We have changed the underwater lighting to match the lighting conditions above the water. Previously, the underwater color (as specified in Studio under the option Workspace -> Terrain -> WaterColor) would always be used regardless of if it was daytime or nighttime. This resulted in the water being overly bright at night.
To improve realism and cohesion of the world, we have added a function which will automatically match the lighting conditions with the time of day. You can still select the water color, but the intensity will now be automatically adjusted based on what time it is in-game (Workspace -> Lighting -> TimeOfDay)
Here’s an example (using the Pirate template) of the lighting changing from day time to night time:
It is important to note that if you already have an underwater scene at night, the environment might become a lot darker than before, possibly affecting gameplay. The ambient factor is used under water to limit this effect so, similarly to normal lighting conditions (above water), setting a higher ambient value makes the scene brighter overall and easier to see.
We have tested this with some games and did not notice any objectionable effects related to game play, mostly because they already used a relatively high ambient lighting value for night time scenes.
In addition to improving the realism of the world, this feature could also be used to add an extra eerie element to your game where the water is darker at night and visibility is more limited. If you equip a diver with a point light you can get an effect that looks something like this:
However, we would like to get your feedback to make sure we do not break your gameplay once this is rolled out. Please let us know if you foresee any major issues with this feature change.