TeamVanilla NoShadows takes Most Wanted's shadow textures off the screen: every texture whose name starts with SHD_, in every pack the game loads, whether it is always resident, streamed in with the city, or unpacked with a car.
How it chooses
Every texture in the game passes through one loading step exactly once. NoShadows looks at each texture's own name there and acts on the ones that match its list, so it covers every shadow texture without anyone listing the 1,500-odd of them by hash, including ones in packs a mod adds later. The prefix list is in NoShadows.ini and can name other textures too.
Two modes
- Blank, the default: the texture's pixels are cleared and the game loads it as normal, so nothing is drawn and the game's own bookkeeping is untouched.
- Skip: the texture is not loaded at all, which also saves the cost of loading it.
NoShadows.log lists what it removed. It checks for retail v1.3 (US) before doing anything and leaves any other build alone.