Shadows in 3D platformer games : A comparative analysis of shadowmaps and blob shadows

Abstract: The challenges found in three-dimensional platformer games heavily rely on the player’s ability to perceive depth and it is therefore crucial for them to feature shadows as they are an important depth cue for the human visual system. In this paper, we compare two different kinds of shadowing solutions, blob shadows and shadow-maps. Subjects split into two groups each played a differently shadowed version of a 3D platformer game prototype as well as a common, unshadowed version. The first group’s prototype featured blob shadows while the second group’s used shadowmaps. The players were asked to input their own proficiency level from one to five into the program. The data collected through in-prototype logging to a file hinted at shadowmaps being more desirable as the shadowmap group’s delta from shadowed to unshadowed playthrough was lower than the blob shadow group’s. However, this data featured a number of problems, such as low sample size, subjective evaluation of player proficiency in 3D platformer games and different distribution of proficiency in and across groups.