The shadows problem still exists???

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Hobbit

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I just saw the 640 MB version from fileplanet. The issue of shadows showing through when they shouldn't still exists.

Will post an image if you guys want to see...

I noticed it during the part where he uses the crane to life the box and drop it on people.
 
As in the magnetic plate's (or whatever) shadow shows through on the ground even though it's attached to the crate?

Don't get too picky.
 
post a screen, in fact post several goddmanit, some of us are only 400 in a queue and won't be seeing it for a bit.
 
any more screens you care to share?

you have a point but at the same time it isn't released just yet so i would guess that the playtests they put in until it goes gold shall show up small bugs like this and Valve can polish them off.
 
For those stencil shadows it takes a lot of cycles to compute shadow occlusion. Valve is just adding the shadow values together, much cheaper. I would assume it's a limitation of the Source engine, not a bug. You're not likely to see it too often, or even notice, only when an object is supposed to be blocking a shadow with it's own shadow. Remember that Source was built on top of the HL1 engine, it doesn't have a unified lighting design like D3. (Not promoting D3, saw the E3 trailer today and it looked great graphically, but compared to the atmosphere of HL2 it looked like a B-movie.) They kept lightmaps in place from HL1 and added dynamic stencil shadows.
 
the game looks unbelievable,my only nitpick is the HUD,i think those black squares are ugly.
 
cdbeckman said:
Valve has said repeatedly that when doing prerecorded demos (still being rendered on the fly, but the actions are controlled) the effects and physics are no longer per pixel, or exact.
Click to expand...

The demo playback bug was causing problems with the synchronization of animation and sound. There's no way a demo-playback bug could cause the graphics engine to 'forget' to do shadow occulsion.

EDIT: nm, saw your reply
 
I took a series of screens:

http://home.comcast.net/~shuzer/w00t.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~shuzer/grig.JPG

http://home.comcast.net/~shuzer/bike.JPG

http://home.comcast.net/~shuzer/rollermines.JPG

http://home.comcast.net/~shuzer/fire.JPG

http://home.comcast.net/~shuzer/torchedcorpses.JPG



cdbeckman said:
However, I noticed a bug myself. During the strider bit, one of your fellow attackers is zapped on the side of your screen and appears to float. Is that what is supposed to happen? didn't look right.
Click to expand...


No, it happens several times.. looks to be the way they die when hit by the combine warp shader attack of doom
 
Valve has said repeatedly that when doing prerecorded demos (still being rendered on the fly, but the actions are controlled) the effects and physics are no longer per pixel, or exact. They've said it's "good enough for their purposes" and that they weren't expecting people to do frame by frames of shakycam E3 movies. Guess they were wrong.
Click to expand...

don't think that has anything to do with this: that was in reference to the timing of things, not anything else. Plus, they said they fixed it.

I doubt this is going to change much unless they upgrade the game: it's basically the cost of using much cheaper but much less accurate stencil shadows. Doesn't really stand as bad or jarring unless you're very picky.

However, I noticed a bug myself. During the strider bit, one of your fellow attackers is zapped on the side of your screen and appears to float. Is that what is supposed to happen? didn't look right.
Click to expand...

Looks like he's burning with some otherworldly energy though: perhaps a side effect of the Strider blasts?
 
cdbeckman said:
During the strider bit, one of your fellow attackers is zapped on the side of your screen and appears to float. Is that what is supposed to happen? didn't look right.
Click to expand...

I saw that too! I thought I was seeing things... isn't the guy glowing, or on fire or something?
 
The glowing/fire/levitating is NOT a bug. Watching the hi-res fileplanet movie *drool*
 
Source was NOT built off the HL1 engine. The HL1 engine was a hiughly modified quake engine.
 
It sure as hell doesnt look like a bug to me.......


I will use the phasers in startrek as an example....when they are about to desinigrate someone...they tend to "freeze" valve might have gone for the same effect.
 
brokenjago said:
Source was NOT built off the HL1 engine. The HL1 engine was a hiughly modified quake engine.
Click to expand...

So? The Doom3 engine was built off the Quake3 engine. Why would they just start over when they already have so much 3D engine code that works just fine?
 
That burning/floating/ubercool effect happens when the Striders kill someone with their cannon, and it also happens when Gordon uses that very high power energy gun in the uppper floor of that house by the side of the road (in the rollermine scene, with the tire swing and all that cool stuff). It's a very impressive effect I think :)
 
qckbeam said:
That burning/floating/ubercool effect happens when the Striders kill someone with their cannon, and it also happens when Gordon uses that very high power energy gun in the uppper floor of that house by the side of the road (in the rollermine scene, with the tire swing and all that cool stuff). It's a very impressive effect I think :)
Click to expand...

