Well, here's a mockup of the effect in photoshop. You can see there are 3 lights here, each of a different color. The grey squares are the shadow casters. You can see that the effect is pretty much just 2d.
What's not shown here is that in-game, I need to know exactly what is being illuminated in order to use the lights to solve puzzles. Currently, I just use the mesh to do that (calculating whether or not points are in the triangles of the mesh), but I'm sure there are other ways that could be accomplished as well.
If you refer back to my description before, hopefully it will make more sense now. Using the white circles as the origin of the lights, i would cast my rays out starting at the far left of the light beam, and go until the end of the right, testing each ray for intersection with a shadow caster...
Does this help?
What's not shown here is that in-game, I need to know exactly what is being illuminated in order to use the lights to solve puzzles. Currently, I just use the mesh to do that (calculating whether or not points are in the triangles of the mesh), but I'm sure there are other ways that could be accomplished as well.
If you refer back to my description before, hopefully it will make more sense now. Using the white circles as the origin of the lights, i would cast my rays out starting at the far left of the light beam, and go until the end of the right, testing each ray for intersection with a shadow caster...
Does this help?