And if the engine could interpret light levels differently? It would just require from players a bit more effort to build something that looks good by placing colored lights carefully, see below.
1. The Palette Approach (0–15 Range Breakdown)
The standard 16-level scalar light system is repurposed into hard-coded color zones:
- 0: Total Darkness
- 1 – 3: Red (Low, Mid, Max)
- 4 – 6: Green (Low, Mid, Max)
- 7 – 9: Blue (Low, Mid, Max)
- 10 – 15: White (6 Gradients of Brightness)
spoiler
2. Custom Fading Rate (3-Block Steps)
To compensate for having fewer steps per color, the engine’s distance attenuation math is modified:
- Light no longer drops by 1 level per block.
- Light intensity decreases by 1 level only every 3 blocks of travel distance, giving each color a functional, long-range illumination radius.
spoiler
3. Hard-Coded Boundaries (No Color Bleeding)
The propagation algorithm enforces strict cutoffs at the base of each color tier:
- As light spreads and degrades to the lowest level of its zone (e.g., Level 4 for Green), its next drop steps straight to Level 0 (Darkness).
- This completely prevents a fading light from accidentally shifting into a completely different color range underneath it.
spoiler
4. Direct Overwrite (No Mixing)
By design, different color lights do not blend when they intersect:
- The engine’s native behavior—where the highest numerical light value takes precedence—remains untouched.
- Overlapping lights simply cleanly overwrite each other based on their range tier (e.g., White overrides Blue, Blue overrides Green, Green overrides Red).
Cyan, magenta and yellow could be fit there for completeness too. But would leave only 2 light steps per color: max and mid.
Or just mid light for all 6 colors leaving 9 steps to white.