Why still no shadows? : Fallout: New Vegas

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 8:23 am

that sounds a little like bull to me...there is no reason to make the option available on the pcand that too integrated is just [censored].

i bet it had something to do with another game mechanic breaking or not functioning correctly at all. Take stealth for isntance, i bet they couldnt incorporate a method for npc's to distinguish between players hidden in the dynamic shadows from the other parts of teh gameworld, as if the npc's couldn't tell darker areas from brighter areas.

but no, it could never be a dev teams incompetence or lack of ability in finding a solution, it can never be that...quick whats a good excuse...uhhhh lets go with hardware...wait what about pc's they are always upgraded..ah good point find another excuse..something technical so they wont question it.

Can you give us more detail from your point of view as a games/graphics programmer? Don't be afraid to get technical.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 3:52 am

To some of you mentioning time and resource, as I've already posted, the feature already exists within the engine, it's just been disabled, I know that someone managed to re-enable it for Oblivion, I'm using this thread in the hope someone can do it for FO:NV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eKzwKFlz8Y

You still aren't getting it. Just because the engine is able to theoretically handle the shadows you want doesn't mean you can just simply enable them. When they added the objects to the environment the devs most likely did not set up the parameters needed to properly display these shadows in the objects themselves, because they knew they weren't planning on using them and didn't want to waste time. Even if you are able to activate the feature, it will likely still require quite a bit of work modifying the objects in game to make use of that feature. It might be possible for a modder to do it, but it wouldn't be quick or easy. The reason it was easier in Oblivion was because the devs initially were planning on using those shadows and thus set up the appropriate parameters. In that case it was much easier to "flip the switch" to activate the shadows.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 3:13 pm

well lets all be happy that the next iterations in the fallout series and elder scroll series will definitely have dynamic shadows on ALL objects.

just glad they are finally dumping this bug ridden collision detection and clipping error engine for one thats at least worth a dam. with the exception to that being any mmo they decide to release

Do you know what engine they're switching to? I'd try and look it up myself, but it seems like a waste of perfectly good laziness when I can just ask someone.

OH NOES NO SHADOWS?

Who cares?

Like he said^ they svck up way to much time and dev cycle and the consoles likely cant handle it.

In fact, I don;t think I ever even noticed until i read this thread.

I also didn't even notice until I read this post. I hope it doesn't start bothering me now.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 4:23 am

I don't care whether they have dynamic shadows or not. I usually turn off shadows in games actually, they are usually grainy-looking pieces of crap anyway.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 8:22 am

Our modding community has tweaked Morrowind's graphics engine so it can produce SSAO on every static object in the game, creating the illusion of shadows.

http://gi159.photobucket.com/groups/t137/M81XPS33YC/MGEScreenshot10copy.jpg

Though in its early stages, I believe the modding community is working on SSAO for Oblivion, but from what i've seen, the spread on it is far too large to be considered realistic.

The thing that varies between Fallout 3 and Oblivion is the fact that theres so many static objects lying around in the wasteland. Obsidian really pushed it with even more items lying around in even larger cells, with even more NPC's!

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 5:49 am

http://gi159.photobucket.com/groups/t137/M81XPS33YC/MGEScreenshot10copy.jpg

That's....Morrowind? My god. If the community keeps at it they'll have the game looking better than ones released next year.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 12:22 am

That's....Morrowind? My god. If the community keeps at it they'll have the game looking better than ones released next year.

http://gs159.photobucket.com/groups/t137/M81XPS33YC/ I stopped updating it about a year ago. I'm not really sure what kind of progress they've made since, if you want to see, head over to our Morrowind mods section.

Aside from low poly character models, lack of audio and lack of animations, my current build of Morrowind isn't too far off from Fallout New Vegas.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 3:59 am

Memory Capacity Issues

Is why there's no shadows

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 3:41 am

That's....Morrowind? My god. If the community keeps at it they'll have the game looking better than ones released next year.

It's amazing isn't it? Mind you I've been happily playing Morrowind regularly from its release to the current day on a rackety old PC with just a few texture replacers and the game is still IMO one of the best computer games ever made, even without bells and whistles like shadows and voiced dialogue. Now I have a flashy PC though I will probably try out the graphics extender just to see what it's like, make the game look different than how I've been playing it the last 8 years

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 11:24 am

I remember this topic coming up when Oblivion was about to release. I can't find it now, but one of the Oblivion devs said that after they did all of the work for the dynamic soft shadows and realized it was too much for the hardware of the time they had to start over and re-do the way the shadows worked. People were asking why they couldn't just allow it to be an option on the PC version, and they said it was too integrated into the game code to simply switch back and forth between the shadow methods easily. Of course, I don't know how true any of that is, but that was their explanation.

I should have finished reading the thread before I wrote up my response to RunningBare, it would have saved me a lot of trouble.

It shouldn't be necessary to do this but as a long time member of the forums I can confirm this information. While you can see object shadows in the E3 video they had to remove and replace the shadow system, it wasn't simply scaled back.

» Sun Mar 06, 2011 2:09 pm

That's....Morrowind? My god. If the community keeps at it they'll have the game looking better than ones released next year.

http://bb.ohsk.net/uploads/;_;.jpg

To some of you mentioning time and resource, as I've already posted, the feature already exists within the engine, it's just been disabled, I know that someone managed to re-enable it for Oblivion, I'm using this thread in the hope someone can do it for FO:NV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eKzwKFlz8Y

it's been YEARS since the last time an Oblivion mod made me say "holy [censored] [censored]". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZsqCXU9ki4. i really really hope those get released soon.

i'm sure (i hope ;_;) that if/when the stuff in that video gets perfected it'd be relatively trivial to get it up and running in Fallout 3 (and New Vegas) since the shadow systems between the three games are pretty much identical.