cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/71569981

I'm sorry I think flashlight memes are funny no matter how many I see

Also flashlights in games: Has 5 minutes of battery power, flickers for some reason if something spooky is nearby, cannot be duct taped to the shotgun under any circumstances.

Turning off the light will recharge the battery somehow.

It's clearly one of those shake flashlights that only have a capacitor.

Meanwhile, shotguns in games are all over the place. They have a range of like 30 feet, at 31 they are garbage. Meanwhile, irl, buckshot remains effective at 90-150ft.

However, body armor is very effective at stopping buckshot IRL (necessitating aiming at unarmored parts), but seems irrelevant in games.

Lighting still really hard, yo.

Great, now I'm going to have Terry Akers nightmares tonight.

Indirect bounce is expensive.

Digital foundry would like a word …

Raytracing ON vs Raytracing OFF.

The shotgun range thing is mostly because almost no shooters have realistically scaled combat areas.

At least Metro 2033 have the courtesy of making you charge the flashlight, and i love the game for that.

Eh, you could fake the above with global illumination.

To my knowledge, they don't do that, especially in horror games, because there's no real way to know how bright the players' screen is. It would kill any tension, if you could clearly spot the monster out of the corner of your eye/view.

And similarly, it would kill horror moments, if another player never sees the monster at their screen edges. By narrowing it down to just the circle, you can control a lot better whether the player sees the monster or not...

Torch!!

Well yeah, it's really hard to see people who are far away.

I remember cheap plastic body flashlights where the battery springs had worn out a little back in the 90’s sometimes having issues where the batteries wouldn't stay positioned inside quite right, so moving it around it might flicker as they shifted or it would shut off entirely if the batteries slipped out of "alignment". Usually you'd just thump it a few times until they settled back in right. But they lasted plenty long, and didn't just flicker on their own.

Those seem to be what game flashlights are based off of, which is especially silly with how long cheap super bright LED flashlights with no battery looseness have been around now.

sure, but most games don’t respect over all darkness anyway. it’s looking day for night everywhere i go, and that’s being heavy handed on the darkness differs

"in RL". Can't read "RL" without thinking about Rocket League...

Ding ding ding. Same reason most horrors take place in the early 2000 or before. Modern tech killed horror - we are constantly connected and tech is somewhat infallible.

Also, about batteries - sometimes aluminium foil IIRC folded a few times and inserted beneath the battery worked.