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Possible silhouette shadows in JK2?


Lord_FinnSon

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Some of the screenshots we have already seen so far feature Quake 3 stencil shadows in use or either circle blobs under characters. While the former ones add a lot more depth into the scene(as you can see evidently in this screen from PC Gamer UK) and don't appear as silly as the latter ones, they seem to cause problems, when drawing on top of everything, even exposions and lightsaber. ChangKhan commented briefly about this issue in January by saying that it's "kind of the nature of them (for now) and they will not be the default shadow mode in the game." What I'm wondering now is: have Raven tried to do something to these "glitches" and will the game ship with an option allowing you to choose shadow mode(either circle or silhouette) or simply turn it off completely? Otherwise you would have to turn them on via a console command and problems would still be there...

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most of the time, when a game includes shadows, it does include an option to turn them off because of the somewhat high overhead involved in calculating them (depending on the nature of the rendering)

 

i would guess that they would have an option for turning off the shadow, but thats up to raven...

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I know that the games which utilize some sort of shadows also have option to turn them off. My point is that hopefully Raven have also included another shadow mode(s) besides obvious blob, because I personally am starting to get bored with that. I know, many gamers say that those characters would stick out from game environment even more, if there wasn't at least blobs underneath them(they aren't ghosts, you know?) and I have to agree with them. Still, after I played Vampire: The Masquerade from the first time, I have been wanting to see shadows to be realized like that and I happily admit that recently there have come more and more games which utilize this feature. Of course Raven can't do exactly "miracles" with their current technology and short development time they were given, but it's just sad to see awesome visuals and even more lifelike characters, which really tell that they have used time and effort to tweak them, but then be pulled back when you notice those blobs. They are like placeholders for something totally different that they only pretend to be.

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Yeah, FinnSon...I have to agree. You raise some good points about shadows there...and I'm a bit tired of blobs too. Especially when you look down and that's all you see...no feet, no legs...just shadow blobs. It's downright unsettling... ;)

 

I liked the shadows in Severance...nice wall-crawling things that help you to spot enemies...or give your own position away. The shadows in Rune were okay, too...reacting to the direction of the light, and stretching or shrinking as necessary.

 

I wouldn't even consider turning shadows off completely...it looks too odd.

 

I'm not so concerned over game speed in SP...I want to ramp up the graphics (including shadows) as much as possible to get the best immersion possible in the game. I know I'm going to have to knock some settings down for outdoor areas (at the moment, until I upgrade my graphics card), but realistic shadows can really help to make a game come alive. I think I'll be turning on proper character shadows, even if it means there are a few glitches elsewhere.

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The shadows in Severence were impressive. It was especially neat to throw a torch down a hallway past some knights that were coming at you.

 

The one thing I've noticed is that when I turn off shadows, I really only miss them for a few minutes. After that I'm too focused on the action to remember how much better it would look with good shadows. I thought the shadows in the screenshots are alright (not the blobs), a few problems here or there won't bother me.

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