What Brad's getting at is the uncanny valley.  Where things don't quite look real enough to be comfortable to look at.  That's why you need shadows.

I think the thing to consider here is, do you know where your main lighting is going to be at all times?  If so, you can save a bit of CPU time because light is blocked (and therefore generates a shadow) in a predictable fashion, creating a sort of shadow table.  It's like how Minecraft saves time by knowing exactly how the sun lights the landscape ahead of time, but more detailed.

On the other hand, dynamic lighting from spells, smaller local light sources and so on is too variable, too close to the subject to just look up a shadow table.  They can in fact illuminate places that are otherwise dark, thereby softening shadows from the main light source.

Of course you don't want to go nuts here because not only does this kind of lighting eat a lot of CPU in real time or otherwise, making it too detailed for the model gets you to another uncanny valley.  For low-level light sources that flicker you can get away with quick and dirty or no shadows because in main lighting they're going to be washed away.  On the other hand if there's a situation where main lighting is low, even a low-level light source like a campfire is going to have a bigger effect than during daytime conditions.

And yes, you have to think about how much time the thing being shadowed is going to be close enough to the camera for the player to even see these things.  The further away the camera is, the lower the resolution of shadow you can get away with, because the model itself appears much smaller.

Also, have some Shadows.

I've been a programmer for a long time, and one of the things I've noticed about people in this industry is that there's a powerful desire to make things "correct" - except "correct" is usually an ideological thing, like the way a very old English teacher will tell you that you MUST NOT use the word "quote" to refer to a quotation, but only as a verb.  ("To quote", yes, "a quote", no)

I'd like to suggest that maybe shadows are something like this.  Maybe not!  Maybe you've got some data that shows that it's a big deal.  But like, guys, one of the best games I ever played was this thing called Chrono Trigger that you might have heard of once upon a time.  It's shadows consisted of little round black circles underneath character's feet.  And there's this game called Planescape: Torment whose spiritual successor just managed to raise millions of dollars on Kickstarter; it also used little round circles under a character's feet.

Those were really fun games.

OK, read the first page of comments, and regardless of where people stand on shadows (use them or not), my bigger question is... are they worth delaying a beta over?  They could already be gathering lots of feedback on gameplay, crash errors, typos, etc.  To have it be delayed over shadows seems silly.  

I realize, of course, that they also want feedback on how the shadows might be causing glitches, etc, etc, but there are ONLY 2 reasons I can see that they would delay the beta over shadows:  Loss of perspective and empathy for all those players who want to be trying the game NOW, and/or concerns over the cost of all the bandwidth (if they did a version now, and another version with working shadows in a week or whenever).  But if the game is gong to be over Steam now, isn't bandwidth cost not an issue?

I realize some people don't care.  But it's clear that some people, myself included, do.  I had a few weeks with very little work on my plate, and I was anxiously awaiting a chance to get to find lots of glitches and report them (and enjoy the game play, of course), and it looks like I'm going to miss out on that chance... because of a graphical setting.  Sigh.

That was inevitable.  It's something that could not have been avoided.

Seriously, though, he can't work all the time.  He'd go crazy.  Then we'd get weird things like 4-dimensional shadows and a new clown race.

And that's were the problem lies....

~ K

You're attempt to tie the discussion on shadows to the success two classic games that didn't have advanced shadows by modern standards strikes me as a bit misguided.  Those two games didn't succeed because they didn't have shadows, which is your implication. They succeeded because they were masterpieces of design and story telling.  The fact that they had crappy shadows is a technological fact of the time they were developed in.  Nothing more.  

Why waste all this effort on graphics?  Baldur's Gate I was critically acclaimed and has sold millions of copies and it was only 800x600.  Clearly you don't need any higher resolution to be successful. 

It's because players expectations have changed.  Also, there's something to be said for the free publicity when someone shares a screenie or five of a game, having good graphics there can really get more people to check the game out.  Not so much on social media, because there tends to be such a blur of activity there that screenshots can go ignored, but particularly on forums (other than Stardock say).

My avatar is a crop of a screenshot from FE.  Doesn't look brilliant but it's not bad.  And it's on every post I make here and on at least one other forum so, you know, it's permeating your brains.

I suspect his argument is more along the lines of-instead of utilizing a lot of resources on an asset that many will not notice or want, the people power could be used to make the core game better and worry about graphical flourishes at a later time, if at all.

I think MarvinKosh's point is very apropos in this instance.

It's pretty much a given the game has to have half decent shadows.  I know some folks (not sure here, real life people ) who are happy to play the game with blobs for units and squares for buildings if all the other components are spot on.  Uber TBS strategy nerds don't care so much for fancy graphics 'n stuff.  That's cool.  But the reality is a lot of people like fancy graphics.  If it looks sexy it will probably sell a few more copies and hopefully that money goes into improving other areas.

In terms of delaying it... presumably once the beta is out they'll want to be working on bug fixes and balancing stuff... rather than stuffing around with shadows.  So if they get it out the way now, there's more time for fixing other stuff when the beta comes out.  Well that's what i'm telling myself while I wait patiently

In any case, cool to see lots of folks are hanging out for it.  

