Im thinking on using dynamic lights to spiff up some effects/realism. I was thinking of having a light above a rotating fan, and shadows moving about on the bottom floor, and perhaps some other things. But I am wondering if the drain on resources will be too much for today’s cards to do much of this. Perhaps I should use a fake texture, and just rotate it on the floor at the same speed the fan blades are moving?
Other suggestions?
What game engine are you planning to use?
I had the same idea of a light behind a fan for the sewers map we’re going to include in my HL2 mod: Border Patrol
Half-Life 2’s “Source” engine handles these dynamic lighting and shadows like a charm without the loss of fps.
Yeah, depends on the engine, and the hardware too. Doesn’t it always? 
Definitely though a single rotating shadowmap or projected texture uses less resources than a dynamic light, no matter what system you’re on. Am I wrong?
Splinter Cell had that cool quasi-volumetric effect of light thru fan blades too. Worth a look for some ideas… it’s in the tutorial level I think.
Which engine are you using TheWriter? Proprietary, commercial? I’m using a proprietary one, well at least for now, soon to be commercial. It’s pretty stimulating to learn all the ins and outs.
Im a RenderWare fan all the way… Sure it needs tweaking in some places but… the exporting to multiple platforms ease is hard to beat.
Cool. Glad to hear Renderware is doing well. Is the cross-platform export really that painless? No tweaking needed?
Yup a projected texture will be the best way to go as far as resources go. Now if you are going to use that kind of lighting as a one of the key features in your game(as it is in Thief) or you are going to make extensive and diverse use of it would be better to use dynamic lights (and of course because they look so cool, Doom 3 :buttrock: )
Well, yes there is tweaking still needed. Most notably on the PS2. Contrary to popular belief, the PS2 realy is a poor console system. It is also the most hardest for coders to (tap into). It’s not the CPU that is the hard part (many companies only use this part), but the two vector chips that were not exactly supported very well. In any case, Textures are most likely going to have to be carely modified on that system, but that is another story (thread)…
The only realy problem that bothers me, is the frame rate in RW seems to have a MAJOR performance hit against it… when comparing it to other engines, eg, Unreal.
This may of course be expected, but I have been seeing speed changes by a factor of 10 (at least I could swear I have) 
This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.