Thanks to ioquake3, World of PADMAN gets a little more graphics power and OpenGL2 will be the new standard renderer in the upcoming version 1.7, which gives us the opportunity to modernize the graphics of WoP discreetly, even if we will not use all possibilities. Besides high dynamic range rendering and tone mapping with auto exposure, we are especially interested in the cascaded shadow maps.
Similar to ioquake3, we are in a bit of a dilemma here and unfortunately cannot recompile all maps to fully switch to dynamic light sources. In this respect, the OpenGL2 renderer allows us to use a kind of hybrid mode where we can combine dynamic sunlight where it makes sense with the fixed lightmap built into the maps and use both to light the maps. This is a compromise, but it looks good enough in most cases and allows us to maintain full backwards compatibility. So you can always switch back to the old OpenGL1 renderer and WoP will look the same. It is also important to us to keep the graphical style of WoP as much as possible, even if the new shader and material support would give us much more possibilities regarding a graphical update. The following screenshots give a first impression of the cascaded shadow maps for sunlight and moonlight in PadCastle and PadGallery. And since we are talking about ENTE’s PadPack, we will of course keep it up to date and compatible with version 1.7 of WoP.
With these impressions the whole WoP team wishes you a Merry Christmas.