Pitch Dark
Experience true, unforgiving darkness.
Pitch Dark is a hardcore lighting overhaul for Minecraft 1.20.1 Forge. Vanilla Minecraft's nights and caves are often "bright" enough to navigate with your eyes closed—Pitch Dark changes that by enforcing realistic, pitch-black environments where light isn't just a convenience; it's survival.
Key Features
True Black Environments: Unlit caves and moonless nights are now genuinely pitch black. High-gamma settings and "fullbright" cheats are rendered useless by a custom rendering mixin that strips away ambient light in the dark.
Desaturated World (Grayscale): As the light fades, so does the vibrancy. In dark areas, the world loses its color, shifting into a haunting grayscale aesthetic that heightens the sense of dread and isolation.
Personal Visibility Radius: Even in the deepest void, you aren't completely blind. You carry a subtle "internal glow" that allows you to see blocks in your immediate vicinity (default: 5 blocks).
The Wall of Shadows: Beyond your visibility radius lies a wall of impenetrable black fog. No more sniping mobs from the safety of the dark—nothing is visible until it enters your small circle of light.
Hidden Celestial Bodies: By default, the sun and moon are hidden from view, creating a truly disorienting and immersive darkness experience. You'll need to rely on other cues to track time.
Configuration
After running the game once, a config file will be generated at
pitchdark-common.toml
. You can customize the following settings:
# Intensity of the darkness. 1.0 is pitch black, 0.0 is vanilla lighting
intensity = 0.6
# The radius around the player where blocks are visible (in blocks)
# Set to 0 to disable the visibility radius entirely
radius = 5.0
# Whether to show the sun and moon in the sky
# Set to true to restore celestial bodies, false for maximum immersion
showSunMoon = false
Recommended Presets:
Hardcore Mode: intensity = 1.0, radius = 3.0, showSunMoon = false
Balanced: intensity = 0.6, radius = 5.0, showSunMoon = false (default)
Atmospheric: intensity = 0.4, radius = 8.0, showSunMoon = true
Vanilla+: intensity = 0.2, radius = 16.0, showSunMoon = true
Compatibility
Designed to work with vanilla rendering. Note: Shader packs may override some of this mod's custom lighting effects.
Technical Details
Version: 1.20.1
Loader: Forge
Side: Client-side only (can be installed on servers, but only affects players who have it installed)
