 |
The spawnarg could be renamed from shadowworldonly to i.e. noshadows_entities (1 = entities cast no shadows, but worldspawn still casts shadows). Advantages: - similar to the existing and commonly used "noshadows" spawnarg, so hopefully easier to remember - imo it better indicates that, effectively, this new spawnarg turns off shadows for entities (technically worldspawn is entity 0, but I think mappers don't think of it as an entity) |
 |
I have rewritten this proposal in terms of shadow masks. Since world geometry would have built-in group 0, "noshadows_entities" will simply be "noshadows_mask" "0". |
|
|
Found the same idea in Unigine Engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI8Q3bANsM8 but on a larger scale =) |
|
|
Looking at this again, I don't like the idea of setting hex numbers, decimal number, or binary numbers (bits) to spawnargs. Because it would be hell for mappers to work with, and most likely it would be hard to change with backwards compatibility in mind. Better use strings as group names. Also, I don't like the idea of simple collections like "noshadows_mask world,animated,custom1" Because then we get a question of whether we should use "shadows_mask" spawnarg (i.e. cast shadows is entity belongs to any of the groups) or "noshadows_mask" (i.e. don't cast if entity belongs to any of the groups), or some kind of complementary, etc. I think the best approach would be to have "shadows_mask" spawnargs as an arbitrary boolean formula that allows shadow groups as atoms. So there are built in groups, e.g. "world", "animated", "static", and user can define custom ones by setting e.g. "shadows_group _my1" on entity. Then he can write formulas like "world | _my1" or "static & !world", etc. to define which entities should cast shadows from given light. When engine has a light + entity, it evaluates the formula to either true of false, where every atom is set to whether entity belongs to the corresponding shadows group. As for group names, we can enforce convention that custom groups must start from underscore ('_'), where builtin one do not. "world" must definitely be a group (includes only world area models, as generated by dmap from brushes, patches, and inline entities). Also it would be great to have "animated" group which includes animated entities and everything bound/attached to them (it is really weird when AI does not cast shadows, but his hammer does). Not sure about the rest... |
- Anonymous
