrum, Bridgeburner56 : Winter's Fury, Pyroscourge)

 

While Desaturation can be used to great effect in creating – as the name suggests – desaturated, or outright black and white Noir-style sectors, and the Fade color property is our premier tool for directly adding “fog” to our sectors, it is the Light color property that I wish to focus on today.

 

 

  

 

 

Here, we can customize a sector’s light color by changing its HEX value. By default, a sector’s HEX (light color) is #FFFFFF – white. This is our normal look. Clicking on the white square will open the Color customization window, where we can use the color picker to find any particular tint or shade we’re looking for, without having to know the exact HEX value.

 

If we wanted our sector light to be orange, for instance, we could find a nice tint/shade of orange in the color picker, or use a HEX value such as #FFA500.

 

 

 

 

 

And just like that, we’ve customized our sector’s light color. Keep in mind, a sector will always appear less and less bright with darker shades of color, despite the sector’s “Brightness” property remaining the same. The closer your HEX value is to white (#FFFFFF), the brighter your sector will appear.

 

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If you’ve played Doom 64, you’re well aware of its bold use of color – a stylistic choice that the level designers seemed to revel in. If nothing else, it became a memorable aesthetic that helped set the game apart visually from its predecessor. With little subtlety, you almost always know when you’re looking at a D64 map. For many people, I can’t help but wonder if this is the kind of stark visual they get when thinking about the use of colored lighting in a Doom level.

 

  

 

 

Because we can use any HEX value as our global light color, we can be as dramatic or as subtle as we want in altering the atmosphere of our level, and this is where things get exciting.

 

Like a filmmaker adding just the right filter to a scene during post-processing, the perfect tint can be extremely subtle and still manage to control the ambience. Without getting bogged down in film color theory, I think the basic idea can still be applied to mapping: specifically, in UDMF where it’s as simple as editing the desired sector(s), and tinkering with the HEX value.

 

Let’s take a look at a few examples from some of my UDMF maps. I’d like to stress that these are far from crowning achievements in the use of this feature, but at the time, I was happy with how they turned out.

 

• Here, I used a very pale blue-ish purple (#C4C9EE). In fact, this HEX value became the natural light color throughout the 5-map WAD. I wanted an atmosphere that felt cold, isolated, and forgotten by time – a feeling that I just wasn’t getting from the default #FFFFFF. Satisfied with this particular tint, I ended up using it in almost every sector across the set as an additional step in trying to make the levels feel more cohesive.

 

            

        

 

 

• Additionally, in that same set, I decided to compliment the subtle cold blue of the (new) natural light color (#C4C9EE) with a soft, warm orange tint for torches and other similar light sources (#FFD2A6). I loved the contrast that this created, and tried to use it as a means to help guide the player. The ambience generated by simply bathing this level in these two colors was such a quick, and easy element to add, but I instantly fell in love with the effect.

 

        

        

 

 

• Here, I used a very soft pink-ish red (#FAA9AB). Inspired in-part by Minecraft’s Nether Fortresses, I wanted to try and capture a bit of that look and feel. The fog was obvious, but it didn’t seem to convey the entire emotion I had in mind; I wanted the level to feel gloomy, hostile, and almost as if the entire fortress had been coated in a fine mist of blood over time. Because of the thick fog, it isn’t terribly eye-catching, but the faint hint in the light color was just enough to tie everything together and sell the atmosphere.

 

        

        

 

 

• Here, I used a nice dull purple (#D38AFF). Because this map was intended to be an homage to Doom 64’s secret level “In The Void”, the fog came first – and honestly, I think it looked fine on its own. But, it just wasn’t quite what I was looking for. I wanted the level to really feel unnatural, otherworldly, and as though the player had wandered into an altogether dreadful place. When I finally tried adding a hint of purple to the global light color, the way it blended with the dense cyan fog felt quite unsettling, and I knew I’d found the look.

 

        

        

 

 

 

I was never interested in the exact approach to colored lighting that Doom 64 used – not least, because I never felt confident that I could pull it off quite as expertly. Rather, I wanted to use this feature with a similar approach to lighting and color that I had become accustomed to in the Hammer Editor. Whether mapping for CS:GO, Half-Life 2, or Left 4 Dead, each of the available skyboxes from these Source titles had very specific values for the light_environment object used in the map – two of them: The “Ideal Brightness” value, and the “Ideal Ambience” value, combined to create the general light and color of the world, designed to match their respective skyboxes perfectly. It’s incredibly effective, and the kind of small touch that I felt had been missing in my own Doom maps. And so, I started to apply the approach as best I could.

 

Adding a slight tint to the global light color can certainly be more effective when carefully combined with other features, such as fog – and can just as easily be abused – but it often seems like a missed opportunity in a lot of UDMF projects, perhaps overshadowed by some of the more illustrious features available to the format. For such a quick, and simple process found right in the sector properties – with instant visual feedback – I think it holds a lot of untapped potential. It may not be a game-changer for anyone, but the subtle influence it can have on the ambience, atmosphere, personality, and visual storytelling of a level is certainly worth exploring.

 

My examples aren’t terribly compelling, as I opted to be as subtle as possible when adding color, but I strongly believe that if you tried experimenting with this feature in your own UDMF maps, you might just discover something wonderful. I’d certainly love to see this feature used more often.