Hello, ive got a question relating to the editor, more precisely about the shadows.

My problem is: ive calculated high quality shadows for my tracks, but after every update or sometimes even after some time (without editing these maps) they are gone! I dont want to recalculate it for each track again, becaus it takes about 30min per track!

Now i want to know, are high quality shadow necessary for uploading my tracks online? or are standart shadows adequate?

Normal shadows are probably sufficient for most tracks.

High quality shadows enables the game to perform more computations and light bounces so that you can have a high quality lightmap. Shadows are smoother and everything just looks a bit better, for the discerning eye. It's especially useful on tracks with a lot of light sources or variations in the lighting.

Interestingly, the High Quality Shadows are saved in a file separate from the track. This high quality lightmap is then used by the game to compress the shadows back down to around the size of the Normal Shadows for storage and distribution in the track GBX file.

That's possibly why the High Quality shadows appear to disappear after an update. If the file that stores the high quality shadows separately gets deleted, then it would appear that they are no longer there because the game can't locate that separate file.

But it doesn't matter much anyway. You're still getting higher quality shadows in the track file by enabling that high quality computation in the first place.

I hope that's not too confusing.

thanks for explanation!

if I understand aright it means that an uploaded track has no shadow-information in it and the one who download it has to calculate them again in any case?

People who download your track will get normal shadows, high quality shadows are only saved on your computer.

Hans Holo is correct. I'll add some more information though.

Beatinfected says:
if I understand aright it means that an uploaded track has no shadow-information in it and the one who download it has to calculate them again in any case?

Actually, there is always shadow information included in the track file, if it's a validated track ready for people to play.

You can easily look at the filesize to see if the shadow information is there. If it has shadows then it will be at least several hundred KBs in size. If it has been saved without shadows calculated (which is sometimes the case for a work-in-progress track) then the track file may only be around 20 to 50 KBs.

But once the track is done, validated, and saved... there are some things to keep in mind...

If the author calculated "fast" quality, then that is the highest quality shadows/lightmap that is included in the track file.

But if the author calculated "high" quality shadows, it enables higher quality computations. The "default" quality shadows saved with the track are a higher quality as a result. But they're still seen as "default" quality by the game.

The person who downloads the track has an option for what is the lowest shadow quality that they are willing to play with in a track. This setting is in your launcher settings under display -> compatibility. It's called "Lightmap quality". Whatever you set this to will be the lowest acceptable shadow quality you will play a track. If the author has calculated shadows lower than the setting you chose, then the game will calculate shadows (at the time of loading the map) to match whatever setting you picked so that you don't play at a lower setting than you wanted. If the author chose a setting higher than what you've picked in your lightmap settings, then the game will not calculate shadows at the time of loading the track to play it because higher quality shadows are already provided by the author.

So for instance, if you have "Lightmap quality" set to "High" then the game will always calculate shadows on every track you download and play, because the maximum quality saved in any track file is "Default" quality. So it has to always calculate the higher quality shadows.

However, if you have the "Lightmap quality" set to "Very fast" (as I do), then the game will accept any quality shadows that are calculated by any author and saved in the track file. Because, this is telling the game that you're willing to play tracks with "Very fast" shadows or higher.

As I understand it though, if higher quality shadows are provided in the track file, then the game will use those, even if you have set the "Lightmap quality" in your launcher settings to a lower setting.

Keep in mind this is all based on experimentation and conjecture based on many tests. This is not an official report of how it works. This is just how I understand it to work.

thank you all for explanation! especially to eyebo for specifying (?sorry, my bad english )