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Geek Culture / Shaders and Half-Life 2

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Rob K
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Posted: 16th May 2003 19:33
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In a recent E3 vid, the presenter mentioned that the Source engine uses shaders heavily for effects and effects at speed. He also mentioned that the engine will be scalable.

There are two generations of shader enabled cards out, Generation one found GF3 to GF4, and the newer generation two found in GF5 / Radeon 9800+.

Does anyone know if we will miss out on any of the effects if we only have a first generation shader-capable card? (In my case a GeForce 3) I looked around but couldn't find any mention of which PS / VS versions are required for the advanced effects.
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Eric T
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Posted: 16th May 2003 21:01
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Not sure but i belive that the games will try to utilize the full effect of a hardcore graphics/video card.


-Eric

I always win don't you know that?
Programming RPG games in Dark Basic
Since 1999.
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 16th May 2003 22:01
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Actually GFX is 3rd generation

1st gen - Radeon 9500|9700 & GeForce2 (Vertex Shaders)
2nd gen - GF3|4 & Radeon 9800 (Vertex&Pixel Shaders)
3rd gen - GFFX (Vertex, Pixel, Light, Time Shaders)

plus the FX 5900 adds to the table a new Shadow Shader set
Light, Time & Shadow shaders are all the priprioty of nVidia so i'm not sure if you'll end up seeing them on your cards.

that aside you can actually run HL2 on a standard card, and all of the Shader effect used will use Software Emulation on the lowest instruction degree. Which for a lowly 1.4Ghz Pentium means you'll bog at just about acceptable speeds.
GeForce3, 4 & Radeon 9800 would be the acceptable cards, currently there isn't full support for the FX features - but it is planned.

what is missed out is actually a matter of opinion, takes nothing away from the game itself - its just some of the effects which look better with certain effects.

like you want bump-causistic water effects you'll want a GF4 or R9800 if you just want the water to look semi-real then you can get away with a GeForce2 or R9500.

Within the Epic battle of the fates the Shadow and the Angel will meet. With it will harbinger the very fight of good vs evil!
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Rob K
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Posted: 16th May 2003 22:24
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"that aside you can actually run HL2 on a standard card, and all of the Shader effect used will use Software Emulation on the lowest instruction degree. "

Hmm... I tried a DirectX software emulation demo, 2FPS!
(compared to over 100 FPS with hardware shaders.

The main concern I had was that PS 1.1 / VS 1.0 cards tend to have pretty low instruction limits, thus making life difficult for developers.

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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 16th May 2003 22:45
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most developers actually stick to 1.1/1.2 pvs - its only when they know they'll be developing for better hardware they'll use the 2.0 shaders

eitherway a GeForce3/4 do the business

Within the Epic battle of the fates the Shadow and the Angel will meet. With it will harbinger the very fight of good vs evil!
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Rob K
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Posted: 17th May 2003 02:40
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Not that it bothers me too much, as I'll probably have to get a new card to cope with Doom 3 anyway (and HL 2).

I was trying to research shaders for use with DBP, however finding a tutorial which is in plain english is like trying to find the key ingredient in a homeopathic solution.

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Cras
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Posted: 17th May 2003 03:37
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well i have a geforce 4 graphics card and i cant even figure out how to turn the damn shader support on.... that is if it has it.
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 17th May 2003 03:46
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lmao... maniac thats like saying i can't find where to turn on the Tranform&Lighting Support with my GeForce2

not many people actually understand howto use shaders ... even in C++ all they do is redevelop what the original shader routines look like for what they want, even the Cg Tutorial book is a crock of crap because it doesn't explain much.
The best way to learn and understand them is to learn what they're commands are (DxSDK help has the full command sets) from that its actually a piece of piss to figure out

Within the Epic battle of the fates the Shadow and the Angel will meet. With it will harbinger the very fight of good vs evil!
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Rob K
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Posted: 17th May 2003 12:32
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@maniac

Shaders are always "turned on". You cannot "turn them off". What kind of GeForce 4 do you have? Only the Ti version support shaders.

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