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Splinter Cell

General and Gameplay Programming Programming

Started by MagTDK January 19, 2003 04:04 PM

8 comments, last by MagTDK 21 years, 2 months ago

MagTDK

122

Author

January 19, 2003 04:04 PM

I just check out the PC demo to this game and all I have to say is wow! The lighting and shadowing look great. Anyone know what the game uses for casting shadows? It doesn''t appear to be shadow volumes because of the soft edge. I''m guessing the game uses some sort of per pixel lighting as well.

Pseudo

100

January 19, 2003 06:14 PM

I think it uses light z-buffers for the light/shadow effects.

iNsaNEiVaN

122

January 19, 2003 08:06 PM

Or a pixel shader. Ive seen realistic shadow volumes done with pixel shaders.

Anonymous

January 19, 2003 08:31 PM

They use a heavily modified Unreal engine. That probably means they use projected textures for shadows (as seen in UT2K3) along with what they call "a filtering system", most likely for more complex shadows like the ones created by venetian blinds and grates.

MagTDK

122

Author

January 19, 2003 09:43 PM

If it''s using a modified version of the Unreal engine, then is it using lightmaps instead of per pixel lighting?

Wyrframe

2,489

January 19, 2003 11:22 PM

If anyone here''s seen Serious Sam, and payed careful attention to the real-time lighting, y''all should know that real-time shadowcasting is not that hard, and can be done easily even on low-end 400 MHz CPUs. I''m pretty sure that Splinter Cell could do the same thing.

In the demo, what I found somewhat impressive was the infrared vision mode. Now _that_ is some interesting texture work, combined with either a kickass pixel shader or a half-software renderer.

RIP GameDev.net: launched 2 unusably-broken forum engines in as many years, and now has ceased operating as a forum at all, happy to remain naught but an advertising platform with an attached social media presense, headed by a staff who by their own admission have no idea what their userbase wants or expects.Here's to the good times; shame they exist in the past.

Extrarius

1,412

January 20, 2003 02:24 AM

Serious Sam is a nice engine.

I didn''t like Splinter Cell at all. It might be fun with a console controller, but not with mouse an keyboard like every other fps/tps I''ve played is. And it has some `obvious` logic `bugs` - when pressed back against a wall, you can only see left, right, and behind the character, when you should be able to see left, right, and in front of the character since that is the way he is facing. Very nice gfx tho.

"Walk not the trodden path, for it has borne it's burden." -John, Flying Monk

Anonymous

January 20, 2003 10:31 AM

My guess would be it does everything like the Unreal engine except the real-time dynamic shadows. So yes, lightmapping instead of per-pixel lighting. I''m also guessing that many of the effects like shiny metals and such are handled by Unreal''s cubemap materials, not pixel shaders. These are all guesses based on the fact that a lot of what is in Splinter Cell can currently be done in UT2K3''s engine. But I''ve read that Splinter Cell does in fact use pixel shaders for something, just not sure what it is.

JuNC

236

January 20, 2003 11:15 AM

quote:
what I found somewhat impressive was the infrared vision mode

Agree totally, I was very impressed by how well that works. The shadows are ok, but a bit too overpowering I thought (yeah, yeah I know that is the point of the game but well...

). I thought the controls are brilliant and work really well (although I agree with the wall hugging).