Reverse-engineering · Guild Wars 2 · D3D11
Guild Wars 2: Lion's Arch shadows, as a database
Hey y'all,
I was doing some hobby work on Guild Wars 2's rendering.
With shadows being known for being expensive, I tackled that first. My modded reimplementation work is not ready yet, so in the meantime I figured I would publish some fun/interesting experiments and a small data sandbox for you to enjoy.
In my next steps, I hope to complete a mod to replace GW2's CSM with a VSM to bring some performance improvements to shadows.
If you found any of this interesting, you have requests/feedback, or you work in the field, don't hesitate to reach out.
Seb
I do not work for ArenaNet and have no relationship with them. This is independent black-box research on a retail client. The data provided is heuristically approximated and derived from the shadow rendering in Lion's Arch. While the data is representative, none of the data is GW2's actual data.
This page shows what was measured, never how the measurement is taken. It does not describe how the capture attaches to the process, how the shadow tick is located, which structures are read, or any of the hooking, signature-matching or addressing involved. The identifier map that reverses the public ids back to the capture exists, is necessary for my own work, and is not published. The measurement is the publication; the mechanism is not.
Where the queries run
Lion's Arch's shadows
The tick, stage by stage
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