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)
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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.
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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.
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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).