Devs, can't y u make game graphics scale better? Shadows

pando83

Long story short, i was wondering if the devs might change some things to make the game scale better, when it comes to graphics.

The biggest difference in game look and atmosphere, is when you change the shadows from "Medium" to "off". The "Low" option was removed a couple of modules ago, but it does not matter since it still removed all environmental shadows.
I don't know a thing about programming, so i'm just asking this:

Isn't it possible to change the shadows "off" option (no shadows at all) with a "low" option that actually at least places ENVIRONMENTAL STATIC SHADOWS (drawn by the environmental artist like in old old games?) to preserve the overall look of the game? You would get rid of dynamic shadows and character shadows, but at least place static shadows on the environment, so it will still look decent at lower settings.

I know it's not an issue and there's more important stuff to do in the game. But if, by chance, in a future module the devs would take the time to place static shadows on the environment, it would be nice. Would help the game to scale better, so that at lower settings instead of "no shadows at all" we would have at least static shadows on the environment.

What do you think?

hotfrostworm

I am not a developer, but I do understand rendering shadows. In the "older games" some programs used fake shadows on the static maps. An example of fake shadows (Shadow Mapping) can be found in many games. Since the sun doesn't move and time will never change a set of alpha maps are layered to make shadows of buildings and trees appear at the same angle all the time. They might use this for Neverwinter, I don't know, because I am not one of the creators.



Games that use "real" shadows fire a ray of light off from a fictional light source in 3D space. This light can be any color, white light for the brightest to orange for a campfire or torch. Then using your graphics card math processor, it calculates in real time what angle and shape the shadow should appear when the ray is blocked by the target. The more light sources you have the more rays are fired finding all the 3D targets and casting multiple shadows. The effect is very realistic but the the process chews up GPU clock cycles.

The fast dirty method is to pre-render all the shadows in the game, so you get perfect shadows all the time, but then there is no option to turn the shadows off. This also removes the time to layer shadow maps, freeing up the GPU clock. If you are telling me they removed the option, I suspect this is exactly what they did. The textures would have the shadows burnt into them and since there is no movement from the sun the shadows are just optical illusions.

nitocris83

Hi @pando83 ! Let me check with people who would actually know about this and see if I can get an answer for you