MV - Community Lighting MV & MZ

I looked around for a bit, but couldn't find the answer as there are a lot of comments to go through (prolly missed it), but I've got a bit of an issue, I guess.
I have a certain tile, set on Tile-Based Lighting, which works as intended, but after a certain point I have it set so it turns off the lighting, and here's the issue:
When I start on the map it works as intended, and turns off when I want to, but if I enter the map from a different map and I reach the point where it should turn off, it stays on for some reason. I tried a few things like changing the Region ID, and changing triggers for the event, but it's always the same.

So it works if I start on the map, but it doesn't work if I enter from a different map.
It's not a big deal (for now at least), but help would be appreciated.

Full pictures of the event in question will help a lot.

There is a bug when adding a note on the map with a custom screen tint <cl: Tint set #ff4e01>. The plugin command tint set #6666ff is not working; it always returns to default map note screen tint #ff4e01

I have an event where I have 2 moving carts that I'd like to have lighting around them like a Region does when using the plugin, but not managing to figure it out.
Of course I managed to use it just fine when setting it to just Region ID, but I'd like to have the lighting follow the carts/event as they move.
Can I get some help?

Hi guys, just picked up this plugin again after a while and I'm starting to get the hang of it.
Just got a couple really basic questions:

1. Is there a way to adjust the level of darkness tint, so if I needed it a bit lighter?

2. I'm trying to work out how to trigger the plugin to start by interacting with an event. So if if I went up to an event and pressed the action button, the light would start. And if I interacted again, it would turn off.
Basically, a light switch.
What's the simplest way for this?
I've managed to turn a light off. On the event page, i have a comment: <cl: light 250 #62b9e9>
Then, underneath that, I've got the plugin command that turns it off. That certainly turns it off, but it also turns off the darkness tint. Which isn't really what i need. I need the screen to stay dark when I turn the light off.
I tried using the Activate Light by ID command, and that didn't do anything. The light just stayed on, whether the command was set to true or false, and whether it was in a comment, or the notetag.
Included pic of how I had it setup. The event I'm using is just called Chicken.

So just to give you an idea of what I'm ultimately aiming for, the scene I have planned involves two characters talking in a dark room. Eventually one says 'I can't see anything' or words to that effect. And the other says 'i have a light with me' and turns it on. A yellow light glows around the character, illuminating both of them. It's not a flashlight, it's more like a lantern. The rest of the room stays at the same level of darkness throughout the scene.
I need the rest of the room to be somewhat visible through the darkness, not pitch black, but just dim. Kind of like moonlight.

So in short I need to work out how both to adjust the darkness tint level, and how to make a light start and stop on command. I wondered the Kill Switch command had something to do with it.

Any pointers would be greatly appreaciated. Thanks.

If you do this: ◆Plugin Command：Tint set #202020 and then change the BOLD numbers to a lighter or darker color then the overall tint of the screen will be lighter or darker.

This is easy, I do the same thing in my game, or something similar.
In the EVENTS Notetag place

This will set the event as a light source with a radius of 300 pixels and a yellowish color. The number at the end is the light ID.
Now you simply add: ◆Plugin Command：Light off 1
on the first page and add ◆Plugin Command：Light on 1
on the second page.

The light will turn off and on with each click.
If you want the light to start in the off position just have an autorun event somewhere in the map that will run the "light off 1" command and then switch the event off with a selfswitch. The you just flip flop the pages of the light event so the 'on' command is first and the 'off' command is second.


For your scene... Is the player character one of the people talking? Is he the one that has the light? because if so then there is a little way to do that exact thing but it's a little different than the technique I explained above. If not, then the technique above will work great for the scene as well.

Your scene would also benefit from some color. Night time is rare pitch black, moonlight usually has a soft blueish tint to it and so you should add that to the scene to give a little life.

HTML Color Codes

Here is a link to where I get my color codes for different colors. You just adjust the swatches until you get a good color you like and then copy and paste the #00000 to the appropriate spot in the command to get that color.


I hope this helped you out... Let me know if you have any other questions. I use Community Lighting exclusively in my project so I've messed with it a lot. I wont say I'm an expert [I still have things that happen that leave me scratching my head] but I feel I have better than average knowledge of the uses of the plugin.

Cool, that did it

I am trying to use the event page function of the plugin and I cant get the lighting to update when the event page switches over. My comment is on the top line of the page contents on every page. Whatever the first lighting code is loaded it will never change, other than on and off which works fine. I saw someone posted the same problem 10 or so pages back and no one ever replied to that guy either.

Hello, I'm having some (bizarre) performance problems with this plugin. I even tested it alone and it was still bugging (less, but still).
The issue: sometimes, after closing the menu, the game freezes on 6 fps, but it still gets 60 fps in the menus. And if I open Quest Journal System (YEP) I get this issue after exiting the menu, and on the menu it continues on 60fps. If I disable the plugin (in the game options), the game goes back to 60 fps. I really wanted to use this plugin, I liked it more than the other lightning plugins.

Iirc, @woootbm had a similar problem. In the end he changed to a different lighting plugin. I don't recall which. That's why I tagged him.

Alternatively, you could try Terrax lighting. It's no longer supported. Technically, community light was based off of Terrax lighting, but from my experience, it seems over the years Community lighting has become very bloated and performs worse than Terrax.

Yes, this was the exact issue I was seeing. My FPS wasn't quite as low, but that probably just means a further incompatibility with another plugin or maybe difference in PC.

I switched to OcRam, which doesn't give quite the level of control on flickering but eh.
OcRam - Lights plugin (MZ/MV)

Thanks, I was thinking about Terrax but since Community was based on it I didn't even gave it a chance.

