[Guide] Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Hello Brick Mania, just recently I started playing Minecraft again. On the dusk of my first night, I noticed how bright the nighttime was; I could see the entire region with almost full visibility!
  I looked around the MC forums for a mod to make nights darker, but I only found outdated mods or ones that were complicated to my returning MC modder brain. So I rooted around in the game settings, and found that reducing the gamma to -0.5 in the options.txt file makes the game refreshingly dark in areas that should have almost no visibility. (Note that this cannot be done while Minecraft is open)


1) Open the .minecraft folder (Google it if you don't know how)
2) Open the options.txt file at the bottom
3) Change gamma: 1.0 (Or whatever numerical value it is at the time) to gamma: -0.5
3a) It should look like this: gamma: -0.5
4) Click File > Save
5) Start up Minecraft and assure that it is working.

 It may seem like a minor change, but try it out! Cave diving is slow and suspenseful, you'll never want to be caught outside at night, and it can all be done without any modding; it's fully vanilla! It works in multiplayer as well, if that's what you fancy. If you don't like it, you can change it back instantly by wiggling the brightness setting a bit.



Screenshots: (Coterie Craft Texture Pack, MC 1.7.9)
Comparisons (Taken at slightly different times and angles, unfortunately.

Default

Negative Gamma

Default

Negative Gamma


General Screenshots
Break of dawn; right before zombies start burning.

Sunset (First image has some odd tearing, sorry.)


Getting back to my house after being lost


Ambushed by a skeleton and Witch that I couldn't see in the darkness on my way back, I ran inside before I was killed


Get used to seeing red eyes peering out from the darkness








If you want, you can set the gamma even lower for a stupidly dark experience, but I find that -0.5 is perfect for those looking for perfect darkness; experiment!

Unfortunately, this can be the cause some odd lighting glitches in water; I'm not sure if that vanilla or because of the negative gamma.



Tell me if you like it, and show us some screenshots!

Jeez, that really is dark. I already have enough trouble with nighttime in Minecraft as is, I doubt I could handle that lol.

Yeah it gets crazy dark if you're caught outside at night time. One time I was trying to bring two chickens across a large desert and night fell, it was pretty ridiculous! It's pretty cool though when you have the Dynamic Lights mod and you're trying to find your way home with nothing but a torch to light up about 7 blocks around you

Stickied and Brick'd

Thanks

Thanks Goth, I'm glad you liked it!

i wanted to post this picture

this topic seemed fitting

Basically sums up the entire post right there.