Contraption Lights (Bi-directional Coloured Dynamic Lights)

Contraption Lights

Bi-directional Coloured Dynamic Lights for Create and Sable.

Put a lantern, glowstone, or any glowing block on a Create contraption or a Sable sub-level, and the light travels with it as it drives, flies, rotates, tilts, or sails. No more pitch-black cabins and tunnels.

Light also passes between your builds and the world in both directions, so a torch on the shore lights a passing ship and the ship's lanterns light the shore. Turn on coloured light and every glowing block lights in its own colour, on your builds and throughout the world. Every dependency is optional: install a backend, something to light, and nothing else.

What can carry light

• Create contraptions - carts, gantries, elevators, bearings: anything assembled and moving, rotating parts included.
• Create kinetics - rotating shafts and cogs, rendered in place by Flywheel.
• Sable sub-levels - physics-driven structures such as ships and dynamic trees.
• Other Flywheel content - blocks and entities drawn by non-Create mods such as Vanillin. Needs Flywheel 1.0.6+, no Create.
• Sable Ragdolls limbs - a ragdolled player keeps carrying their light: a torch in hand still lights the scene while they are limp.

Glowing blocks hidden inside Create copycats and items framed in placards count too, casting the light of whatever they hold.

How light travels

| Direction | What you get | Turn it on | | --- | --- | --- | | Build lights the world | A moving build throws its own light onto the terrain, following every turn of a bearing and roll of a ship. A beacon riding a sub-level casts its beam out along the sub-level's up axis, like a steerable searchlight. | On by default | | World lights the build | Held torches, glowing mobs, dropped items, placed torches, glowstone and lava shine back onto a passing build. Directed sources count too, so another mod's flashlight or a beacon beam lights what it sweeps across. | The ...WorldTo... options | | Builds light each other | A lit ship lights a nearby contraption or kinetic, and a lit contraption lights nearby kinetics. | Nothing extra. A build already emits, so the option that lets it receive from the world lets it receive from another build. | | Builds riding builds | A bearing-driven propeller with a lantern, spinning on a moving ship, lights the deck, the world and other structures, and is lit by all of them in return, tracked to where it is actually drawn. | Automatic once the relevant options above are on |

Coloured light

Off by default, and one option turns it on. A torch then glows warm, a soul lantern blue, a redstone torch red, and a froglight the pastel shade of its own texture.

Where two lights overlap their colours blend: a redstone torch beside a soul torch reads purple between them, and a coloured light near a white one still tints it. Colours fade smoothly with distance.

It reaches everything the mod already lights, and the rest of the world with it: blocks, entities, block entities, particles and lava, the lights your builds carry, held items, contraptions and kinetics and anything else Flywheel renders, and anything lighting the world through LambDynamicLights. The one enableColoredLight option covers every mode, VEIL included.

A shaderpack does its own lighting, so coloured light turns itself off while one is loaded and comes back when you unload it. While it is off it costs nothing: no extra memory in Sodium's terrain and none in Flywheel's lighting.

Colours come from data files, so a resource pack or another mod can change any of them or add its own. See Adding light colours.

Modes

Client lighting has one mode setting. The server option is separate and needs no client mod.

| Mode | Light it produces | Shaders | Needs | Covers | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | LAMB (default) | Smooth per frame and cheap, no shadows. Vanilla-coloured until you turn on coloured light, which this mode supports in full. | Yes | LambDynamicLights | Every direction above. | | VEIL (experimental) | Crisp angled shadows cast by a tilted sub-level's own blocks, which no other mode does. Follows the same enableColoredLight option as LAMB. | No. Veil stands down whenever Iris is installed, so this mode disables itself. | Veil | Your build lighting the world, plus a rougher take on the reverse. No cross-build light, no riding builds, no Flywheel kinetics. Not meant for normal play. | | Server light blocks | Real invisible light blocks placed as a build moves and cleaned up behind it, so every player sees it with no client mod. | Yes | Nothing on the client | Your build lighting the world. Heavier, so off by default and meant for server admins. |

Setup

| Mod | Enables | | --- | --- | | LambDynamicLights | LAMB mode. | | Veil | VEIL mode. | | Create 0.6+ | Contraptions, kinetics, copycat and placard light. | | Sable | Sub-levels, on any mode. | | Sable Ragdolls 0.7+ | A ragdolled player's held light. | | Sodium 0.8.12+ | The options below in Video Settings. Coloured light works with Sodium installed or without it. |

Common setups: Create + LambDynamicLights for smooth contraption lighting; Sable + a backend for ships with no Create; Create + the server option for a whole server at once. Running Iris shaders, use LAMB. Coloured light is a separate option on top of whichever mode you pick.

Options

Everything has sensible defaults. Client options live in the in-game config screen, the config file, and Sodium's Video Settings.

Client