This implementation of dynamic shadows with soft edges in 2D using OpenGL was part of a game concept I experimented with. In the end I decided not to go ahead with the game, but as the shadowing itself was pretty fun to do and as the concepts (and possibly the code) can easily be used for other games, I will detail my work here.
I had just finished implementing hard-edged shadows for rectangles when I found a GameDev.net article by Orangy Tang, where a technique for rendering soft shadow edges is described. The article is very thorough and I ended up using most of the ideas described there. Instead of starting from scratch, I will only explain what was done differently.
But first, here’s an animation of the result in action:
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