Transparent building casts shadows... sometimes

z · May 09, 2009, 08:06:13 PM

In my modified Traffic Volume View, the main building of all transit lots lights up, just as various other civic buildings light up in other data views. Unfortunately, due to customizability requirements, none of the RTMT stations have a main building - they're all props. So Cogeo designed a transparent main building to be used with an RKT0 that consists of a single plane, showing the RTMT logo letters. At first he designed a horizontal plane, and later a vertical plane, which seems to look better. In both cases, even with all special views are turned off, a shadow of the RTMT logo is cast whenever the query cursor is placed over either the building or any of the main props on the RTMT lot. When the cursor is moved away, the shadow disappears - at least for the horizontal plane. It disappears for the vertical plane as well, but only if the game is run in software mode. If the game is run in hardware mode, the shadow of the logo from the vertical plane is always there, making this feature effectively unusable. Strangely enough, the horizontal plane behaves as before, with the shadow appearing only transiently, when the query cursor is passed over the lot.

Ideally, we'd like to get rid of this shadow completely, as it serves no purpose. But it would be sufficient to get the vertical plane to behave like the horizontal one, where the shadow appears only transiently. Is there some way to do this? I have enclosed an attachment containing both the horizontal and vertical models.

Swamper77 · May 09, 2009, 08:30:11 PM

You may try looking at the Maxis Subway Station building exemplar to see if there are any properties that could be of usefulness.

-Jan

z · May 09, 2009, 11:02:08 PM

Quote from: Swamper77 on May 09, 2009, 08:30:11 PM
You may try looking at the Maxis Subway Station building exemplar to see if there are any properties that could be of usefulness.

It looks like a completely ordinary building exemplar to me. There are no unfamiliar properties there. And the Maxis Subway Station isn't transparent, and always casts a shadow, so it doesn't seem to be doing anything special at all.

EDIT: I found the fix for my problem. There's a boolean property called "No Shadows." If you add it to your building exemplar and set it to True, the building doesn't cast any shadows. I tried it and it works.