Computing shadows

[dmi]

Hello!

I've just started using the map editor, everything seemed to be fine until I finished my first one and started computing shadows.

Everything goes ok until I start computing with a higher level than "Very Fast". With "Very Fast", shadows look ok, it could even be playable. Though when I choose "Fast" or anything else for a higher detail, my map gets totally dark, lights get screwed and I have no idea why.

Example:



I'm wondering, am I doing anything wrong?

One more strange stuff: I sent the map to one of my mates, he computed shadows, and it looked just fine for him! So I asked him to send me the map back. I opened it and it was fucked up again. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

[Guyver1]

Graphics Card Driver issue
Graphics Card advanced settings configured badly/wrongly/too low settings (performance instead of quality etc)
graphics card that isn't advanced enough to support the Direct X features in shootmania

could be a number of things

[TMarc]

Which video card exactly do you have (chip, dedicated video memory etc.)?

It appears for some people that shadows cannot be calculated properly if the card has less than 512MB RAM.

[dmi]

That's right, I have an old Geforce 7900GS with 256 mb's, that might be the problem then.

[tcq]

I have a 8600m GT with 256mb ram and sometimes this problem occurs. It seemed like the direct lightning is calculated, but the shadows afterwards are not. This can happen if you start a calculation and kill the game in between (e.g. if it's no longer responding and the time counter simply stops). Then inside the map, it will be saved as if everything was calculated (e.g. if you calculated shadows on a specific level, you can't calculate them again on that level but need to choose the next higher one (buttons are not click-able any more)). To calculate the shadows once again, if you have used HQ settings, you need to place a new block and restart the calculation or if this not work, select the whole map with the selection tools and cut/past it. Then save the map and it should be computable again.

Sometimes you need to try to calculate the shadows multiple times until they are displayed in the right way. Depending on your hardware, this might take you some hours -_-

[Electron]

I have the same problem with a GeForce 7600 GT with 256 MB video memory.

tcq described the situation quite good. For me the calculation of the shadows cancels after a out of memory error while loading textures in Video RAM.

The best workaround for me was to delete the corresponding light map cache file from the users cache folder and than reopen the map anew. It looks like calculating the light map without loading the old one from cache uses less video memory.


BTW: The new version of my tool GbxDump indicates now the LightMap Cache CRC of a map. This value can be used to identify the corresponding ZIP file in the users cache folder:

"<sha256>_<LightMapCacheCRC>_<envir>_<mood>.BumpIntens.LightMap.zip"

[dmi]

Thanks for your answers, you guys helped a lot !