OBD talk:OBLS: Difference between revisions

:*Realtime character shadows and lighting. Before realtime shadows were canceled mid-development, they only extended downwards from the character models, but ideally shadows would have been cast at angles appropriate for the lighting in the room, and OBLS would have been needed for that. (Note that other games were already doing realtime shadows such as Outcast (1999), Nocturne (1999) and Heavy Metal FAKK 2 (2000), so this would have been on their mind.) I don't know if they ever planned to light characters based on something other than a fixed linear source (a sun), but OBLS would have been necessary to recognize when a character, say, stepped into one of [[:Image:ManPlant3.jpg|these spotlights]].

:*The player was once intended to be able to "[https://web.archive.org/web/20000422020741/http://pc.ign.com:80/news/5839.html kill the lights]", which either meant hitting a light switch or shooting out the lights directly. OBLS would have given the player targets to shoot at which could then be disabled. But how would the lighting in the room change if it was based off static lightmaps? If your only option as a player was to turn off the whole room at once, a new "lights off" lightmap could be swapped in (or the existing one simply turned off). But if lights were meant to be breakable, that would imply that BWest meant to have realtime lighting after all, since you couldn't meaningfully react to individual broken lights otherwise.

{{OBD}}