"Sswift, by true shadows i meant stenciled, I would just like to be able to cast basic stenciled shadows for more than 5 entites on a fairly complex level at a decent speed.
With Island Storm I have had to use basic fake shadows, just to keep the framerate, I have tried to switch from them to your system when the player gets closer, but the framerate dies, when casting onto a large .b3d with lots of textures."
Well you know if you have problems like this, you can always send me a copy of the game which I can compile that has the shadows integrated. Then I can see if I can offer suggestions to improve the speed, and I might find a way to optimize the system better for your specfic scenario. I don't really have any real levels to test with, nobody sends me anything but simple demos. :-)
Oh and were these entities animated by chance? One thing I've considered implementing would be an epsilon value for the animation much like I have for the movement and rotation of an entity realtive to the light source. In short, a value which determines how many frames the animation has to progress before the shadow is updated. In all likelyhood this would actually be fractional frames, but if you can avoid rendering the shadow map every frame, as you currently have to do with animated meshes, you get a large speed savings.
Another thing I could implement for distant entities is the abiltiy to force them to render their shadows less often.
I'd have to see how you're using the shadows though. I don't understand how you could see the shadows well enough to even need shadows if they're that far away.
With Island Storm I have had to use basic fake shadows, just to keep the framerate, I have tried to switch from them to your system when the player gets closer, but the framerate dies, when casting onto a large .b3d with lots of textures."
Well you know if you have problems like this, you can always send me a copy of the game which I can compile that has the shadows integrated. Then I can see if I can offer suggestions to improve the speed, and I might find a way to optimize the system better for your specfic scenario. I don't really have any real levels to test with, nobody sends me anything but simple demos. :-)
Oh and were these entities animated by chance? One thing I've considered implementing would be an epsilon value for the animation much like I have for the movement and rotation of an entity realtive to the light source. In short, a value which determines how many frames the animation has to progress before the shadow is updated. In all likelyhood this would actually be fractional frames, but if you can avoid rendering the shadow map every frame, as you currently have to do with animated meshes, you get a large speed savings.
Another thing I could implement for distant entities is the abiltiy to force them to render their shadows less often.
I'd have to see how you're using the shadows though. I don't understand how you could see the shadows well enough to even need shadows if they're that far away.