http://www.opserver.de/ubb7/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=249412#Post249412

This was my attempt to back up the subject.
I´ve thought that I would get a lot of support from the forum
members. Because that´s the only thing that counts.

I admit, it was rather stupid to start the thread in german.

w00t!!

Bad...

Is it possible that JCL could finish the shadowplugin?

Will this be Gamestudio's official PhysX solution? Will it ever be finished? :p

Just kidding... You are doing a great job. I know that the last 10% of a programming project often are more pain and effort than the first 90%. But maybe Conitec should support such projects in a better way. Something seems to be wrong with this approach if almost nothing ever gets finished (like the earlier level editor projects).

Sorry for pudshing back this topic to top, but does any one have the last build of this shadow dll?(the free version without limitation)?

I would like to use the sun shadows for my project :|


Greets
Rackscha

Sorry for offtopic but:
I haven't seen this topic yet and

This looks great - from what I see in the screenshots

Please finish this

PLEASE PLEASE

Man... dll link is dead reupload some one...

Can anybody re-upload the non-limited shadows.dll again please?

These are my personal thoughts about why this development has been left undone:

As you all know, those users below Professional have almost every technology available to create a "latest generation graphic" videogame.

The shaders are great (Shade-C is what I'm using right now)

As for the post processing and so the shadows: yes we humble Commercial Users have them too, with the bluring as well, they look good BUT they totally kill the framerate EVEN IN SHORT RANGE, and EVEN USING THE LOWEST LOD.

Why is that?

Conitec announces that the shadows from the Professional version are 10 times faster then Commercial or below.

And while a shadow is a.. let's call it "primary need" because it's the one that gives depth to the scene,

normal maps, volumetric lights and all the shiny shaders out there are "secondary needs", for instance even withot HDRL a scene would still look decently.

THEREFORE

Since shadows in general are A MUST and people need them badly, conitec's smart marketing strategy is to offer the FUNCTIONAL version of them only in within the Professional version (nearly 800 euros) while we humble commercials (200 euros) or below are left with total USELESS crap (crap not because they look ugly but because they kill the frame rate).

CONCLUSIONS

A project like this would make the Professional version become OBSOLETE, for the very simple reason that (other professional version features):

1.Nobody cares about the source code -> this engine was released and announced as an easy to use engine, so the few real programmers here enjoy scripting, not hardcode level programming. The rest of us artists load in resources and compile.

2.Nobody cares about the unlimited clients -> this isn't a massive multiplayer engine and it will never be, this was born FROM a shooter engine, PERIOD.
Besides that, the real indie developers know FOR A FACT that a 3man or 5man team trying to create an MMO is wasting hours of work going nowhere, a hopeless jump in the abyss.
Indie developers start with small games, single player adventures maybe something with limited networking like diablo or such. Max 8 clients are enough for that.

So there you go, if you want the working shadows you have to pay additional 600 euros. Honestly that's not worth it, expecially when you realize that EVERY OTHER engine supports them by default.

These are called smart marketing strategies.

And that's why this development was forced to be canceled IN MY OPINION.

Now dear Chris3D will you please provide us with what you've done so far with this code of yours?

THANK YOU VERY MUCH IN ADVANCE

Sincerely,
Pietro

As far as I know, Unity for example doesn´t offer stencil shadows at all, if you don´t buy the pro version for quite a bit more money than GS Pro.
Such a plugin is A LOT of work and that is actually the reason it was canceled, as time just keeps going on at a lot too much speed
There is no way I could imagine that he was "forced" to cancel it. Since I worked on shadows as well, I know that jcl is actually VERY supportive if it comes to developing features like this.
Other features of the pro version, which may make it worth to buy are for example the BSP, the terrain LOD, the automatic LOD generator of MED, the particle system which is a lot faster than with comm and of course the customizable start up window, which can even be comletely disabled as well as the file packing.
If you are seriously developing something with gamestudio those features are easily worth it, as they can save a lot of time.

Damn... I realy need dynamic shadows... I need this .DLL, I know this shadows works only with terrains and models... But I need it to work with level blocks as well... I don't know any thing about shaders... Please upload it...or give me some alternative...