Shadow Volumes

[Parallax]

I think blockland should have Shadow Volumes.

[Ad Bot]

[BluetoothBoy]

Wat.

[Parallax]

Wat.

It's a method of extruding polygons, and anything within those extruded polygons have their illumination lowered, creating a shadow effect.
Pixel-perfect too.

It would be perfect because Blockland is a very low-poly game, so it shouldn't be hard to implement such a feature that utilizes polygons.

[Filipe]

I would love to see this

[Halmet]

Agree with the author of this topic. Also, i don't know about this method, thanks! :]

[Dexxtter]

would it be less intensive

[Parallax]

would it be less intensive

I think so.
I mean Thief: Deadly Shadows and Deus Ex: Invisible War have shadow volumes and these games came out in 2003-2004, and Doom 3 came out in 2004.

[Crispy_]

But Blockland has to be able to render 200000+ objects, including vehicles and players. Those games likely only have to render 100 max, including objects that never move.

[Parallax]

But Blockland has to be able to render 200000+ objects, including vehicles and players. Those games likely only have to render 100 max, including objects that never move.

I know, non-moving objects like bricks could be marked as static so any dynamic shadow being casted by it will not recalculate it's position even though it's not moving.

Objects that enter the shadow (like Players) will cause recalculation.

Perhaps players could tag bricks as static, too. Great for stuff like furniture.

Better Idea
Lights could receive these tags, instead.
A shadow volume light tagged as static will not update, a shadow volume light tagged as dynamic will not update unless something moving enters it's light, a shadow volume light tagged as always update will update every frame.
Maybe there could even be smart lights that stop updating when they stop moving, like a lightbulb swinging around.


Combine both the ability to tag bricks and lights, and people could really customize.

Maybe people can control the lights like in the environment window.