MZ - [MZ & MV v1.9.7] Shora Lighting & Shadow System

Hello !
First of all, thanks for your great plugin, it's very useful and easy to use!

But I have an error that I can't manage. I have a light on my hero, but sometimes I would like to disable it. So I run a plugin command "set light paramaters", where I set the light id 0 to off.
It works, but when I launch the game, it still puts an error message: "event 0 doesn't have a light to change paramater".
How can I set this ?

Thanks for the kind words!

Hmm, what do you mean by "when launch the game"? So the plugin command work but still give that message? Where did you put that plugin command? If you put it in a common event, then maybe that the reason, since somehow common event fire when the map haven't loaded. I think I can fix this by simply remove the warning.


If you disabled the light using another way, please provide me an image of that event (to know if it set to autorun or etc.), I will try to simulate the issue.

Thanks for your quick answer.

It's when I'm doing a playtest.
Yes, everything works perfectly, I can continue playing, but at the top left of the screen there is this error message. And if I go to the menu and come back to the game, it disappears.
And yes I put it in a common event, so I think removing the warning will work.

Version 1.7 + 1.8 Released: Major performance and flexibility breakthrough.​

The 1.7 version was supposed to improve the performance of the plugin after the quality improve in 1.6, however since the the contents is too big for an update I managed to merge it with the 1.8 update instead. So there it is.

Change-Logs:

- Performance:

+ Lighting layer now will can only be drawn to the map layer. By this, pictures are no longer affected by ambient lighting.

+ Soft shadow now use Kawase Blur instead, which much faster than the old Gaussian Blur.

+ Massive performance improvement by purely render mask texture instead of using filters. This also finally allow the radius and angle features to be added.

- Flexibility:

+ Light's state, shadow's state, radius and angle now can be both set in the plugin manager, in the comment syntax or update dynamically using plugin command/ script call.


+ Change the old comment syntax. The new syntax allow for more flexibility since you can choose whether properties to overwritten.

Example: [flashlight -angle 45 -radius 150 -x 12 -direction off]

Read more about available properties in the Wiki. The old syntax ([light flashlight]) will still work, but give a warning in console. Please change to the new syntax. (Just change it to [flashlight] will work).

+ Entire plugin state can be dynamically enable/disable using script: $gameLighting.enable(), $gameLighting.disable(), $gameLighting.setPluginState(true / false).

+ Add helper parameters, which currently allow you to defined your color, and disable engine's shadow. By defined your custom color, you can quickly using the color by its name instead of it value, like [light -tint white] instead of [light -tint #ffffff].


+ You can now change the map ambient/shadow ambient/top block ambient from the map's notetags. Syntax is [ambient #333333], [shadowambient night], etc.

+ Temporary remove static lighting feature, to implement custom lighting in the next update. Custom lighting will behave the same as normal character's lighting (so you can still dynamically changes it settings), but with custom position.

- Quality?:

+ By setting radius/angle dynamically by plugin command (by tick similar to offset), you can easily create your own pulsating light/ cycling light. Repeatly changing light with shadow do impact performance, so useful to use this (don't use lots of shadow light continuously pulsating).

+ Moved both the light intensity filters and shadow soft filters to the [Advanced: Filters] section. You can dynamically turn those on/off/set it value.

- Minor

+ Fix lots of bugs from user reports. If you bugs still hasn't been resolved, please mention me with as much detail as possible.

I will try to update the WiKi and adding more screenshot/GIFs tomorrow :kaodes:

nicely done @Shora but on the screenshot, red has "ff000000"
which is 2x 00 to much XD not that you need to update it, but in
the next version, but I dont know if the 2 extra 0's do anything though.

but keep up the amazing work on this plugin <3

Ah sorry for that, guess I'm too hurry when type in those example.
Thanks for your kind words though <3

Hello !
Thanks for the update, the additions are great!

I have thought of something : I know you can set a color for the top block value, which is great, but do you think you can add one for the "small object value"?
I'll elaborate. On my maps, I have high walls, which your plugin works perfectly well for. But I also have small obstacles that are on the ground (so with the lowest ID), and it would be great if these could also do shadows, but without be impacted by the top block value.
That way we can make the top block value dark, and the other light, and both create shadows.
I think this could be a great addition to your plugin. And I hope I'm not too confused.

That is a very reasonable idea. Though I planned to have a GUI editor for shadow / custom lights by version 2.0, which will let you choose top shadow ambient for each casters you drawn. Which will give you lots more flexibility since you can choose different ambient for each caster instead of only height-0 walls :kaopride:.

It looks very promising, can't wait to test it! (even if I know I'll have to be a bit patient).

I checked the plugin in the demo which is 1.61 still, but is there also
a "radius grow" setting which you can set by using an item or skill?
for a period of time (to event it)?

in Terrax_Lighting plugin it was possible, but didn't use it, but I was
wondering if something similair could be done in the current version
that gradually grow from radius x to radius y and revert to shrink
after x frames?

That is called Pulse, which automatically continuously grow and shrink light radius. I planned to have it in v1.9 (as well as Rotate continuous animation), but currently you can do that by simply using parallel event + plugin command + wait command (like the moving light in demo):

not that it keeps pulse in and out, but more in a way,
radius x = 100 and grow to 400, after x wait frames, it shrink back to 100,
unless pulse does that.

but nice rotations image, not that it stays on 1 spot though, but it looks awesome.
I test the demo later today and see if it works :)

I'm planned to give user the ability to set pulse do a list of animations though. So in this case you can just add 3 commands to the list: grow to s (in some frames), wait x frame, shrink back to 100 (in some frame), and set repeat to true (similar to the move route editor in the engine). This way you can have most flexibility over the repeat animation.

Great update but something seems to be broken with the newest patch. I am using a plugin that draw particles and one for change position for the event and they don't seem to work with this plugin.

For exampel:
particles : 2 : 16 : 1 : 0.1 : 0.4 : 0 : Particles_SparksB
[ambient_pillar]

Then the light is not working and not displayed unless I remove "particles : 2 : 16 : 1 : 0.1 : 0.4 : 0 : Particles_SparksB".

Did something change with the comments when display lights?

Did you try seperate the light comment into a new comment? The syntax now is not supporting miced with other syntax, since it combine all the line into one (so you can go seperate the syntax if you want). If needed I will change it to only read line per line though.

Yeah didn't work with two seperate comments.

I have a few comments for different events it seems I can't use that anymore.

Sorry for the convenient, I will try it fix the issue (by using regex to match out the light syntax)

Ah no worries.

Another question. Is the pulse animation disabled now? I had a few pulse animation for the torches but now it doesn't seem to be working anyore. I saw in the plugin that the
PulseAnimation part was commented as well.

Is anyone else having problems loading a save file with the newest update? I just want to make sure whether it’s just me or anyone else.

Yep me too. Just tried to Save and I can't load the game now from that Save file.