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This latest build needs the '-fence' commandline flag to do the tracing through fence textures. But without that, a func_illusionary with _shadow 1 should cast a solid shadow
no... again my bad... I kept saving jam5_scampie.map and not saving as jam5_scampie_16.map which is what I was compiling... *headdesk*
Added shadows to the func_illusionary hanging vines compared to the released version... the differences here are subtle. It's all in the details, you can get some nice crisp shadows, and in some cases that really pops and is noticeable... but often the subtle nice differences in the lightmap are lost when mixed with textures. Again, -extra and -soft, the
area1, lit, textured area1, lit, lightmap area1, lit2, textured area1, lit2, lightmap area2, lit, textured area2, lit, lightmap area2, lit2, textured area2, lit2, lightmap area3, lit, textured area3, lit, lightmap area3, lit2, textured area3, lit2, lightmap area4, lit, textured area4, lit, lightmap area4, lit2, textured area4, lit2, lightmap area5, lit, textured area5, lit, lightmap area5, lit2, textured area5, lit2, lightmap Basically... not sure it's worth an extra ~25mb of download for general use. There's some nice treats and bonuses here and there, but unless you're doing some really detailed shadow casting, it may not be worth it?
My maps and lighting style may be a bad example though, I tend to light and make bright highlights rather than cool shadows due to the low res nature of Quake's light maps Thanks for the comparisons Scampie.
It's entire possible this isn't really a useful feature for quake's visuals, or at least for most maps. I guess the main thing it gives you is the ability to have harder edge shadows without stairsteps. e.g. for sunlight casting an angled shadow, with the default resolution, you have to blur quite a lot to get rid of the stairsteps. So the problem may be, the harder edged shadows may not be desirable anyway. Regarding file size, the optimal way to use this is just enabling it on brushes that need the higher res, and this will both shrink the I will make sure that all my maps are minimum 16x res shadows...
I wont play by your rules!!!! Like I said, don't call this a bust or anything yet. I'd approach my lighting differently if every/most things had crisp shadows, because I'd want to highlight those more often rather than the ugly blobs we currently have and use a bunch of blurring to make look passable.
are there any quake maps that actually use cast shadows really well? We should test on those. I'm thinking like, dm2 and dm4 have a lot of shadows behind grates and stuff.
here's DM2, compiled with -extra4 -soft -dirty -dirtscale 1.5 -dirtgain 0.9 -lightmapscale 0.25 (4x resolution)
area1, lit, textured area1, lit, lightmap area1, lit2, textured area1, lit2, lightmap area2, lit, textured area2, lit, lightmap area2, lit2, textured area2, lit2, lightmap area3, lit, textured area3, lit, lightmap area3, lit2, textured area3, lit2, lightmap area4, lit, textured area4, lit, lightmap area4, lit2, textured area4, lit2, lightmap Obviously DM2 wasn't made with this in mind, but I think this does show were some of the higher resolution lightmaps can make a big difference. just tried to compile dm2 at 16x with all those settings...15min compile to make a 93mb
I was testing fte with a 173mb lit2 before I started messing with projected lights.
(side note: xz compessed it to 14mb, so if you can cope with the load times then its not completely impractical to distribute, just use 7z or xz instead of zip or gz - assuming lit2 was a finalized file format anyway) Wait dont we have area lights support in these compilers? If so then you can have sharp bases for the lights that widen out and look super sweet with this new resolution.
http://area.autodesk.com/userdata/forum/3/3dsmax_viewport_shadows.jpg Not going to bother with 2x. That goal isn't 'find a compromise where higher resolution and American McGee's lighting from 1996 looks good'. The goal is to make a high resolution lighting system, and make THAT look good.
I disagree. I don't like the 16x lighting. The hard edges and sharp shadows don't look good to me. What I'm looking for is a 2X, maybe a 3x, improvement in resolution. That would give me what I need to make Quake levels look better than they do today while still retaining the look that makes them work.
I came to the conclusion that either 2x or 4x could be the new standard for modern mappers. I'm certainly going to map with this in mind.
I think one of the factors making the DM2 shots look bad is the unnatural approach id took to lighting back then, using multiple lights to represent light from the sky as this screenshot taken at Scampie's location 3 indicates - http://puu.sh/hVGCZ/4ed3224645.jpg (taken with DarkPlaces and r_editlights 1 for the sake of convenience).
As a result, you get shadows being cast in several different directions, in a location where one sees a sky above and no other light source and thus expects all shadows to be cast in the same direction. Consequently it ends up looking weird when they aren't. This wasn't quite so prominent with lower lightmap resolution. I think of all the screenshots Scampie took, the one at location 4 looks best, and that's not surprising since there is only a single light source there - http://puu.sh/hVH6K/089cd1541c.jpg - and thus it looks more realistic. However, as others have said, even in location 4 there is the issue of the shadows looking unnaturally sharp a la Doom 3 and the increased resolution can produce that old problem of better quality media appearing dissonant with the low fidelity of most of the game. Nonetheless, ericw, I think once people have worked out what combination of compile options works best for a given scenario, this will be a really nice feature and I wouldn't be discouraged by the mixed results so far.
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