I've always thought Valorant looked like crap because the players don't cast shadows. Just found out the other day that it's because other player model positions aren't sent to the client until the server determines they are visible to reduce cheating. This would cause shadows to appear and disappear as the player model was loaded and unloaded so you would never see a shadow unless you could also see the body of the player.
I think you read my post about that, I don't know if they specifically disabled player shadows because of the anti-cheat system but it certainly makes the anti-cheat simpler. Valorant intentionally has extremely bare-bones rendering to allow for very high framerates on modest hardware, aside from no dynamic shadows it has no dynamic lighting whatsoever, and no alpha transparency anywhere. Things like smoke that would usually be transparent are stylized in ways that let them be drawn fully opaque because it's faster. Regardless of the cheating situation they probably would have skipped dynamic shadows anyway, for performance.
Spot on: "We have cast shadows only on objects in first person, like your own hands and weapon. This is to avoid cast shadows being a competitive factor in both effect (knowing where your cast shadow is) and performance (low-spec machines can’t reasonably run well with cast shadows)."
interesting decision - makes sense for performance but shadows giving away a player's position in a competitive fps adds depth (and fun!) imo. satisfying to read a bad approach and also to play around if you notice your shadow's about to give you away.
I agree it lessens the depth though I think it generally aligns with Valorant flattening out some of the complexity of CS to free up overhead for hero abilities and ultimates. Each round has as many as 40 abilities to think about across 10 players and many maps add unique mechanics on top of that (e.g. teleporters). Also in CS because of a fixed sun position the parts of the map where shadows are relevant never change and become mostly rote memorization which is another thing I think Riot tried to minimize somewhat (e.g. Brimstone and Omen smokes not requiring memorizing dozens of lineups across the map pool).
for sure, its a totally valid design decision either way. also, good point about the fixed sun in cs. i've had a lot of fun with the shadows in r6 siege - since a lot of the combat takes place indoors where you can really reshape the level on the fly it doesn't feel as static
But its not, as we see in the posts above. CS has shadows and a fog-of-war anticheat implementation, Riot could have managed it if they really wanted shadows.
Thanks for the clarification, that was the post I read. I think it would look better if they did a cheap shadow like N64 Zelda which starts from the feet instead of the centered circle which falls off to transparent before it gets out to the feet but I guess you run into problems when the shadow extends past the player model sometimes.
Surely fixable by the server checking for visibility of the shadow as well? I don’t know Valorant but I assume that could actually become a strategic element to not hide with a light source at your back.
Positioning is already a huge part of the game, and every wall, corner and box to duck behind has a strategic purpose that one must be aware of, just not based on lighting but geometry and game strategy. So adding a whole other mechanic to it wouldn't be interesting.
I tried to get T-Mobile to unlock my far out of contract iphone 6s a few years ago, which should be super simple. The first time I talked to a rep and confirming everything they said it should show as unlocked in a few days. A month later and it wasn't unlocked. I called again and went through the same steps with another rep, they said it would be unlocked for sure this time. Nope. Luckily my friend gave me their old unlocked iPhone and I switched carriers. That 6s is still locked, T-mobile is scummy.
Strange. I've been using Inkscape to make vector art on Windows and Ubuntu with various hardware for years and while I don't think it's ever running at 100+ fps it's totally usable and hasn't been laggy. [edit: unless you are using filters or editing a very complex file, it does bog down then.]
What about line style etc?
Is is possible to define the style of line you want and then create lines of that style.
Presently one workflow to work around it is to consider a small area of the canvas as a palette area and create lines/objects in them and apply the desires styles on them. Then duplicate these palette objects into your main drawing.
Ha, was looking for this, just read 3 articles about these columns without a picture of the layout. Resorted to a video tour, are you sure it wasn't the larger ones here? https://imgbox.com/nh1Wx8JF
I have no idea, there is a severe lack of graphic context in these articles about a specific architectural detail. In the original article it looks like people are standing by the column the letter was found in.
Yeah it's insane that they have an article about these columns and don't show which ones it is prior to showing the people next to the deconstructed one without any context of where they are located.
Yeah, it seems like a promotion for Cosmos. I saw some planet drawings by Andreas Cellarius from 1660 on the default page that included "(not openly licensed)" in the info text. Even if they are public domain it looks like a quick scrape.
Ha, I have a good engineer friend who often plays devil's advocate and he sometimes seems to reflexively respond with a disagreeing statement even if he is agreeing with the majority of what is being discussed.
