So what about some shadows eh?

ben0413

I had touched slightly on shadows in my post about muzzle flashes.  I have talked to some people at Valve and Half-Life does NOT have the ability to do shadows, although the Blue-Shift pack did.  Valve stated that it was taken out of the code, no reason was stated however.  To see them in Blue-Shift, however, you CAN type "r_shadows 1" in the console.

So on to my actual question...

Will NS be able to adapt this shadow technology for a later release or has there really been any talk about?

DOOManiac

the reason shadows, which used to be in half-life, were removed is because 90% of players didn't now about them, and the 10% that did only used em to see people coming around corners and whatnot. it offered an unfair advantage to those that knew there were shadows.

the shadows themsleves look like crap anyway :P

JasonBostwick

If I recall correctly, the shadows in HL/BS were just sprites that had no regard for the amount of lighting/angle of the light. It gives off a rather cheap affect, I think, and to get realistic ones it would probably not be worth the time it took to code them.

KungFuSquirrel

They were actually just a flattened model attached to the ground. <!--emo&:p--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':p'><!--endemo--> You could make out flickering polygons in a few cases.

It was kinda cool, but more of an effect for single player than multiplayer. I wasn't aware that Blue Shift had re-incorporated them, though, I'll have to give that a go. <!--emo&:)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'><!--endemo-->

BedwettingType

The framerate drop was a joke, too.  Even GLQuake did it better than HL.

<b>Multiplayer exploits aside,</b> it wouldn't be worth it to bring the Half-Life shadows back, unless they were affected by light sources, i.e. stretching out and being cast on walls.  But that would require some good hardware, so it's more of a DOOM 3 thing.