Left 4 Dead 2 PC Demo Released
The demo will be available for non-preorder PC customers and Xbox Live Gold members on November 3. Last, and most definitely least, Xbox Live Silver members get access on November 10.
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Milleh
replyI really hope that in this one flashlights from other players cast real time lighting / create real time shadows, but I doubt it :(
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Wouldn't that be extremely hardware intensive? I guess some people have octa-cores and the latest GPU so that might be nice as an extra option, something like Ultra High Shadows, and would undoubtedly look sweet and more cohesive with the atmosphere. I may be talking out my ass here saying it is indeed hardware intensive because I don't know but yeah... it seems like that kind of lighting effect would be.. I definitely noticed it in L4D, the lack thereof.
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I'd love to check out a game that had shadow casting flashlights that everyone could see in MP. Anything specific I should look at?
Shadow casting lights can be incredibly expensive on the gpu for somewhat fundmental reasons. I'm surprised people were able to budget enough performance for it.
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You think it will, but it wont.
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don't know of a 'modern' engine that supports more than about 2 shadow-casting lights at a time - most are 2 max (unreal 3 / crytek) and even that will bring most systems to a crawl in complicated scenes. doing the shader calculations for that kind of situation for shadow maps just isn't feasible in most cases.
you could fake it with dynamic lightmaps potentially, but it would look pretty ass.
the way that valve implemented it is extremely efficient and is probably the best way to handle it in an online game.
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My guess: All that extra light would affect gameplay pretty heavily. And if some people's graphics cards could show it and some couldn't, you end up with an unbalanced game depending on hardware. The Synergy coop mod for HL2 lets you see other player's flashlights, so the engine must be capable of it.
But from the singleplayer try I just did, you hardly notice your own flashlight in the daytime, much less the missing light from the other players.
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I remember Valve implementing this in EP2, I think? Don't know why they wouldn't in newer Source titles.
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I think they said it had something to do with the fact that there would be 4 flashlights all casting separate shadows? I don't remember.
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I think the original post means, the flashlights of other players casting shadows on themselves and others.
And everyone is right regarding hardware being the main limitation.
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Spawn four dynamic lights in Garry's Mod.
It's extremely resource intensive. -
It wouldn't look right to have one flashlight with shadows and the others going clean through obstacles. Don't forget that shadows are what make the light look realistic... and 4 separate shadows, along with 4 lights in the scene and you're looking at some serious hardware restrictions.
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