So after the podcast I was thinking about a few topics we had discussed and I wanted to clarify some of the things that I mentioned on the podcast. Mainly, how long it may or may not take Bungie to update the live game when making changes to the world. The truth is that in any game engine you can make changes to any of the world elements fairly easily. Now, how long it takes to translate those changes to the live game all depends on how long it takes their engine to build the elements that effect those changes. What it all comes down to is lighting really. [b]Lighting in games refers not just to the visible light you see but also the shadows that are cast on every object that has shadows enabled[/b]. When you walk around the Tower, for example, you will find that many of the lights at the Tower actually don't cast shadows. That's because[b] the more lighting you have that casts shadows, the more time it will take for the engine to build the game[/b]. Now, for those of you who are still reading, thank you, and I'll explain more about how lighting works. In games there are mainly two types of lighting, [b]dynamic light[/b] and [b]static light[/b]. Dynamic light refers to any light source that will be moving and/or casting [b]dynamic shadows[/b] (moving shadows) at run-time(in real time). These lights are rendered in real time by the console. Players of Destiny will know these as the sun and moon that cast the primary direction light from the sky, who's light casts shadows for most of the items you see including the player. Of course, there are some smaller lights that are placed around the Tower and other locations in the game where you can find dynamic light. This is because [b]it's important to use dynamic light when possible to improve immersion when its benefits are not at the expense of too much rendering power[/b]. Its up to the design team to determine when and where those balances are held and when they fall. Now, obviously the most real lighting experience in any game would come from using all dynamic light. And right now, you might be thinking to yourself why don't they just use all dynamic lights. Well if they did that, there would be no way your console of choice could ever render anything in Destiny. So they find the happy medium that works best to optimize the game for the its chosen console/s. Now [b]if a light is dynamic and is casting dynamic shadows, it will only be casting dynamic shadows to objects (3d models) that have dynamic shadows enabled[/b]. This is another way to balance the use of the rendering power. For example, [b]player characters will always cast dynamic shadows from dynamic lights because they carry one of the most important roles in the game. They represent the player[/b]. However, some small rock on mars may not cast dynamic shadows simply because it's only going to be looked at in detail maybe 5% of the time you play. It really all depends on the relevance of the item in the game. Okay, I hope those reading are still following everything. I'm going to move into static lighting now. [b]Static lighting[/b] refers to any light source that is non movable / will never move / will not ever cast a dynamic shadow. These lights cast [b]static shadows[/b]. This is where we begin to affect game time builds with lighting. [b]Any static light that is used in any game must have their shadows "built" or "cooked" to the world / level[/b]. This can take time depending on how many items have to be built and depending on how large the world / level is. There can also be errors when building light which can result in time wasted and rebuilds. [b]The process of building static lighting and cooking the shadows is know as Lightmass in Unreal Engine 4.[/b] I'm not quite sure what they refer to it as at Bungie, but it's all the same process. Usually when a company like Bungie, Activision or any large game corporation needs to build Lightmass they use whats called a Light Building Farm. This is essentially a vast number of computers dedicated to processing the information to build the Lightmass. I know for example on a medium sized game level with under 100,000 items in the world in unreal engine 4 it can take my computer about 5 to 10 minutes to build the lighting when the entire level is set to use static lighting and shadows. I would assume that Destiny has upwards of a 750k to a million items in each streamed section of each planet and maybe even more. With most of them having some static shadows to cook it can add up to very long Lightmass build times. This is why[b] it's very important to find the balance between using dynamic shadows when you can and only using static shadows when you have to. It's also the reason why it's even more important to know when to cast shadows on items or not[/b]. With both lighting types you can always set items to not cast any shadows if those item aren't important enough to need them. So those small rocks on mars or shrubs in the Cosmodrome are prime candidates for no shadows as they don't really supply the immersion with much effect. But the lack of shadows from items such as old cars on Venus and buildings on the moon would have a huge impact on game immersion. [b]You can also set any very low impact lights to not cast any shadows whatsoever[/b]. This provides the game with small nuances in lighting without impacting Lightmass or real time rendering much at all. You can find these types of lights at the Tower on the stairs near where you spawn in and as you walk up toward the gunsmith. Now when discussing lighting [b]it's important to remember that any time you want to change something in the game world you will also need to test it in a non editor format[/b]. This requires you to do all that Lightmass building in order to see the real result. This is where Bungie might have issues with time management when developing new worlds and changing the current ones. [b]Once they do finish all the changes they must repackage any new patch information up for translating to the live game. Just doing this alone can take hours.[/b] [b]What this means for you as a player is that the longer it takes for Bungie to build their version of Lightmass in addition to the implementation of their designs, the longer you have to wait for new content to roll out[/b]. If a large portion of time is spent on building lighting and rebuilding lighting over and over for testing then it would seem like a good idea for Bungie to look into ways of overcoming their problems with either a larger build farm or an update to the engine, if they didn't completely build a new engine for Destiny from the beginning. These are the things that we will probably never know for sure about and can only speculate on. Lets hope that in D2 they bring it for real! For those of you who reached this point in my post I want to congratulate you and thank you for taking the time to complete my short game lighting training course. Give yourself a pat on the back, you are now educated on how lighting works in games, for the most part. Now go out there and enjoy the rest of your day!