I'm extremely happy that we finally have interior lights but wow are they abysmal in detail. Is there something to adjust the quality of shadows for placed lights? I have here two pics of the same model with the same light placement. One is in GG the other is in FPSC ( I know I shouldn't compare the two but I expect GG to be superior) If not is this improving with the new dx11 lighting system or is that already implemented in the latest release? The sunlight in GG has very decent shadows compared to the disembodied blobs tossed on walls with the placed static lights.

Lightmapper will be getting a overhaul, how it will be addressed and changes made has yet to be seen, I would closely monitor the blog, I personally will be watching it...

If you send me your model to (lee@thegamecreators.com) I can also run the lightmapper and see what can be done for the next few updates. We do have some internal settings for lightmap quality, and some of them are exposed in SETUP.INI but it will be interesting to see if there are any issues that are preventing a better baked light result. Thanks for the side by side!

I'm not sure if Lee can confirm this but once we have DX11 incorporated will there be any need for the lightmapper ?

Could all this be handled by the DX11 implementation ?

Great! That's what I was wanting to know, (dx 11 implementation).


That's what I was looking for. Since FPSC and GG share a similar file structure, I was hoping to adjust those settings and get better quality but I didn't see them in the INI.

I'll definitely send the model your way. Keep in mind I placed the lightsource just above the ground in front of the rails to get a good dramatic test. This is just the first of my enterable Western models that will be going up in the GG store soon. I'd be honored to have you use it in testing DX11.

wait, do you say placed lights now cast shadows?
in realtime????

After dx11 upgrade, there is the differed rendering of lights Lee is working on. This would negate the need for the lightmapper, and all lights would cast shadows then.

In theory.

I believe Lee is implementing a system whereby interior lights will cast realtime shadows by switching off shadows for lights which are not visible or something like that. I agree the default static lightmap quality is poor compared with the realtime shadows so I'm also hoping for a full functional realtime lighting solution with the DX11 update.

Can anyone confirm what setup.ini command improves the lightmap quality. I can only see the ones listed below:

Hey Nomad Soul. They are there but they are not working at the moment. I suspect that they will be functional after the dx11 upgrade after the start of the new year.

Thanks. I'm looking forward to seeing what can be achieved with the DX11 upgrade and hopefully Lee will give this the same rigor as the performance update.

I have attached the result of the lightmapper on higher settings (new functionality for GameGuru in the next update) with the shack, and I think it looks pretty good. The new SETUP.INI fields will be:



lightmappingquality=500 where this means 5.0 quality which tries to create a high quality shadow
lightmappingblurlevel=100 where this means a standard blurring pass of 1.0, you can increase this for more blurry shadows
lightmappingsizeterrain=2048 where this is the texture size for lightmaps used by the terrain
lightmappingsizeentity=512 where this is the texture size for lightmaps used by the entities

As to the issue of real-time shadows everywhere, you need to understand that there is a cost to multiple shadows in real-time and you normally need a nice card to run these effects. We will be keeping the light-mapper as it's a good pre-pass baking system that can be expanded for other needs such as calculating radiance maps, but also because you will still need lightmapping for games that target very low-end hardware and in the future, mobile devices that will be playing catch-up to the GPU powerhouses we are used to these days.

For my DX11 shadow effect, I am planning three shadow types (directional, point and spot), and each will be used for specific defaults such as direct for outdoor sun shadows, point and spot for indoor shadow cast from a single light source and spot for the flashlight when activated. As only a single shadow will ever be in effect, it will transition between the real-time rendering of the shadow as you pass from outdoor to indoor, and if you activate the flashlight. I know you want a many shadow solution, but you will not be able to avoid the performance hit, which we not only want to protect but actually increase with our DX11 work.

If anyone can recommend some YouTube video links of Steam games that use multiple real-time shadows (AT ONCE), that also runs on a minimum specification graphics card that scores under 800 on PassMark, please send it to me and I shall stand corrected

There are actualy many games that use full dynamic shadows and run with Passmark score below 800, because there are also more factors (example draw distance, LOD, polygon count, antialiasing, reflections, ambient occlusion...)
For example Battlefield Bad Company 2 use full dynamic shadows on any setting and is running at playable FPS with Core 2 Duo 1,7 GhZ and Geforce G210M (on low settings).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDcl5cyXMB0
However, at low setting, the shadows are very blocky.

Another games that use them and runs well on low-spec PCs are:
Just Cause 2
Medal of Honor 2010
Call of Duty 2
Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare
Call of Duty World at War
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
Call of Duty MW3
Call of Duty Black Ops 2
Besiege
Turbo Dismount
Far Cry 2
Serious Sam HD
Serious Sam 3 BFE
Slender The Arrival
Gothic 3
and many others...

I played almost all of those games on Mobility Radeon HD 5650 (passmark score 712) above 30 FPS.

Excited now. Thanks Lee.

Call of Duty 2 doesnt have multiple dynamic shadows, and the level archticture uses pre-baked shadows, too. As the former CM and later Producer of the Gothic series on the publkisher side I have also to point out that Gothic 3 did much of its stuff due to some Piranha Bytes Voodoo, and today it does much of what it does good because of moders improving it heavily all the time, I can only worship those but I cannot demand that to be reproduced by anyone else

Even Unreal 4.X uses a combination of pre-baked shadow maps and dynamic lights & shadows. If you have a map with many light sources, especially intersecting ones, and then switch them all to full dynamic, you have to ask NASA for one of their systems to run it fluently.

