Wierd problem with lights [SOLVED]

[dimmu1313]

I've read elsewhere that, as with most objects, etc., that the best practice is to find the light I like, copy it, and place instances of that new light. I guess my problem is -- as with most objects -- finding the "right" object that works for me.

In the case of lights, I am having a devil of a time getting these things to work right. I'm mainly using my own version of a FarmInteriorLight01, just with different colors and some other tweaks. My problem that I'm having -- and i've seen this on other lights too but gave up on checking more lights until asking here -- is that when I play the dungeon in-game the light is off until the character actually walks within the light radius and then it turns on. As soon as i walk away from the light radius the light turns off. It's like the lights have motion detectors or something and the whole room is dark until i walk into certain spots where i have a "lightbulb" object and then suddenly there is light in that spot.

I have no scripts on these lights. They seem to be basic, run of the mill lights that i grabbed right from the list of lights in the object list. I thought FarmInterior01 light sounded fairly simple and basic and i see nothing in the settings of either the instanced object or the base object that would explain this behavior.

[frogprincess_q4]

I guess the first thing to try is a different light source or 3 and see the differences.

[dimmu1313]

yeah that's what i've been doing. The only think i have found so far is that it doesn't seem to happen with shadow lights. It seems like, at least on the few lights i have tried, if i change a light base from omnidirectional to hemisphere shadow, the problem goes away.

is this something that maybe happens all the time normally and i just haven't noticed in the game before? i would think i'd have noticed. so wierd though. you approach the light, light comes on, you leave the vicinity of the light, the light goes off.

[frogprincess_q4]

I've never noticed it in-game or in the process of modding. If you're not testing in a vanilla set-up that might be affecting it, but plenty of things in Creation Kit don't work the way one expects them to.

[dimmu1313]

i'm just using the skyrim.esm and then my own mod file i made from scratch.

[dimmu1313]

Ok I think I figured it out. I can't find anything that gives a clear explanation of it, and the online tutorial and reference only makes a passing mention of this in the definition, though it doesn't say how exactly it should be used nor does it say anything like this would happen if used incorrectly.

The problem was that in the base lights i was choosing, and apparantly this is fairly random, there is an option on the base Light object labelled "portal strict". Unchecking this makes the light stay on all the time.

In fact, here is a copy/paste of the actual creation kit wiki:

Portal Strict: Sets this light to light only objects within roombounds it is touching. Necessary for shadow lights.

Huh?? First, this is affecting shadow and non-shadow lights alike. Second, this says nothing about causing the light to visually turn on and off as i get near or move away. Third, i'm not entirely sure what this whole "roombounds" thing is all about, but, umm, they are in a room. Some of the lights are touching the room walls, and some are floating in mid-air, so again this makes no sense.

Anyway, I will call this solved and hopefully this helps someone else out too. Beware of "Portal Strict"!

[dimmu1313]

Ok nevermind. I assumed the problem was fixed because i only had the one instance of the new light and went in-game to look and it was staying on, so i went back into creation kit and replaced every light with the light that was working, and lo and behold every light still does the same thing. Strangely enough though, the first instance of that light is still working!

So i guess the problem isn't solved after all. "Portal Strict" appears to have nothing to do with it after all. I am really at a loss >:(

[frogprincess_q4]

I feel your pain :( I wish I had something helpful to add. Nexus seems to have more active modding forums and maybe TES Alliance?

[dimmu1313]

Fixed! FINALLY. It was pretty easy it turns out. This is definitely wierd. The issue was caused by the Reference editor option "Never Fades". More specifically, it was caused by this option not being set (i.e., not checked).

Here is what the wiki says that option is for:

Never Fades: Stops the light from being culled at a distance. NOTE: This may be deprecated.

Yeah i'd say this option isn't deprecated. It very much still has an effect. I'm curious to see what this option does for someone else. If someone could try editing a Light reference object and turning this option off and post here what the effect is, it would be very interesting. For me, as I said, it basically just turns the light off completely as soon as you walk away from it to a certain distance.

[RowanSteale]

I was just wondering where do I go to find Never Fades option, I have been having the same problem.

[dimmu1313]

First of all, thanks for the necro lol. Actually I do mean it, thought no one ever saw this.

To your question, it should be on the Light tab of the reference object's editor window.

A better solution anyway is to choose some standard light that's used all over the place. Just go to the Lights category in the object browser, and sort by use count. Choose one of the "NS" (no shadow) lights (i.e., it has NS in the name usually towards the top of the list. The idea here is that the more regularly used lights in the vanilla game definitely work, so they will work for you too. Honestly that's how I ultimately decided to fix all my lights and prevent the problem from occuring again later.

[pokkla]

引用自 dimmu1313：

Fixed! FINALLY. It was pretty easy it turns out. This is definitely wierd. The issue was caused by the Reference editor option "Never Fades". More specifically, it was caused by this option not being set (i.e., not checked).

Here is what the wiki says that option is for:

Never Fades: Stops the light from being culled at a distance. NOTE: This may be deprecated.

Yeah i'd say this option isn't deprecated. It very much still has an effect. I'm curious to see what this option does for someone else. If someone could try editing a Light reference object and turning this option off and post here what the effect is, it would be very interesting. For me, as I said, it basically just turns the light off completely as soon as you walk away from it to a certain distance.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Here it is 3 years later and your post solved my light issue. The Never Fade checkbox did the trick. Thanks. Saved me a lot of time searching for a solution.

[dimmu1313]

引用自 pokkla：

Here it is 3 years later and your post solved my light issue. The Never Fade checkbox did the trick. Thanks. Saved me a lot of time searching for a solution.

I figured it would come up at some point. I still remember how frustrating that particular problem was.

[BunBun]

Canis did you ever figure out what Roombounds were? do you care anymore? (=

The problem/solution you had didn't help me, but this thread was the first thing to pop out googling "Portal Strict" . . . which is what I needed.

so.... THANKS!

[dimmu1313]

wow big necro!

Well I wouldn't say I don't care so much as I haven't done any skyrim modding in a couple years. I thought about getting back into it but once the special edition came out it made my big dungeon quest mod nod work anymore because it didn't supprt skse (not sure if that's changed). I had hundreds and hundreds of hours put into my mod and once the new version of skyrim came out i pretty much threw in the towel.

[BunBun]

I'm pretty sure you can un-update back to the original skyrim, it's what I've been running.

And no, AFAIK there's still no SKSE for Skyrim SPED. Seems that it's being worked on.

Incoming friend request... I have a couple questions.