sndwv: I noticed immediately on the first level the player character casts an opaque, full black shadow that occasionally 'glitches' past when walking past a light source. Was it always this way (I remember the Q3 engine never being that great with shadows) or is this a modern compatibility issue? Is there a way to fix it? Thanks!

Gudadantza: I guess you mean the cg_shadows 2 option. By default the game launches with cg_shadows 1, a blob shadow under the characters, plain and simpler lighting. The volumetric shadows (2) used to be buggy in every Id Tech 3 game I tried. Consider them unfinished an buggy by default.

lCraftyl: The Shadows aren't supposed to be on by Default.

Even when you type "cg_shadows" into the console to check the value that is set, it will says "Default value is 1"

Basically, the Dynamic Shadows are a experimental thing that was never fully added into the game as a core feature. You can only enable them from the console itself on the OG release and for good reason, because they're pretty janky.

When GOG made the installer, someone must have enabled them in the config file and left them on when they're not really supposed to be.

Imo, they should update the installer so the Dynamic Shadows (cg_shadows 3) aren't enable by Default. Again, they're buggy and could cause issues, even crashing or performance problems.

cg_shadows should have the value of "1", which enables the blob shadows. (The value 2 doesn't do anything I don't think)