Shadows have disappeared.

[Donkey81]

Completely confused.

Recently loaded up Half-Life 2 again after a lengthy absence from both playing it and mapping for it.

It suddenly struck me the other day: the shadows have disappeared.

NO entities are casting shadows. They once did - I'm sure of it because I remember making a map that relied heavily on prop shadows. I've not changed my system since then, and shadow quality is set to high.

I'm running a P4 3.5GHz with 1GB RAM, and a GeForce 6600. Not that it matters, because it's the same system that used to cast shadows.

The only thing I can think is that I've been playing it without the disk, as I've lost it - but this wouldn't make a difference would it?

 

[Donkey81]

UPDATE: It's not all the time! It's just in most maps!

I'm working on two of my own maps at the moment. Shadows work fine in one, not at all in the other. I've created a third test map and they don't work in that either. I don't understand it at all!

 

[giant384]

umm you havent needed the disk to run the game since 2 weeks after the game was released in 2004.

make sure you have an environment_light entity or shadows wont be cast at all.

 

[Vegeta897]

He said they once did work so I'd assume he has one, Giant.

 

[Donkey81]

All my lighting's set up identically in each map. I really haven't got a clue what's going on.

Gonna have to be trial and error I reckon. Just frustrating as I'm working on some test maps for a mod I'm working on, and can't really show them off until this is fixed. Everything other than the shadows is fine.

 

[Donkey81]

Can we go right back to basics here, in case there's something ridiculous I've missed.

Can someone give me a list of things required to get shadows working properly in maps? Sounds very 'beginner-level' but I want to make sure.

For the purposes of testing, I have two maps, both are very basic room-corridor-room things.

I have a map (map1) which is set up with a combination of 3 'light' and 12 'light_spot' light entities, as well as 'cubemaps', with two 'npc_citizen' characters who cast shadows.

I then have a map (map2) which is set up with a combination of 1 'light' and 3 'light_spot' light entities, as wlel as 'cubemaps', with one 'npc_citizen' who DOES NOT cast a shadow.

If I rename map1 it still works perfectly. If I copy and paste the entirety of map2 into map1 and link them, the shadows work perfectly in the map2 section as well. If I rename map2 as map1, it does not work.

Any ideas at all? This is really frustrating me now.

EDIT: Prop_statics are casting lovely soft shadows. It's just dynamic entities. Double you tea eff?