Strange Lighnings

Floodinator

<div class="IPBDescription">Dark Places a bad place to hide?</div>The distance from a Player to a Qbject determinds how much you can see. I really dont like it and I am sure they work on it but its sometimes really extreme.

The best example if found for this was on Triad22

<img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-XWdEAhMBGNQ/Tjer0_hdbhI/AAAAAAAAAKk/fGKxRh28fEA/s1600/2011-08-02_00001.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />

At this Pic I am standing really close to the door not a bad place to hide seem dark enough!

<img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-dkVrpp6c5kU/TjeoHI4xujI/AAAAAAAAAKA/VIK9LVmz9I8/s1600/2011-08-02_00002.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />

And thats what the Marine around 5m away sees. A really bright place.


Things like that you see often in the other Maps to (f.e. Corridor from MS to Flight).
Or popping up Shadows from nowhere but only where you actually stand and only you can see them.
Is it possible to set a wider AOS so that the shadows can be seen as soon at it is possible not just when standing in front of em?

twiliteblue

What you are observing is because the default shadow setting (r_shadowsfade) is set to true to improve graphic performance. If you set it to false, all visible light will cast the correct shadows, at the cost of rendering speed.

wulf 21

I'm pretty sure that there is an option for mappers to make special lights like this always cast shadows. Maybe the maker of triad should do that.

Floodinator

<!--quoteo(post=1865648:date=Aug 2 2011, 08:57 AM:name=twiliteblue)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (twiliteblue @ Aug 2 2011, 08:57 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1865648"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->What you are observing is because the default shadow setting (r_shadowsfade) is set to true to improve graphic performance. If you set it to false, all visible light will cast the correct shadows, at the cost of rendering speed.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Tyvm! Now they stay and I don't even lose 1 FPS!

pSyk0mAn

That's probably because there is only that one shadowcasting spot light visible.

When you have bigger rooms with multiple shadow casting light spots, they really screw your fps, if the ones farther away don't fade into non-shadow casting light spots.
There are usually plenty of light spots that don't necessarily cast a nice shadow on the scene, but are still set to shadow casting to have player/structure shadows.

There is an option for shadow casting lights, which enables the mapper to kinda set the range where and when these lights start to fade into no-shadow mode. The actual range of that light also contributes to that matter (before the option was introduced, mappers used huge range on lights so they don't fade away).

For the moment, one has to be careful with this option and put performance over visual quality.
As long as there are not that many shadow casting lights, it's no problem to give them a huge fade out value, like in Crevice or Alien Start in Summit, for example, where you can't just have the sun fade out and fully lit the whole location, when you are outside the entrances looking across the room.

But I can clearly see some issues with gameplay, when players can get an advantage out of lower video settings. There are a lot of issues tied to brightness and video settings anyway, but I'd say that's pretty normal for that stage of a game.

Floodinator

Is it posdible to handle the shadows with the Dynamic Occlusion Culling so it won't get rendered when not in LOS?

fmpone

Hiding in shadows is not a viable strategy. Here's why: some players can disable the shadow effect, and then you're not standing in a shadow, you're standing in a spotlight.

The only solution is to make shadows cheap to render and force them on

NurEinMensch

Engine should cast light and not cast shadow. ;P