They're two different animations.. one is a swirling green energy type field (where the corpses appear to disappear instantly), the other is a flaming corpse that breaks apart a few seconds later
 
dscowboy said:
So? The Doom3 engine was built off the Quake3 engine. Why would they just start over when they already have so much 3D engine code that works just fine?
Click to expand...


To avoid licensing costs, I assume, there may be more reasons.

The HL engine is an extension of the Quake engine (made by id). Valve had to pay to use id technology.

Making there own engine means they can avoid those costs - and gain loads more off of licensing their technology out to other game developers.
 
I don't understand the shadow overlapping bug/engine limitation. Why is it so hard for the engine to realize, "when 2 shadows overlap, just combine them and draw one shadow, don't make it twice as dark." It almost seems like they would have to intentionally program it to make shadows overlap, which makes no sense. Can someone explain this to me?
 
you give it a whirl and see what hapens because if it was so easy as you say why haven't they done it?

This video thing is making me bitter because i cannot get the stinking video of FP It crashed me out and now i will finish work before i get the download....anger management failing.
 
Dunno. It's one of those technical things that you'd have to really understand the tech to know why it might be really easy or really hard to fix. It could be a limitation of the method.

You do know that you can't talk rationally to a game engine, right? :)
"Hey, game engine, how come you can't just realize when two shadows overlap, dude?"
Game Engine: "Oh, Geez, thx dude, I didn't realize that before: I'll keep an eye for it. Party on!"
 
DarkStar said:
I don't understand the shadow overlapping bug/engine limitation. Why is it so hard for the engine to realize, "when 2 shadows overlap, just combine them and draw one shadow, don't make it twice as dark." It almost seems like they would have to intentionally program it to make shadows overlap, which makes no sense. Can someone explain this to me?
Click to expand...

Yes. Think about this: There are two lights in a room, and two people with two shadows each. Where the shadows do not intersect, there will be a light shadow because one of the lights is still hitting that area. Where the shadows intersect, the combined shadow will be darker because zero lights are hitting that area. Adding the shadows together makes them look more realistic when they intersect. The only problem comes if the intersection is of two shadows from the same lightsource. Normally it's pretty hard to notice, the magnet/crate thing made it easy to see.
 
well explained, it's just a logical computer thing that has those niggly real world issues that demonstrates the difference between reality and a game. Take note!
 
those are not so good quality of the movies + dough himself said that the game is in ALPHA....the game is playable but they have to polish it! so i'd say u should relax! it's gonna be fine ;)
 
alright, I have very little understanding of this but...
I think a computer needs to test for occlusion of two shadows to try to sort them out.
This is the same as AI 'automatically' taking cover behind objects. They have to test whether it is actually blocking them.
Gabe said that occlusion is very hard on the computer when he was talking about AI taking cover behind walls and I guess it applies to the shadows as well.
My guess is that with the amount of other stuff going on in a single scene in HL2, overlapping shadows will stick around. That is, until they update Source.
 
^^ Why isn't this a problem in other games though? i.e. FarCry. Seeing the shadow of a box resting on a table pass through the table onto the floor just really takes me out of the scene. It may be nitpicking but it seems pretty major.
 
Because most other games don't have very many moving objects. Moving objects have to have some sort of shadow, or else they'd look silly.
 
I think this "shadows showing through solid objects" problem is a much bigger deal than some of you are making it out to be. At least, in the terms of multiplayer. If the sun is behind me, you are in front of me, and there is a wall between us, I want to be able to hide behind the wall. If my shadow shows THROUGH the wall and you can see it, well, that sucks big time.
 
I think this "shadows showing through solid objects" problem is a much bigger deal than some of you are making it out to be. At least, in the terms of multiplayer. If the sun is behind me, you are in front of me, and there is a wall between us, I want to be able to hide behind the wall. If my shadow shows THROUGH the wall and you can see it, well, that sucks big time
Click to expand...

Thats different--and it isn't a big problem.
 
Different? It's exactly what's happening in the E3 vids, the shadow of the crane is showing through the shadow of the box. And it IS a big problem. If I'm hiding behind the box, I don't want my shadow showing through it; that would give my position away.
 
CoreyGH said:
Different? It's exactly what's happening in the E3 vids, the shadow of the crane is showing through the shadow of the box. And it IS a big problem. If I'm hiding behind the box, I don't want my shadow showing through it; that would give my position away.
Click to expand...

As long as the wall is a worldbrush, there won't be a problem. The shadows only bleed through models/characters.
 
So it solves part of the problem. I still want to be able to hide behind movable boxcars/crates/vehicles and not have my position given away by shadow bleedthrough that shouldn't be there.

This matters to me because hardly anyone plays the single player version of HL anymore. It's lived on for so long because of multiplayer so issues that have a large factor in MP are a bigger deal to me.
 
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