Shadows (and/or Shaders) have no intentional gaming use at our current state

[Trogtor]

Introduction
Ever since the Shadows and Shaders update. Blockland has become extremely beautiful and more progressive. This has nothing to do with the update itself which brought a halt to Interiors and Terrain (Nor does is this about interiors and terrain or bringing them back). This is simply a response I have concluded on how our current state of graphics turn into a wonderful feature that can expand our sandbox credentials of ideas for games.

Getting Into Details
Unfortunately, due to the budget and hardware needed even for a "Low shader" experience (which is ok enough for ideas I will show you) does not meet the requirements for the lower aged and populated community for Blockland (Ex. A child who uses his parents desktop to play his favorite games, such as Blockland). Therefore our developers kept the option to keep the shaders "Off" which can change the graphics of the game very much, and it's not so pretty.

Of course, there are many sorts of ideas that can be used with shaders. Here are some examples.

• A Dark Horror Forest
• Having a dark room
• Hide and seek in the dark
• And other things that can involve dark ideas

But since most of our players cannot experience our beloved shaders, they have to choose the option of turning them off. Also, this can be very exploitable if you require people to keep them on. Here are some examples.


(Click for full size 1369x769)
Shaders                                    No Shaders


You cannot tell in this pictures current resolution, I recommend clicking for full size


Conclusion
I think I have sort of given my opinion on our current state of shaders intentional use. Even though this is a great feature for polishing our old and outdated game engine, I doubt it holds the power of future use in gaming with Blockland what so ever due to the need of higher graphics that I highly doubt our younger users can obtain due to our generations parents ignorance on the importance of PC technology.

This was not intended to tell people that shaders should be removed. It's sort of a reminder to the community (And maybe devs) that since this can't be a required feature for all of our gamers, It cannot be used for certain gameplay.

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[sarge997]

I agree, to many people turn it off on a lot of games just to cheat.

[Trogtor]

You make a valid point but its not technically "cheating" it's just exploiting.

[Zay]

Total support. Even if shaders look pretty, we can't really use them for any gameplay.

[Trogtor]

Total support. Even if shaders look pretty, we can't really use them for any gameplay.

We could if it was a required graphics option but since our younger community do not have the ability to purchase hardware for it, Blockland wouldn't make much money and would have a bad rating from a younger community.

[Awdax]

Man, I wish you could bake the shadows or something.

[Pecon]

I'm waiting for when Badspot makes minimum shaders required. It'll make things much more consistent.

[Wynd_Fox]

It won't matter. Some people still can't display shaders, even on minimum.

[Trogtor]

Man, I wish you could bake the shadows or something.

i doubt that wil still make it default

[Awdax]

I don't know. Maybe there could be a way to bake them and have a server-side setting to force baked shadows.

[Trogtor]

I don't know. Maybe there could be a way to bake them and have a server-side setting to force baked shadows.

oh you mean like how torque bakes map shadows?

That would be amazing

[John Freeman]

Shaders dont even work for me
I didnt gain anything from the update :c

[heedicalking]

I emailed badspot about something like this in 2011

Visibility via lighting is not consistent enough from card to card to be a gameplay feature.

Well shucks! There goes the opportunity for shadow based gameplay!

[Altiris]

Shaders dont even work for me
I didnt gain anything from the update :c

You don't like gamemodes, being able to change the skybox, water, and ground textures, all of the recent updates we have received?

@OP, you don't need some highly powerful expensive PC to run shaders. I can run Medium shaders on the Speedkart gamemode with a Pentium 4 and a GT 220 online with no lag at all. I can run shaders on low with the same specs at, it's either Tango's or Gravity Cat'a Fortwars with playable FPS, I don't remember if I received lagspikes. The P4 is super old and the GT 220 is pretty old, so imagine people with better specs than that, even slightly.

[Chrono]

It's kind of annoying that us people with better computers actually get a less exciting experience though.
We turn on shaders because the game looks nice.
Suddenly we're in the dark, can't see stuff, and getting wrecked by people with stuffty computers, or decided to lower a setting.

Though in some cases it's the host's fault, they didn't adjust the settings properly, especially for something that's a pure interior build.