Shadows without shader support

Scripting Issues
1

Hi, I’m coding a game for a class that must be able to run on all (or a large percentage) of my schools computers. 99% of these computers only have Intel GMA 900 or 950s, none of which have any hardware T&L or shader support (from what I gather from wikipedia). I was still hoping to put shadows in my game, and I was wondering if it is possible to do so without using a shader.

Specifically, I’m making an RTS style game, using GeoMipTerrain for my map. I was wondering if it is possible for the units to cast shadows on the ground, on trees, rocks, each other, etc.

Thanks

2

Try searching the forums for “ShadowDemo”.

David

3

strange. i’m pretty sure the intel gma 900 series already HAS shadermodel 2.0 including dx9 and opengl 1.4 support. vertexshaders semms to be implemented on the cpu,thought.
but shadows via shaders should be no problem at all.

4

Or, if your hardware supports the ARB_shadow extension you can have shadows without using shaders, too.

5

Thanks for the replies

I tried using ShaderDemo.py, however I couldn’t get it to work on my geoMipTerrain.

I used this code

    def setupShadows(self):
        # Initiate the shadows
        print self.dlnp
        print [unit.model for unit in self.allUnits]
        self.shadows = [ShadowCaster(self.dlnp, unit.model, 0.5,0.5) for unit in self.allUnits]

and got this output/error:

render/dlight
[render/panda_soft]
:display(error): Window wouldn't open; abandoning window.

Does anyone know what is wrong?

By the way, ThomasEgi I can confirm that there is very little shader support. I can run the normal mapping demo, but not much else.

Thanks
[/code]

6

there should pixelshader but no vertexshader (those are still available but they are computed on the cpu afaik, same witih T&L)
but for shadows that should be just enough. depending on the implementation of the shadows

7

Hmm, when I run the shadow mapping tutorial that came with panda3d, I get this error:

:display(error): Window wouldn't open; abandoning window.
d

I have no clue why it returned “d” for the last line…

Does anyone know why?

8

bump, any ideas?