[Ulala]

Amazing, can't wait to see this feature fully implemented.

[F1gm3nt]

Good Job man, I'm just simply awestruck. I get very little slow down ~4-5 fps but since that brings me down to ~60 it's worth it IMHO. Any how keep up the good work.

[übermetroid]

Here is a cool idea....  Will a clocked ship cast a shadow?  Because if it did block out the sun that could lead for some really scary moments...  (Like when everything goes dark for no reason and a cap. ship unclocks...)

[Forinec]

. . . Or if an evil-looking Sathanas-shaped shadow suddenly moves over an unsuspecting GTVA destroyer . . .

[Sandwich]

Cloaked ships casting shadows = uber-wrong.

[Fury]

When Bobboau is going to commit shadow code to CVS?

[karajorma]

Based on what he said he has to write it first.

What we've seen this time was mearly an experiment to see what could be done and how.

[Ransom]

Originally posted by Sandwich
Cloaked ships casting shadows = uber-wrong.

It may be completely scientifically demented, but I think the effect would be awesome, as long as shadows couldn't be cast on cloaked ships and they don't cast shadows on themselves...

[WMCoolmon]

For Bobboau's cloaking code, I don't think it would be. I don't know much about optics but I don't think a ship could cast the same amount of light as a sun, in most cases, to cover up its shadow.

[Gregster2k]

I'd like to see that as an option in ships.tbl...e.g.

$Cloaking Device: Yes
                 +Type: SmallKBOP
             +Opacity: 25.0 (percentage of how much you CAN see the ship even while cloaked)
 +Cloak Duration: 45.0 (seconds that cloak can be active before it automatically shuts down)
+Cloak Fadetime On: 0.5 (how long it takes for the ship to reach full cloaking)
+Cloak Fadetime Off: 1.0 (how long it takes for the ship to return to normal appearance upon cloak disengaging)
          +Weapons: Disabled - ability (or none thereof) to fire whilst cloaked
  +Casts Shadow: No - the casting of a shadow, while cloaked, on other ships*

*--- Be cool that if Casts Shadow were on and Opacity were changed that the shadow could be changed to be translucent if the ship is...I'd like to see the types as separate effects named in a separate new cloak.tbl file....example stock ones would be Small and Large Klingon Bird of Prey Effect (default) and Small and Large Wing Commander Fadeout or something =P (small and large meaning slightly different effects for capships and fighters) but whatever.

[Unknown Target]

I played the shadows on my:

P4 2.4ghz
256 Megs of RAM
Geforce 4 Ti4600
Windows XP

with the Bablyon 5 mod enabled. While I was playing the Bab 5 mod, I had pretty much NO slowdown.

[Trivial Psychic]

Originally posted by Gregster2k
I'd like to see that as an option in ships.tbl...e.g.

$Cloaking Device: Yes
                 +Type: SmallKBOP
             +Opacity: 25.0 (percentage of how much you CAN see the ship even while cloaked)
 +Cloak Duration: 45.0 (seconds that cloak can be active before it automatically shuts down)
+Cloak Fadetime On: 0.5 (how long it takes for the ship to reach full cloaking)
+Cloak Fadetime Off: 1.0 (how long it takes for the ship to return to normal appearance upon cloak disengaging)
          +Weapons: Disabled - ability (or none thereof) to fire whilst cloaked
  +Casts Shadow: No - the casting of a shadow, while cloaked, on other ships*

*--- Be cool that if Casts Shadow were on and Opacity were changed that the shadow could be changed to be translucent if the ship is...I'd like to see the types as separate effects named in a separate new cloak.tbl file....example stock ones would be Small and Large Klingon Bird of Prey Effect (default) and Small and Large Wing Commander Fadeout or something =P (small and large meaning slightly different effects for capships and fighters) but whatever.

I proposed something similar to this when cloaking was being discussed a few months ago.  Since the plan has always been to include cloaks in with the planned Tertiary (weapons) system, then a separate table file would be created, that would encompass all tertiary devices, including cloaks.  It would make it very useful for campaign and moders to have the power to say what properties and disadvantages a cloak will have on its target system, not to mention the advantages for expanding into non-Freespace (universe) mods.  Unfortunately, tertiary implimentation has always been just beyond the horizon in coming features.  I hope we can get all of this graphical stuff out of the way so these enhancements can be incorporated.

Later!

[übermetroid]

Bobboau, any chance you could make a shadow build that included all the latest SCP stuff too?  I really like playing with the shadows, but I want all the new SCP things too....

[Deepblue]

Ditto.

[Turambar]

and put in the code for a new shadow model, because looking at the hi-poly fenris with shadows slows down my 6800GT

it doesn't like to be slowed down

[übermetroid]

Originally posted by Turambar
and put in the code for a new shadow model, because looking at the hi-poly fenris with shadows slows down my 6800GT

it doesn't like to be slowed down

How much does it slow down?  My 5600 runs it just fine...  Not at 120 fps, but still ok.

[Lightspeed]

code for the shadow model = vital.

We can't really afford any performance to go waste. (and Bob explicitely said it's problematic with hi-poly models)

[Turambar]

yeah, perf-loss=bad

if i can play farcry on full settings smoothly with all the cool shadows and such, why not FS?

[Lightspeed]

'cause the code is inefficient as hell.

When the FS2 engine was originally developed, nobody imagined THIS.

It will take a long time, if ever possible, for the SCP team to rewrite enough of the engine to warrant the same performance possible with games especially written for modern features.

[übermetroid]

So we got to wait for FE?