Community lights really have some interesting features, I would like to control the flickering... But I'll search for an alternative, thank you all.

So far none of the other lighting plugins give anywhere near the same results as Community Lighting does for me. They all have interesting features and the performance is top-notch, but they all look like blobs of light or painted circles... Community lighting is the only one I've tried that gives a great natural-looking light.

It's a bit disappointing that the plugin has such bad performance issues...

Comparison:
Community Lighting:


OcRam_Lighting:


Sorry, I'm just a little upset about this... and when a problem in my game is confounding me and I can't fix it, it stops all work on the game until I do...

I'm on the same boat. I can even get some good results, but it's not the same thing, not as easy to use and not as versatile.

I did a lot of work make the lights work the way I wanted them too... but I would do it all over again if I could find a plugin with the look and feel of community lighting but without the performance problem.

What is the problem with the lag and performance anyway. Is it something that can be fixed in the code? Maybe a rework or something?

I really don't know why that plugin is buggy. It's so good. Since I don't the performance problem 100% of the time, maybe it could be fixed, but I'm still not too good at coding to know what's the problem or even trying to fix it.

After searching, I found two plugins (thanks to Sigmasuccour's spreadsheet) that "can" replace it, but it's really not as easy to use them as it's to use Community's one, it's more like a workaround depending of what you're doing. Maybe you can use only one of them and it'll work good. I'm using those two (I'll talk about them below) because they haven't the same features by themselves, but using the two at the same time maybe can replace that (at least for what I was doing).

Right now I'm using:

LNM_LightningTool is great because you can setup the lights in-game (you need to press "tab"). I'm working on a map (something like a nightclub) and I needed to change the ambient light + darken the ambient gradually, but only with these I couldn't do the two at the same time, while using Community_Lightning it was very easy to do. The biggest problem is: AFAIK you can't change the lights color in LNM's plugin like in Community_Lightning (the "cycle"), so I had to change the entire ambient color instead. Also, using the tint function wouldn't work (at least as I tested it).
So I'm using another plugin to darken the ambient:

It can also create lights, by plugin command or even region tags. But I'm not fluent in japanese, so it seems that you must create the lights yourself:

So for creating lights, I'm using the LNM_LightningTool as it is easier to use and to test. But maybe MPP_MapLight could be better, it's up to you.

I also tried other plugins, but yeah, Community_lightning is pretty versatile.

Playing with MapLight was interesting, the lighting was not too bad and the look was better than most. I might play with that one a little more and see what I can get out of it. However, I wish it had the smooth light feature to make it feel less... rigid. Unfortunately, this plugin is another one that doesn't allow the darkening of areas and the sectioning of lights to give the impression of depth. So basically the light is just there, painted onto the map ignoring all concepts of walls and such... I'm not talking about the ambient, I talking about the TileBlock and RegionBlock feature. They are great tools if not limited themselves in what you can do... But only Community Lighting has them and I find that to be a shame.

I tried the other one as well, but that one is confusing and it's irrevocably tied to the game time plugin. I might try it some more, but right now it's not something I'm looking forward to jumping into.

Otherwise, these are good finds...

Let's divide the problem in parts.

That's why I'm not using if for the lights tbh.
But by this, what exactly do you mean? Because different region tags can darken with a different intensity. And also, when you setup the lights, it's possible (and you must) use an image for the light, so can't you make a shape in the way you want? Depending of what you want to do, maybe this can be useful? Also, I don't recall now, but I think that using LNM's lightning plugin you can also use images for creating the lightning shape, so from that you also can create those "sectioning of lights". I'm not really concerned about this because I'm using lights in a different way probably, but I think that by using specific images (with the shapes) you can do that. It's gonna be very troublesome though.
By "sectioning lights" you mean something like this?

It seems that Khas' plugin may be useful.

Community_Lightning is really the easiest and the best, aside from the strange performance problem. This one is tied to the game time plugin because you need to set when the lights will appear and when not. Like, if it's 1:00 pm, you may not use the lights (if you're on a outside map like a city), but the lights should be visible and make effect at 7:00 pm (just examples). But once you really understand how it works, it's not that hard to use it, mostly because you can create and manage lights in-game. But, again, it's not as complete and versatile as Community_Lightning.

I mean something like the light on the wall in this image:



That was done with one of the directional tags that Community lighting has. I believe it was d1 which makes the light only show 180 degrees from the top of the light... it gives a pseudo wall effect so you don't have a full light and have to hide the parts you don't want to see yourself. I guess it can cut down on having to render the full light even if it's hidden, but it doesn't seem to help performance very much.

The blocking thing was something I was griping about and I didn't even think of trying to make a "light" that could block the light.... I'll try that later. Unfortunately, the light "blocking" effect wont help me for was I use them for. Without the ability to cut the light in half or quarters like in Community than the light will still bleed over the walls, but now it'll have a weird dark line through the middle of it.

I might try the image thing, but I suck at making things like that... They always turn out weird and never look as good I picture them in my head.

Yeah, there are some possibilities. This "blocking" could work, I thought about using something like Galv_layers to block part of the lights, but as I mentioned, using light images would be simpler.

Well, it's not hard tho. You can take the images from Khas' plugin as an example. It's just something like this:

(the first image from internet that I could find)
If you're using photoshop, you can make an image like this by just using the pencil tool hardness on 0. It's literally this.
I made this on photopea right now:


So you could just cut it in half maybe?
Or not even in half, like this:


Well, depending of what you're trying to do (how many places like this for example), maybe it'll be troublesome, but it's not impossible.