Dev Log 4 - Dynamic Shadows

[@daveh5139]

Nice work! I went with the same idea for the rotating objects. However, shadows don't overlay. If one shadow goes into another, it doesn't get darker like holding up two pairs of sunglasses. I was able to find a material (for Unity :( though) that made it so the shadows would not do that and they meld into each other creating a more natural shadow. You are a much faster and better dev than I am so I'm sure you'll love this challenge. Love your videos, keep it up!

[@JebacPresretac101]

Amazing!

[@vinniciusrosa8284]

Shadows can be done if making the game with c++ and SDL or SFML. You can define black squares and simply manipulate its vertices.

[@ShiloBuff]

I'm not great with shaders, but it seems like this can also be achieved with a shader and shader parameter. Allowing the GPU to do the processing instead of the CPU. Would also be less overhead from a duplicated node. Maybe there are some edge cases i'm not thinking of, just an initial thought.

[@o7pacifica]

DuoRift Games presents: Stardew Canyon

[@Jarl-Game-com]

Very nice!

[@lucast2742]

I'd suggest you to skew the shadows a bit when the shadows point on the side. Instead of just rotating it. In terms of "perspective" only rotation the shadow is a bit off

[@DuoRiftGames]

I think skewing the shadows from dawn to dusk is easier to get away with since you can hide the image as it starts to flatten out. I want to give it a shot; I'm just a little concerned about that "paper thin" look during the night, especially while flopping a shadow texture to preserve realism. We'll see how it goes!

[@timmygilbert4102]

Draw shadows in a canvaslayer, use canvaslayer as a texture, overlay texture on main scene

[@danielmasten4180]

That does seem like it would solve the shadow overlapping. Then they would have to decide whether to run the the canvas layer above the the main scene or below the trees. Run it above, and the trees are shaded from above. Run it below, and it may be difficult to shade the player, unless hopefully there's something I'm missing here?

[@jimhenry9720]

I’d love to get that shader code. I haven’t been able to get something that preserves the shapes which also keeps the length of the shadows proportional to the object that’s casting it. Most things I’ve found and tried creating have all shadows the same length.

[@DuoRiftGames]

If you're talking about the shader code at the end, its applied to a duplicated sprite at 3:25. In the future, I'd like to come up with something that duplicates, rotates and skews the sprite directly in the shader code, taking all of the load off of the CPU. That part shouldn't be too hard, but capping the darkness value while preserving transparency and y-sorting is the real thing I'm trying to tackle.