Can you share about some of the difficulties and problems you have with the implementation? Filtering issues? Shadow frustum optimization issues? Baked shadows with dynamic shadows blending issues?

I think that a bob 101 (there forum, I put TWO spaces in his name, so don't make this paragraph a link to nowhere) has a point.  If they're going to add shadows, they need to properly utilize them to sell the game.  Therefore, in Legendary Heroes, you must add Succubi.  Give them a higher polygon count that other units, and make sure they're well animated.  A few screenshots of those will get some attention.  The shadows will really help highlight the curves.  Succubi gotta be curvy.

Great screenshots certainly make for some good publicity and some sales, but you know what else makes for good publicity and sales?  People being really excited over playing a beta.

If they hadn't gotten expectations high with previous statements saying "it should be this date", then I personally, and certainly some other people, wouldn't be disappointed right now.  We would just be waiting.

Well done shadows aren't typically the first thing noticed if at all, but are certainly noticed if they are poor, or if you are used to shodows, are removed.

The game itself continues getting developed every day.  It just means that Beta 1 will be further along in other areas. It's not like the rest of the team is sitting around having beers waiting for the shadows to get in. 

Even in beta 1, the shadows won't be "right", they'll just be better.  The goal isn't to make the world realistic. But as game developers, we do have a desire to have our game be visually consistent.

To use a book analogy, there are people who only care about plot and there are people who only care about the quality of the writing. But most people fall somewhere in-between.  

I don't think anyone will ever accuse an Elemental game of having state of the art graphics -- it's a DirectX 9 game after all.  But we  are motivated to try to make the game as consistent to our vision as we can.  It's not like it holds up the game development process, it just holds up how soon we are able to give it out to the public.

All I can say is that I love cranking the graphics to max settings (now that I am actually able too with my rig) in Fallen Enchantress and just getting immersed in the game world and the events and actions that are going on. 

All right, all right, sorry I'm so grumpy.  I just know my free time is almost done, and I had really pegged on this to be my free entertainment.  If you could magically send 5 cool people to my house, all ready to play the Rise of the Runelords adventure (Pathfinder), I could use that as free entertainment....

"Movie Days?", I need to suggest that to the rest of the Engineering team. I know several people already plan to be "sick" the day before the next installment of "The Hobbit" is released this December.

We should have also "Launch Days" for newly released games too! 

I personally believe people work faster and produce higher quality stuff if they can rest and relax once in a while, so no evil faces from my side (meaby only bad jokes)

Only real thing that makes me wonder, is its nicer to know about why or what is happening (feels like you "forgot" about the forum and your beta release date for a while)

But whatever, I'm too poor myself anyhow >_<
Anyhow, I am sure the shadows is going to look great! and personally I prefer having nice shadows in the game, they usually add a great sense of depth and perspective to a game world!

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

There are many problems with the lighting/shadows in FE that basically make it a 2d game with a 3d engine.  Just look at your cities from a low angle on the 'shadowed side' of the building.  It looks horrible; you never want to view the world from that angle - ever - and something about that is just not right.

I'm not a huge proponent of cutting edge graphics in a strategy game.  However, we're dealing with a 3d engine and these are issues which must be resolved. 

If we can get nice dynamic shadows with low computing overhead then I for one am all for it.

I don't think time off is a problem - Stardock isn't crunching as far as I can tell.   Hopefully everyone is working 40 hr weeks and getting enough time off over there.

Best thread title ever.

Anyways, shadows or not, what I would love to see are improvements in the weapons / armor upgrade screen. Or, in fact, for there to even be a screen instead of a button that offers no information or options.

i would like the city upgrade screen to not block the view of the city I am upgrading. 

If I have a path selected at the end of a turn I want my units to follow that path when I hit the turn button, not wait till the next.

i want to be able to assign resources connected to outposts to the city I choose.

i want the spell of making to be farther up the tree. 

I want the diplomatic ramifications of those buildings to increase proportiomallly to how many buildings I have built.

I would love more and different direct damage spells.

While I am at it, I would like a pony, too.

Edit: actually never mind about the pony. Just remembered that I've gotten that one a couple of times.

I was thinking the same thing Heavenfall said...shadows cause problems in so many games if done wrong.  LIke in SWToR...man they were bad and thus got turned off...still havnt turned them on.  Even in other games like WoW and  many others...off they go.  I have even turned them off in Civ 5, because I dont like how it affects the performance of the game.  

Hopefully Lord Frog will get them done the right way unlike many others.

I have to agree that simplified shadowing or no shadowing would not matter at all to me, even though I have a pretty good laptop (I mean it), FE still runs very slow on it, except when using the always-on cloth map option.

After a short adaptation, the cloth map shows itself as easier to plan, easier to read, as the information is less cluttered... but it could be just me.

The question I have is why aren't you guys using a game engine that will just do the shadows out of the box?  Is there no such engine?

Not for strategy games.  If you want to make a first person shooter or a game with very finite numbers of units that isn't on land you have unity, unreal, gamebryo.

Firaxis made their own for Civ V.