Ah, I was about to make a topic on this. Anyway you have cleared up on the specifics of the issue, as I was still using assumptions based on a little server/editor testing.

I was hoping Gridarta would see -1 as meaning no value (so that no header is written when the darkness is -1), and also default to -1. That way, no server change is needed.

Either way, both methods should fix it, which is the important thing. I'm a little surprised the discrepancy still exists, given the signs in those maps have been around for a while. I guess it was just one of those 'bugs' that was lost in time.

Hm, no -1 is important to be -1 as this way mappers can say 'let the server sort it out' and not need to know about the current value of MAX_DARKNESS. So if the server changes, the map will cope.

Yeah, that's what I wanted to achieve. Anyway, if it's not good for Gridarta, then I guess that wipes out my solution. In which case, your solution is imo the next best thing. It's a bit of a pain having to go over all the maps in order to fix this, especially after the recent background_music change.

Looks like we have no choice though. Guess it's time to buckle up once again for another breaking change.

The problem with my solution (which I think is actually a problem caused by the original Gridarta change  defaulting to 0 rather than -1) is it means that all maps with no specific darkness setting (all non-outdoors ones anyway; I think the gloomy patch will luckily prevent outdoors ones from breaking, but I'd need to check) would need to be loaded into the new Gridarta and resaved (or someone write a batch script to add darkness -1 to mapfiles without a darkness and outdoor 1 setting).

As it stands, the Gloomy patch will not cope with this -- outdoors maps with no specific darkness (which is nearly all of them) would be plunged into inky blackness.

There are two solutions.

The first is much easier but IMO not the better one. That is I put into the server code a little exception for MAP_OUTDOORS(m) == 1 && MAP_DARKNESS(m) == 0, which essentially means that to the server outdoors 1 darkness 0 maps would be the same as outdoors 1 darkness 7. This actually isn't restrictive at all AFAICS because a variable lighting map with the cap at no light is pretty pointless anyway.

The second is to load/resave or batch process the mapfiles as above.

Either way it's very solvable once Gridarta is fixed.

Sorry about the double post, I just had to bump this thread somehow.

Anyway, when it's time to go over the maps and 'fix' them once the editor and server are patched, I think there may need to be a slight change of plan. Instead of just changing outdoor maps which currently have no darkness setting to include darkness -1, I think we may need to do the same to all indoor maps as well. The reason for this is that any indoor map that is intended to be pure dark should have darkness 0 already set. Also, there are indoor maps with no darkness set, such as the testmaps. This is the main reason why I posted, as if we just 'fixed' the outdoor maps, the testmaps would become pitch black, and I bet there will be some maps (mainly unofficial ones) that will also suffer from this as well.

I don't think that we should have any unwanted side-effects from this. With this slight change of plan, we simply go over the maps and check to see if they have no darkness set, and if so, add darkness -1 to them. It's actually simpler than the original plan, as we no longer need to check for the outdoor 1 line. And after that, we can optionally remove darkness 0 from any map that has it set, as it is then a redundant line.

Looks good.

Re darkness 0: This shouldn't be a problem as Gridarta has not been able to produce darkness 0 maps for a very long time, if ever, so the only darkness 0 maps in existence are ones where the mapper has edited the file in a text editor. So if a map is darkness 0 it must be intentional.

But anyway, this means as soon as Gridarta is fixed, we can just take the same action as with background_music (update the server, update the SVN map, release a new Mapmaker, post a note to Maps on how to update local maps).