Procedural Object shadows

[_Alex_]

Well, it's been on my mind since I played Clive Barker's Undying about a year ago....

The shadows in that game rocked! I mean, despite the fact that it was using Unreal Engine 1, it had crisp, shadows on almost every object in the environment, and I'm not talking about static pre-baked ones either - I mean procedural textures projected onto the ground underneath a given mesh.

Allow me to illustrate visually.




So my question is this (and I pose it not just to the active HTDP coding staff, but to anyone who knows whether this would be feasible)

Can we "appropriate" some of the code used to do this from Undying's codebase, and whack it onto HDTP's ? It would be pretty awesome if we could get those crisp shadows to show up on objects in Deus Ex, as it stands the best that we have are blob shadows on the player models

It could be protected engine level stuff...so I dont know. I did do abit of work with projectors when I was modding ut2k4 though, and alot could be done without diving into engine code. so...im just curious

[Darkshade]

If it's the same engine... sure, why not?

... Not that I know anything about how it works...

[_Alex_]

Unfortunately native code can be protected by the engine, Darkshade. And unless you have a license for UE, it is off limits ...

Annoying that epic haven't yet made UE1 open source, tbh...

[Jonas]

Hrrm. I'm guessing this sort of stuff is in the native code, or somebody else would've updated it long ago.

I do recall that Ghost in the Machine did something similar to what you're suggesting by stealing a function from the Rune (which also uses Unreal) player class that made the player cast a dynamic shadow. It looked pretty neat, but it was right there in the player class, and that code doesn't work for regular NPC's or other meshes.

[EER]

and that code doesn't work for regular NPC's or other meshes.

Not that I know anything about unreal modding, but why should it work in the player class and not in any other class? If you just c/p the code it might work anyway, right?

[DDL]

Depends how it's written, and how friendly it is: if it runs a light-calculating algorithm that loops through all the accessible lights in the level every tick and uses that to generate shadows, it'd be prohibitively processer-intensive to run it for every shadow-casting actor, but probably ok for just the player.

[Jetsetlemming]

I love Undying. Some other things I love about it's graphics: lightning strikes in the skybox that briefly light up the level enviroment as well
The skybox artwork itself
The polygonal detail in the enemies
decals on movers! They disappear if the mover moves, though. You can through a bunch of explosives at a door until it's entirely black, and as soon as it opens they vanish. Better than leaving them floating in midair, though (I'm looking at you, goldeneye!)
Destructable character models (I never noticed any besides cut in half, cut off head, and explode for the normal characters, though the skeleton enemies are fully destrucable before they die, and the ressurecting ones will still hop after you with only one leg and a hipbone before you "dispel" them. )

[DDL]

Hey: DX has decals on movers! And they move with the movers, too!

[Jetsetlemming]

Hey: DX has decals on movers! And they move with the movers, too!

O_O How have I never noticed this, before? I was sure you had a different version or something, or were just forgetting, opened DX, loaded a save, and filled a door full of lead to find bullet decals.
bullet decals that moved with the door.
whoops.