Should white light override other colors?

[Zarestia]

This is rather a question and not so much a bug report. After todays update fixed npc lighting among other things I played around with colored lights a bit.
A PC with a standard torch attached overrides any colored light placed on the map. This happens in the bright radius, in the dim radius one can see that these lights mix a bit. I haven't found anyhting on the internet about the mixing of white light + colored light. I suspect white light should not override but lighten up the other color?

At the moment:
- White + Blue = White
- White + Red = White
- White + Green = White

What "might" be better (idk, hence the question):
- White + Blue = Light Blue
- White + Red = Light Red
- White + Green = Light Green

Maybe we have some physics or color theory experts here. :)

[anathemort]

In a real-world scenario, it would depend entirely on the intensity of the light sources. We absolutely get blends of spectrums; see variable LEDs, "warm" and "cool" lightbulbs, etc. One could argue that a larger bright/dim setting equates to a more intense light, but that may be something based on the ruleset. Maybe if we use the bright distance as a factor of intensity, we could have colors blending more seamlessly?

[johnecc]

I think the maths of that would be quite complex, what are you going to do calculate the mix for each 5 foot square from the light sources. What if 3 or more lights interact?

[Moon Wizard]

While an interesting discussion, I would caution that we are finding a balance between game system rules for light "zones" as well as some nod to physical light characteristics. It's a very complex system that we have found can be quite fragile when "adjusting"; so most likely the lighting behaviors will stay as is for a while.

Regards,
JPG

[anathemort]

While an interesting discussion, I would caution that we are finding a balance between game system rules for light "zones" as well as some nod to physical light characteristics. It's a very complex system that we have found can be quite fragile when "adjusting"; so most likely the lighting behaviors will stay as is for a while.

Agreed with this. I meant to include such a caution to my own thoughts :)

[Zarestia]

Of course, that is totally understandable. As we can edit most values ourselves, there isn't really a "problem" here, just different perception by different poeple^^

My testing was also done with extremely saturated lights, which are probably not that common, at least in fanatsy games. With more natural lights, this should not stand out in the least.

What I found spontaneously to be visually more pleasing for me is to set the alpha of nearly white lights to ~80-90% via the hexcode (D9FFF3E1 e.g. for torches). Maybe this helps some folks.

[wndrngdru]

The main problem you run into with reproducing color physics on the FG screen is that there are a limited number of values (256) for each of red, blue, and green in FG (as well as all but specialized graphics applications).
When you take a white light that has a value of 255,255,255 and try to add blue to it, there's literally no more blue that can be added because the blue value is already at its maximum. You would have to reduce the values of red and green to obtain the blue color. That would reduce the brightness of the light which would also look weird.