Setup my map building script to figure out shading. Its a simple and cheap way but since its incoded into the finished model it reduces the frame rate not and creates smooth corners.

In the shot above you can see the textured version with the shading in effect with a single light creating some illumination. The bottom shot is the same scene with the textures turned off and a place holder texture which I've been using to test how light spreads on the surfaces.

I was playing around with the irrlicit wrapper for GM thinking it was amazing and all…because it is, but since I don't have the time to learn the coding to completely redesign my game for it, opting instead to be inspired by the concept of precalculated lighting.

Now GM has the ability to use real time lighting, which I prefer over precalculated, but it doesn't produce the best results all the time. In an effort to hide GM's limitation I came apon the solution of fading off the edges of walls touching floors/cielings and visa versa, creating smoother connections and nicer shading effects. While its no technological breakthrough, it gets the job done without the need for external editors or loss of speed.

I'll experment with some fake volumetic lighting pretty soon, since the 3d enviroment is self contained, I can find a work around involving GM's funky z-buffer. In COW rpg I had used fake volumetric lighting before, coming from entry ways and windows. Unfortunatly due to the zbuffer problems, when two or more sets of volumetric lighting layered over eachother they would cancle eachother out depending on what direction you saw it and what depth the object was set to.