well Dynamic Shadows can be put on almost anything in the game, except it may cause major lag issues. Since BF1942 was never built to handle Dynamic Lights and Shadows throughout the entire game world, it experiences problems when adding dynamic shadows to everything, and most modern games would as well. This is why it uses Lightmaps, the lightmaps use the Dynamic Shadowing part of the engine to trace, and then draw a shadow, it is then painted onto the terrain. This reduces lag by taking buildings out of the dynamic shadow equation. They do the same with the interior of buildings by creating Object Light Maps.
Bf1942 also doesnt used advanced shaders widely, though its .rs files support many types of advanced shaders, they were never implemented in the game. One shader they use is for the water, but its very primitive compared to the modern water of today, They used a Normal Map and a few Bump Maps to make the water have depth, tho you'd never notice it because its 2002 and the game doesnt really show it. You can see wide spread use of Normal Mapping and Bump mapping however, on everything, in BF Vietnam. The wrinkles on the clothing, the high detail faces, the Bricks of the buildings, all are Texture that reflects light. This being so, it would never be possible to put dynamic shadows on patch terrain because even if you did, it would reflect as a complete object, and cast a shadow away from it, rather than from within it.
To cast shadows on weapons, like you see on alot of the First Person guns, the game uses Shadow Meshes, these meshes are rough cut meshes that are read by the game, and once Dynamic Shadow code is in place, will cast a shadow where ever there is an indent.
People talk of the light codes in BF1942, well these are not for Dynamic lights, but rather for use by the Lightmap generators to create other effects with the lightmap.
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