Why are stencil shadows so slow?

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wattywatts

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Joined: 25th May 2009

Location: Michigan

Posted: 2nd Dec 2013 20:44

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I've always just assumed that stencil shadows were more proof of concept than anything else, but I've recently been playing Thief: Deadly Shadows and it seems to be using only stencil shadows to light entire levels. I'm under the impression now that it has more to do with DBPro's native shader.
Not that there's much reason to use it with so many user created shaders around, except that it's a one line command with little else to code. Really I'm just curious.

http://www.indiedb.com/games/max-vs-mars

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Phaelax

DBPro Master

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Joined: 16th Apr 2003

Location: Metropia

Posted: 7th Dec 2013 00:36

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One of Thief's biggest components to its gameplay is the shadows, so no doubt they spent a great deal of time working on them. The game is also much newer than DBP(which is over 10 years old) and may also make use of better optimizations. But I can't say what the real reason is.

http://zimnox.com

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wattywatts

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Posted: 7th Dec 2013 03:07

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Yes I'm sure they spent a lot of time optimizing for Thief Deadly Shadows, but according to the info I've been able to find DBPro came out in 2002 while Thief came out in 2004 so there's not that big of a time gap.

http://www.indiedb.com/games/max-vs-mars

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Rudolpho

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Joined: 28th Dec 2005

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Posted: 7th Dec 2013 09:45

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Aren't stencil shadows made up of real 3D geometry as opposed to shadow maps which are projected like textures onto the already existing geometry?
If so perhaps the answer lies in newer games being able to use DX10+'s geometry shaders for it instead of having to recreate tonnes of meshes on the CPU in each loop cycle?