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This topic has been brought up off handily a couple of times in other threads however I feel that it is time it’s had it’s own thread. The topic I am talking about is forcemodels and why we don’t have the ability to have our own version of a bright keel. The reason I think this would be a good idea for next release is because some of the models are just way too dark (i.e. Stone Gargoyle, Neko, Tony and others) and can hardly be seen on some maps.

but bright keels are stupid

Problem:

Possible solution:
Normalizing of skin colors.

I don't know how hard it would be to normalize the skin colors, shaders could be a big problem.

If the individual players could make there own colored skin the problem would only get worse because the difference between the best and worse lit skin would be even bigger.

Player visibility is one of the things I want to solve in the 3.xbranch by making things too stylized to not distinguish, as a way that isn't 'brightskin it all to hell'

I believe there must be some way to use some kind of normalizasing where all skins are analized and adjusted so they all have the same light value and the same blueish and redish values. This should also take the different light effect of different colors into account, like red is 6% or 12% lighter than blue (or was it the other way around?).

I considered trying to run them through Matlab/Octave to analyze them and maybe normalize them but shaders would cause a problem. Assassin/Ghost for instance. Also knowing what parts of the skin are visible on the model or not.

lol sooooo doesnt work on pul1ctf just saying ;)

Glowing ones and several arrows to tell where the target is.

lol.

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Seriously, I find this very useless. First, because as I said in the other thread, the most important for reflexes is not color or bright models but movements, and there are already some cvars that fulfill the needs.

Secondly, you can use r_gamma and r_intensity to see the game better (and even without brightskin, you get to see more than enough).

Thirdly, there are already some brightskins packages, so you can add it on your server and with sv_pure force everyone to dl it. At least servers admins get the choice to include or not brightskins depending on their idea about the question. Or you can use a mod with customizable brightskin color like ExcessivePlus.

Fourth, there is a fork which is mainly aimed at bringing brightskins :
http://www.evilarena.de/development/

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If brightskins are ever implemented into the game, servers admins should be able to allow or disallow it.

Ok the normalizing of skin colors sounds like it would help.

Wouldn't taking screenshots of the (omnidirectional lit) models and analyzing them instead solve that?

I've shot some models for the current website design: oa-models.zip (http://udionline.hu/fajlok/openarena/oa-models.zip). Light comes from only one direction and not all the skins are there.

Possible, but it would be harder to make it into a batch script.