I cannot get Pandora Tomorrow to render shadows, spotlights, and torches.

The game is almost unplayable since you cannot see where the spotlights shine. The ground just remains dark. The normal lights on walls shine ok, its just the projected lights that are not working.

Its the same problem on my 7900GS and 8800GTS.
Ive tried playing around with the pandora.ini settings, but nothing works. I have also tried different Forceware drivers.

I am guessing the game uses hardware shadows to render the lighting, perhaps these 3D functions have been removed from the 7x00 series?

Is there a pandora.ini settings I can add or change?

I also had a look in the nVidia control panel, but couldnt find any settings that allowed me to force/emulate lighting.

I tried changing all the below settings to False and True.

[D3DDrv.D3DRenderDevice]
Translucency=True
VolumetricLighting=True
ShinySurfaces=True
HighDetailActors=True
UsePrecaching=True
UseMipmapping=True
UseTrilinear=True
UseMultitexture=True
UsePageFlipping=True
UseFullscreen=True
UseGammaCorrection=True
DetailTextures=True
UseTripleBuffering=True
UsePrecache=True
Use32BitTextures=True (changing this to true should fix the problem, but not on 7900+ cards
HardwareSkinning=True
AdapterNumber=-1
UseVSync=True
ReduceMouseLag=False
UseTripleBuffering=True
;added
;ForceShadowMode flag : 0==projector, 1==buffer, unspecified==auto-detect
ForceShadowMode=1 (this is from SC1, I tried 0,1,2 to no avail)
;EmulateGF2Mode=1 (this is from SC1, but doesnt work)


PC:
Intel Core2Duo
XP SP2
GeForce 8800GTS
currently using Forceware 163.75

ok ive been playing the game more, and there are actually some lights that work.

At sadono's camp just before you enter his building to bug his phone, they have a splotlight outside with heaps of crates and two guards walking around. The main spotlight doesnt light up the ground, BUT if you go up the stairs, the spotlight lights up the crates and railing and casts a shadow.

But on that level where you have to stay in the spotlight across the garden to get to that lady in the building, the spotlight works perfectly.

And in the submarine garage level where you are up high and ride that horizontal lift and get shot at (on the way to the submarine), the guys with torches project light 'rays', but the torches dont light up the walls or floor.

What are the command lines for the splintercell2.exe file? Can I specify -forceshadowprojection or something?

im sorry, but like you, i have tried everything, using SC1 settings on SC2, changing drivers, editing game files, messing with .INIs but nothing can solve the problem... no nvidia card newer than the FX series will work.

It would be nice if the programmers spent a few hours to fix up the lighting and release a patch. The lighting is the most important aspect in the Splinter Cell games, so the game is somewhat ruined in its current state since virtually everyone has PCI-Express and cannot downgrade to a Ti4600/FX card.

How hard could it be? Run the debugger to detect errors in the projection lighting functions and update the D3D calls.

Does it happen on ATI cards as well?

AFAIK SCPT works on ATI cards, but SC1 doesnt

there is a device, i dont remember its name, but its like a slot plugin, which you insert in the pci-e slot and it becomes a agp slot, so you can fit agp cards in, IIRC, you will also get half performance than you were supposed to.

I have a 7800GS (AGP) and have no problems with the lighting in the game. Just wanted to confirm that with AGP it does work. I did have some other strange problem which I fixed. *Only* by choosing the shortcut in the start menu that says 'play *Single* player game' did I ensure the game would launch correctly every time. 'Play Pandora Tomorrow' gave me 50% successful launches at best. Weird...
Sorry about your problem. I think when I do upgrade to a new computer I'm gonna keep this old one. Too many problems with older games on new CPUs... Good luck.

you may think you have no problems because you havent reached the TV station level, that level is really really hard bcuz lights arent displayed (in fact thats the only problem i found in SCPT with newer cards, there are people complaining about lighting bugs in other levels too but i dont have them, and i havent played LAX bcuz i didnt get past TV station with all those bugs)

the official bug is: nvidia cards newer than geforce fx cant render light beams or spotlights with weather effects, like rain (and only weather effect in the game), people see other bugs bcuz theres something wrong with their PCs, other than that, i have no bugs at all...

Well, that's just great. I've got that to look forward to. Glad to see that Ubi-Soft is doing such a bang up job of supporting their products. Makes me feel warm all over.
Yah, well seriously, I've had no problems on any other games with this card. So, we'll see. If it doesn't work the game only cost me $13 on Amazon (and also came packed with the first SC). Although I finished that one a year ago it was still a good deal.
Anyway, thanks for the info.

You may try to fake ur Graphics Card with 3D Analyze. Fake it a lower performance one. Dunno if it will work.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: In50mni41986,

that didnt work for me, but it worked for some people on other forums

That's bad :/ So u will have to say good bye to PT OR buy an older Graphics card ;d

UBI will never post a patch.


They do not off suport to older game titles.

Certainly not for a game that is a few years old. They did not even fix their latest game to work on the newer video cards properly.

Unfortunately this is problem with the current Nvidia 8800 and some 79000 graphic cards. I do not believe that we will see a workaround.

to solve those silly shadow problems you can get a PCX card like the 5750. Its the crossover 'patch' that actually is a piece of hardware. Its an FX series card that is PCi-E. For both SP1 and PT I still had to screw around with some ini file settings in the end but to no avail did I ever get the TV station level to work like it did when i ran an AGP FX5700 Ultra.I had to tweak some settings to get LAX to work right too.