Occlusion: Too much, yes! But more important they thought about how light works. More or less. And even if the effect is a bit too strong, i really like that the corners of the walls are darkened. I’m not sure how they did this, because the occlusion shadow looks very straight. Maybe a light map? But maybe they used vertex color? I have no idea.
Source: Games of Might and Magic
Because of Deus Ex impressed me a lot with this occlusion stuff (besides of the great gameplay & story), i forgive the new “Deus Ex: Human Revolution” that they overuse the occlusion again. I see it as there style:
Source: Eurogame.net
Oh and don’t forget to read this small comment about exactly this issue.
I cannot stress the absurdity of this enough…
Sean Barret explains it best: http://nothings.org/gamedev/ssao/
AO = a abstraction, SSAO = a crude approximation of a abstraction
Can’t say “thx” enough for posting this link. I thought about this corner thing a lot of times and i’ll enjoy reading the article. I love this comment section :,)
Actually that outline was a bug in Unreal Engine 1’s lightmapper (my own lightmapper had the same issue), most likely because it considered anything “outside” the polygon as black and later when it blurred the lightmap to avoid the hard edges of shadows, this blackness was spread to the visible parts of the lightmap. Or at least that was what happened with my lightmapper, but Unreal 1’s seems to have the same behavior (you can’t get rid of those borders without hacks).
~badsector
Hm…interesting thought! Darn, i would love to have contact to the guys if Ex Ion Storm and ask them :)