Shadow calculation time.

[PapyChampy]

I don't think so. The only visible effect for other players should be on the thumbnail of your map, which actually captures the quality shown in the game when the map is saved.

[eyebo]

From what I've seen the settings in the launcher are your personal "lowest" setting for shadows when playing maps offline.

For instance, lets say I have my Lightmap quality set to "High" in the launcher settings.

If I play a track by an author who calculated shadows on "High", then I will not need to recalculate shadows when I play the map.

However, if I play a map by an author who only calculated shadows on "Default" when saving his map, then the game will automatically start calculating shadows again so that I can see them at "High" quality, the minimum quality setting which I set in my own launcher settings.

--

Inversely, if you set lightmap quality to "Fast" in your launcher settings, and the author of the map you're about to play saved the map with "Fast", "Default", or "High", then your game will not need to recalculate the shadows, because the shadows included in the map already meet the minimum specifications for lightmap quality that you've specified.

Whether the shadows/lightmap are actually displayed at "High" quality (if the author saved them as such) when you've set it to lower in your own launcher settings... I don't know. I would assume they would show at highest quality anyway, because your game need not recalculate them. The high quality lightmap is simply included in the GBX file.

[Demented]

Well explained.

[GanjaRider]

I don't think so. The only visible effect for other players should be on the thumbnail of your map, which actually captures the quality shown in the game when the map is saved.

Ok I hope you're right. Saves me having to close the game and put settings higher everytime I want to compute shadows.

And thx for the detailed info eyebo.

[Electron]

I supposed ManiaPlanet never needs to calculate shadows. I supposed it uses always the lightmaps/shadows stored in the gbx file.

And I supposed ManiaPlanet stores only the lightmaps/shadows up to normal quality in the gbx file. I supposed while calculating high quality shadows ManiaPlanet calculates first the high quality lightmaps and stored them in the local cache folder and after this (in the next step) it calculated the normal lightmaps in memory for storing them in the gbx file. I supposed only the local player benefits from high quality shadows until he clean up his cache folder.

And I supposed the game settings do not affect the calculation of the shadows (but DirectX capabilities and memory usage will do [e.g. fall back to safe mode]). I supposed the game settings only affect how to make the best of the stored shadows.