I was hoping that the new light stuff might possibly bring occlusion of some sort, but I guess not. Here's what I mean, for those of you that don't understand:

the light source is the sun
the recipient is your ship
between you and the sun is an asteroid

Now, logic says that the asteroid would cast a shadow and your ship would be dark. However, because there's no dynamic shadowing at all in this game, the side of your ship facing the sun looks exactly the same as though there were no roid between you and the sun. Very annoying for stealthiness...

What we changed was how the existing lighting model was used. Doing shadows would require some work.. which is somewhat less important than making the game accessible to newbies and other things.

It's not that we don't want this. Ray and I have had long discussions on the merits of shadow maps and stencil shadows and even (more recently) precomputed radiance transfer stuff (which wouldn't help this problem at all, but still falls under "general lighting model improvements").

But, I think I've said basically the same thing every time someone asks for shadows: "Yes, so do we, can't do it right now, sorry". We did this recent change because it was something achievable in a very short period of time, which also yielded major benefits. Hey, at least we have some "dark" now.

Our focus, for now, is not on "Vendetta Online the crazy game engine"; but rather "Vendetta Online the Fun Game that's Easy To Get Into".. with "Fun Game" and "Easy to Get Into" being the primary goals.

I agree. The graphics are far more than nice enough to work on other things that will add much more to the gameplay value.

Also, wouldn't shadows kind of up the ante for system requirements, and thus exclude the players who own ancient equipment? Part of what I love about VO is its scalability.