Warp wrote:
>   I don't know if Thief3 uses shadows in the way you describe, but it would
> be a rare exception.

Given it's a sneaker, and given that doing things like leaving doors 
open behind you can get you caught, and making too much noise can get 
you caught, it seems reasonable they'd put that much effort into it. I 
wouldn't think it would be all that much more difficult to have the NPCs 
react to seeing shadows than to the player himself. Especially since 
they only seem to react to the player in the other games. (I.e., make a 
noise, get caught, even if you're standing near others arguing loudly 
next to a pneumatic hammer.)

>   (OTOH, one could argue that something which is rather heavy to calculate
> and which can be turned off with a rendering quality settings shouldn't be
> a relevant gameplay feature because when it's turned off then it makes
> little sense.)

I don't think you can turn it off. The game needs "pixel shader 3" and 
won't run on my "pixel shader 1" cards. Not sure (don't really care) 
what the differences are.

>   For example, at some points you need to use the gravity gun to pull a

Altho if you watch the speed-runs, it's clear the use of the physics 
engines make it possible to do things you wouldn't expect otherwise. 
Like shoot the lever in the tower that holds up the giant logs that 
break the doors down. Or maybe he's shooting the rope. (Took me a couple 
viewings to figure out what he was doing there.)

One of the things in Black&White was the desire to make the physics good 
enough that anything you could do for real you could do in the game. You 
could, in theory, create a ball of water, use it to focus the sun on 
some trees, light them on fire, set a boulder in the fire until it's 
hot, and throw the bolder into another forest to light *that* on fire.

> Also ragdoll physics make falling
> enemies more realistic in all kinds of terrain, 

But nowhere near as fun as watching Jumpman bounce on the way down. ;-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
  Ever notice how people in a zombie movie never already know how to
  kill zombies? Ask 100 random people in America how to kill someone
  who has reanimated from the dead in a secret viral weapons lab,
  and how many do you think already know you need a head-shot?

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