RuneLite HD mod for ‘Old School Runescape’ gets major lighting upgrade


The recently released HD mod for third-party Old School Runescape client, RuneLite, just got a major lighting upgrade.

Announced on the Patreon page for RuneLite HD, the Linear Space upgrade by the modder known as 117 will change how light is calculated in the game. As explained by 117, “previously, lighting was applied to colours in gamma colour space. Now, colours are converted to linear space before lighting is applied, then the result is converted back to gamma space before being displayed on the screen.”

A before and after of RuneLite HD. Image credit: 117/Jagex
A before and after of RuneLite HD. Image credit: 117/Jagex

“This new method is physically accurate and should produce more natural-looking lighting, instead of the odd, high contrast, washed out lighting that would often give things a plastic-y appearance. All lighting had to be updated to facilitate this change, so be aware that there will be some places and things that look worse than before the update.”

The update also fixed some “major visual bugs” while using the RuneLite HD plugin, but requires a restart before it will take effect.

Several other changes were implemented, all of which can be read about via the RuneLite HD Patreon page. The plugin was released earlier this month, after the creator negotiated its release with Jagex, the owners of Runescape.

Some controversy initially arose when Jagex allegedly told 117 that the mod, which had been in the works for “approximately 2000 hours of work over two years”, needed to be cancelled because the studio has its own graphical improvement mod that is “relatively early in the exploration stages”.

Jagex later walked back their statement, saying it had begun “actively exploring options on how we can work together to offer 117’s plug-in as a bridge until our own version is ready for release”.

117 later confirmed that “discussions with Jagex have been fruitful and we have reached an agreement that I am personally very happy with.”

In other news, Dolby Vision is now available for Xbox Series X|S consoles.