Shader Whining...

---- deleted too -------
(sorry)

...haven't read the whole thread but if fog is missing then the author of the shader simply forgot to handle fog in the vertex shader. with hlsl this is just one line of code. -> http://www.conitecserver.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=SHADER&Number=432085 (my second post in this thread)

thx Vent... looking at it now...


can you comment a bit on how you are finding implementing shaders in your development?

--Mike

@Red: If you want to see how badly full blown shaders can crawl a system then check out the newest Thief game. Of course, there's always Doom 3 but Thief 3 has shaders everywhere, too and it's plain ridiculous at times. I think these types of games are just going to chug along by their very nature and you need a machine from those gods you mentioned to get anything enjoyable out of them. Makes me glad I'm focusing on lame point & click(gasp!) and storytelling(choke!).

All the shaders work fine, but you must use them judiciously. If fogging doesnt work it's because we didn't put it in the shader for some reason. Fog can be easily added.. in any HLSL pass just add this your vertex shader output struct:
float Fog: FOG;

and then in your vertex shader:
// Add fog
float3 PositionWorld = mul(inPos, matWorld);
float ofog = 1 - (distance(PositionWorld, vecViewPos) - vecFog.x) * (vecFog.z*1.5);
Out.Fog = ofog;

In some shaders I don't add fog because they are meant to be used indoors. For instance my Ultimate lighting Shaders were designed to be indoor only, hence no fogging and no sunlight. This can be easily be changed however.

In any case, There are indeed problems with tangent lighting shaders on World geometry. To make it work better, make sure you set all the blocks to "flat" and have "tesselate flat" set to "auto". Here there can be a problem though which I have informed JCL about, but i dont know if he has taken a look at it yet.. sometimes if vertices are welded you can get odd lighting problems. So what i do is either use models for everything, or use blocks where the egdes dont touch.

Of course using shaders will slow you down a bit depending on the complexity and what kind of card you have. There are some specifc optimizations that could be done with the shader system that haven't been done...however, i have good performance in my game- which isn't a "test" level, but huge outdoors areas. My terrain has the max number of faces allowed on a terrain (32,000 or something).
My terrain shader mixes 4 color textures, 2 detail textures, a main normal map,vertex lighting, and an environmental bump map. The framerate is hardly effected by all this. On top of that all my regular models like guns, monsters all have 2 pass, 8 light per-pixel lighting shaders. My water does cubic environment bump mapping. Even so i get good framerates, even with a render backbuffer Dll doing fullscreen Bloom effect.

In general using terrains and models is faster than world geometry. I tend to avoid world geometry whenever possible.

OB - yeah... you're right... i was surprised though, to see DOOM3 working as well as it did on the GeForce5200 2.something GHz machine i have here...


Matt - thx for the tips... i'm modding the bumpmapping shader now with the fog insert...

it is encouraging to hear that you're getting good results on an outdoor scene... quick question...

... i'm using a matrix based water entity that is running lil sinusoidal loop code to undulate the water surface... do you think that another approach might be faster... better... overall when used with the water shader?

also... how are you dealing with shadows?

thx again

--Mike

ok... i got the fog in place and working in the shader code. your info and code block gave me the insight to make the proper changes... this is better...

BIG TIME THANK YOU for taking the time to explain this...


as for the water... i looked at the shader code... what i am doing is actually modifying the position of the vertices with some code i pilfered from an old AUM issue in addition to the shader effects... this way i get an uneven surface of water against a hull of a ship ... see code on page 2 of this thread and i think a short video there too --> moving water and shader

still got a lot more to look at... but things look a lil more manageable...

see... sometimes whining is a good thing

--Mike

Oh i see.. yes i know what you mean.. actually moving the vertices.. i have found that's not really a good idea with large areas of water.. i think the environmental bump does a better job...but i you have to have real waves i guess its the only way, however i think maybe this could also be done in a vertex shader to speed it up.

In an old thread Steempipe released a demo demonstrating a terrain mesh moving extremely realistically(with a shader)! Perhaps he'll release the code for that one day, i'd really like to try it out.
Your right about Half-Life 2 it didnt have any shaders that were intresting other than the water. Doom3 and Theif 3 were technical achievments in the terms of shaders but I stopped playing both of them after a few hours since the art direction and gameplay became boring. If only they mixed a little more than a grey/brown pallete of colors in with those shaders. My opinion btw - many people I know really enjoyed those 2 games art styles.

I loved the Thief 3 gameplay. I didnt like Halflife2 though. Doom 3 is kinda just shoot monstar, run, shoot monstar..

Heh, your right - Doom3 is well.... Doom with great graphics. I loved the first 2 theif games, but the 3rd one fell short. The biggest reason I felt was the city in-between missions. I really didnt like having to go around the city to get to missions dodging the same old gaurds over and over again. Also, the whole city looked very similar and I found it hard to remember locations. I wish they would have made it more like Theif 1/2 where you didnt have to run over to the merchant shop everytime you wanted to buy something and it progressed directly from mission to mission with cutscenes. The shadows sure were nice though and 3rd person mode added alot to it.

Funny.. i liked exactly what you didn't.

Why is that obtuse.. whats why use an engine like A6 to make point and click games

1. Do you understand what a point and click adventure game is?

2. If you do, have you seen Adventure in Pocia?

3. If you have, how can you doubt A6's ability to handle such a game?

4. Are you being thick on purpose?

Thanks for the information on Fog with shaders Matt, that is essential information for us shader non-gurus.

Loco