Enabling projectile shadows

(moving this post from general to the private TLK forums as per suggestion)

Hello, just to keep a running thread in case someone figures it out, I have a requirement for my projectile ball to cast a shadow above the ground which it travels. I modified the lighting kit code to include a renderShadow function for projectiles. The code changes are working and projectiles are casting shadows in both the release and debug builds of the code.

There is a strange bug though which is happening only in the release build. If you quit a mission and then re-enter it, launching the projectile crashes the engine without any clues as to why.. no messages, nothing in the console log. I have isolated (via printfs) the crash point in the new renderShadow funtion but I have no idea why that operation would crash the engine. Here are the code changes and the crash point:

Projectile.h

// add to class ProjectileData
// ----- SHADOW ENABLING BLOCK -----
F32 noShadowLevel;
F32 genericShadowLevel;
S32 shadowNode;  
// ----- SHADOW ENABLING BLOCK -----

// add to class Projectile
// ----- SHADOW ENABLING BLOCK -----
void renderShadow(F32 dist, F32 fogAmount);
// ----- SHADOW ENABLING BLOCK -----

Projectile.cc

// add to ProjectileData constructor
// ----- SHADOW ENABLING BLOCK -----
genericShadowLevel = 0.4f;
noShadowLevel = 0.01f;
// ----- SHADOW ENABLING BLOCK -----

// update renderObject method
void Projectile::renderObject(SceneState* state, SceneRenderImage *)
{
   .
   .
   .
   glScalef( mDataBlock->scale.x, mDataBlock->scale.y, mDataBlock->scale.z );
	
	// ----- SHADOW ENABLING BLOCK -----
	this->sgSceneObjectData.installLights(this);
   // ----- SHADOW ENABLING BLOCK -----

   if(mProjectileShape)
   {
     .
     .
     .
    
   }
   glDisable(GL_BLEND);
   glDisable(GL_TEXTURE_2D);
   glTexEnvi(GL_TEXTURE_ENV, GL_TEXTURE_ENV_MODE, GL_REPLACE);

   glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);
   glPopMatrix();

   // ----- SHADOW ENABLING BLOCK -----
   F32 fogAmount = 0.0f;
   F32 dist = 0.0f;
   Point3F cameraOffset;
   getRenderTransform().getColumn(3,&cameraOffset);
   cameraOffset -= state->getCameraPosition();
   dist = cameraOffset.len();
   fogAmount = state->getHazeAndFog(dist,cameraOffset.z);
	
   Projectile::renderShadow(dist,fogAmount);
	
    this->sgSceneObjectData.uninstallLights(this);
   // ----- SHADOW ENABLING BLOCK -----
   .
   .
   .

sgShadow.cc

// added to includes
// ----- SHADOW ENABLING BLOCK -----
#include "game/projectile.h"
// ----- SHADOW ENABLING BLOCK -----


// created new function, same as ShapeBase:renderShadow except removed the rendering code for mounted objects
// ----- SHADOW ENABLING BLOCK -----
void Projectile::renderShadow(F32 dist, F32 fogAmount)
{
	
	if(sgSceneObjectData.sgDisableDynamicShadows)
		return;
	if(Shadow::getGlobalShadowDetailLevel()<mDataBlock->noShadowLevel)
		return;
	if(mProjectileShape->getShape()->subShapeFirstTranslucentObject.empty() ||
		mProjectileShape->getShape()->subShapeFirstTranslucentObject[0] == 0)
		return;

	Vector<LightInfo *> lights;
	LightManager *lm = gClientSceneGraph->getLightManager();

	lm->sgGetValidLights(lights);

	// ambient must be last!
	for(U32 i=0; i<lights.size(); i++)
	{
		LightInfo *light = lights[i];  // ** CRASHES HERE IN RELEASE MODE 

		if(light->mType != LightInfo::Ambient)
			continue;

		U32 il = lights.size() - 1;
		if(i == il)
			continue;

		// swap...
		LightInfo *last = lights[il];
		lights[il] = light;
		lights[i] = last;
		break;
	}
        .
        .
        .

}
// ----- SHADOW ENABLING BLOCK -----