it needs a stencil buffer to be able to use stencil shadows.
this is generally the first thing that gets disabled when context creation would otherwise fail, as its often mutually exclusive with 16bit or 32bit depth buffers, depending on the driver.
ah, I see, thanks Spike. I was trying to revive it to use parallel shadows because, as I pm'd you, unfortunately parallel lights shadowmapping keeps crashing randomly on FTE. Do you think there could be a workaround to use parallel lights (via ORTHOLIGHT) and avoid crashing?
Thanks
Meadow Fun!! - my first commercial game, made with FTEQW game engine