However, you are right, many games (not only AAA, also several indies) created within the last 5 - 8 years usually can handle shadows casted from 3 - 4 light sources at once. It´s simply a must have, not a nice-to-have feature; to have at least 2 different shadows casted by an object if lit by two different light sources (not takign into account prebaked). A good example for such a situation would be a room in which you have a strong ceiling light in bright white and then a smaller lantern on a table next to a chair. The chair would have of course two shadows then.

If it doesnt, the players perception will always tell him / her that there is something wrong, at least on a subliminal level. It´s the same with the "flashlight" we have now, it is useful and the priamry effect isnt bad, but it FEELS somehow wrong, and after some minutes (or sometimes even hours) every player notices "Frakk, it doesnt cast any shadows" - this is especially when you lit a ladder or somethign lese close to a wall that would cast a signature shadow.

You are talking about my card.
Nice shadows, I hope all those features being reserverd just for top cards, will be optatives, so you can use then if you want/can do it.

3com

I checked out the YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDcl5cyXMB0) and I could not see two shadows cast from different light sources. Can you tell me the timecode in the video where it shows two shadows. Also, if anyone else can post a YouTube link showing multiple shadows that runs on GameGuru minimum specification machines then for me, seeing is believing and I will accept the possibility that it's possible.

It's probably not the best use of my time to play "Just Cause 2, Medal of Honor 2010, Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare, Call of Duty World at War, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty MW3, Call of Duty Black Ops 2, Besiege, Turbo Dismount, Far Cry 2, Serious Sam HD, Serious Sam 3 BFE, Slender The Arrival, Gothic 3" but if someone can show me a video of any of these casting multiple shadows, I can then dig out (or buy) the game and I can take a closer look on my system (and my laptop too).

As Ertlov states, there are MANY situations where a pre-baked shadow gives the impression of multiple shadow sources, but there is usually only one dynamic source when casting a real-time shadow on low-end systems. In the YouTube video referenced at the top, you'll noticed how the developers had to reduce the shadows to large blocks to get the pass done quickly. There is no way they would add a second shadow pass on LOW settings (I suspect).

Now if we are talking about multiple shadows for HIGH settings in your game, then we can have a conversation about how we might go about this and what limitations we can agree on. As a starting point, a nice YouTube video of multiple shadows in an FPS style setting would be some good eye candy to talk over. Thanks for the continued feedback, I think this is a good and critical subject!

OMG, next week is going to spring me into a new level of production! These types of shadows are what I've been waiting for to create a truly atmospheric game. This will give me so much more control over the mood of my environment.

I think 1 dynamic light for the shadows on LOW (and even medium?) is fine (mainly the flash light needs this effect when it's in use),

but multiple real time shadows should be possible for higher settings (such as a swinging light and the flashlight both casting moving shadows at once)

Yes, this is what I am getting at. If we have our GG games running in realtime and not using pre-baked shadows, we will need dynamic shadow casting from multiple light sources anyway, as the sunlight casts shadows as well as our own light sources do. However, I believe the effect is good enough with two lightsources being taken into consideration for shadow casting based on their "dominance", with the flashlight being the strongest one except for surfaces that are hit by direct sunlight.

Edit: I guess I stand corrected here. I took a look at the Metro Last Light and even there the maximum of light sources casting dynamic shadows is 2. I also took a look at our own Painkiller Resurrection game to see how we handled it there, and there it is POSSIBLE to have multiple dynamic light sources casting shadows, but only with the rockets fired from the rocket launcher (thus only possible in Multiplayer or when fighting a boss shooting rockets) or many Mr. Molotov grenades exploding at once, and both takes a heavy toll on FPS.

So I guess, two is the key number here. However, we need our own lights casting shadows really bad, at the moment, in realtime, none of our placed light sources do.

It should only be necessary to have 2 lights casting dynamic shadows at once. 1 for a scene light (e.g. sun or interior) and 1 for the flashlight.

In Doom 3 the designers were advised to only have 1 shadow casting light as the focal point in each area which could be a swinging light or a primary light source on the wall etc with smaller lights which don't cast shadows as fillers. It was also very important not to have any lights intersect with each other as this would multiply the calculations required. They made it so characters had self shadows but do not cast shadows on each other (only geometry) for performance reasons.

I would be very happy with a system which supports 2 shadow casting lights but there should be a flag to enable / disable shadows for the flashlight as I don't think that is essential. The flashlight in Doom 3 did not cast shadows without mods and it worked well enough.

So in summary I vote for a single light casting shadows for low / medium settings and 2 shadow casting lights for high setting with an option to enable / disable shadows for the flashlight.

Lee - Great work on the static lightmapping. This will actually be a useful feature now and looking forward to the update. You might also want to consider a system which transitions from baked shadows to realtime shadows based on the player distance as this was used in Unity and I thought it worked rather well.

Since we can control the light mapper quality in the next update, what would be the chances of the skyspec.txt file settings working? Not scrolling sky yet,

;GrimmNight
;SUNLIGHT DIRECTION VECTOR
SunDirection = 50,50,100 <--- Works now
;SUNLIGHT STRENGH MULTIPLIER (DEFAULT 100)
SunStrength = 1 <-------- ******* Does not appear to work no matter the setting sun is very bright.
;SUN COLOR (RGB)
SunColor = 250,1,1 <-------- Works now
;SUN ROTATION
SunRotation = 113 <-------- Works now
;SKYSCROLL SPEED <-------- Were disable back in Reloaded.
SkyScrollX = 10
SkyScrollZ = 10


Thanks