We’ve (well, I’ve) been working on a new self-funded development for a couple of days now, and the first pass of some graphics have arrived. Very early days yet, but I thought I’d post this for posterity and comparison with how the game finally ends up.

It’s a time management game where you play the part of a harried bar tender trying to please a never ending parade of ever more demanding customers.

Raz0r, our internal games engine, has had directional light shadows for a long time, but the shadowmapping implementation was far from cutting edge. This has now been addressed with the addition of a Parallel-Split Shadow Mapping technology that makes directional light shadows appear pin sharp, even when used in massive worlds.

The attached pic is obviously a test scene that’s not trying to push the envelope in terms of visuals, but it does display a large outdoor environment with plenty of instancing and a nice crisp shadow on the ground wherever you look.

The method runs in a single pass (both when generating and later when reading back), storing 4 levels of splitting into the R,G,B and A channels of a standard texture at full resolution. The whole effect runs well on the DirectX 9 pipe, supporting down to shader model 2 which is our minimum spec.