Game Development Community

Shadows

by Dewaldt · in General Discussion · 11/25/2011 (9:34 am) · 1 replies

Basic Lighting - Great Performance. I load many objects & the engine feels @ home. The only down fall is that may objects / models don't have shadows on. (It don't show)

Advance Lighting - Poor Performance. I can't load many objects & the engine don't feel @ home. The good point is, it really does present great shadow effects.

Since I am making a real time strategy game, I'm forced to use basic lighting regard the performance of the game. Is there no code which I can use custom shadows? Suited for real time strategy game?
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Torque Owner 000
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#1
12/01/2011 (9:12 am)
For Advanced Lighting, PSSM Lighting/Shadows loves to chew up system resources and the more shader effects added to a scene (normal maps, etc.) the more draw calls and polygons are rendered, chewing up resources as well. Larger texture sizes also chew up a lot of resources as well.

You can adjust the Advanced Lighting settings by manipulating the Basic Sun (I don't recommend the Scatter Sky, as players won't be seeing it in your RTS and it's expensive on resources). Dropping the shadow map resolution (texSize), adjusting the shadow rendering distance (shadowDistance) and playing with the detailed shadow rendering distance to the camera (numSplit) will all help with performance (along with adjusting texture sizes and shader effects for your models and terrain). For lower shadow resolutions you can adjust the softness (shadowSoftness) so it won't be as blocky.

I love Advanced Lighting and all the bells and whistles T3D comes with, but I also want good performance on lower end machines. Playing with and adjusting these elements helped me achieve a good visual look along with good performance on older machines. Hopefully it'll help you as well.