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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Special Effects...

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iaretony
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Posted: 13th Aug 2003 21:43
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I am about 85% complete with a game, and mostly I'm waiting for the company I hired to do the art to finish.

Last night I saw the games this site sells:

http://www.pompom.org.uk/

Their are some really cool special effects going on here. Is most of this done with pixel shaders?

Secondly, how badly do effects that are based on pixel shaders slow down hardware without pixel shading?

My game is meant to be very mass market. I had always been planning to add a snowing particle effect, but now I'm considering adding more. Should I? Will I be limiting my audience?

How is DBPro at this stuff anyway? Does anyone have any reccomendations for how to learn to program effects like this with DBPro?

Tony
[email protected] - [email protected]
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adr
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Posted: 13th Aug 2003 22:13
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Cards that support pixel shaders shouldn't slow down at all. Those which don't support those functions, well ... I don't think it's possible to emulate pixel shaders through software, so it just won't work. Your game wouldn't crash mind you, it just wouldn't look as good.

I could be wrong though

I opened the case to my PC today and thought, my exhaust fan sucks.
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the_winch
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Posted: 14th Aug 2003 00:32
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Older cards that don't support pixel shaders are going to be slower than the newer cards and in generally slower computers. Even if you can emulate them in software the computer is likley to be too slow anyway.

You could try to use a pixel shader and try some other method to make a cheaper effect that could be used on slower comps. Just disable the intensive effects depending on how fast the game is running or provide options so the user can do it.
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iaretony
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Posted: 14th Aug 2003 01:35
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This brings up another issue.

If the special effects really don't effect gameplay, and hence are disabled on slower machines, would it be dishonest to have screen shots on the website that show the game with all effects enabled?

Tony

[email protected] - [email protected]
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indi
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Posted: 14th Aug 2003 04:14
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why not have a cutesy bar at the start that demonstrates how much mojo or magic your machine has,providing a clear message that its not the games fault you cant see all the high end magical effects.

people cant argue with that.

http://www.lunarpixel.com
http://www.lunarpixel.com/dt/
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the_winch
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Posted: 14th Aug 2003 04:53
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I wouldn't call it dishonest if you said something along the lines of

Screen shots taken on a 1ghz with tnt2 card and 512mb ram, certain visual effects are dependant on hardware.
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lcfcfan
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Posted: 14th Aug 2003 05:05
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All games companies show screens with their games running on high spec machines, just go for it!

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Xander
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Posted: 14th Aug 2003 06:44
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Icfcfan is right, how many games have you bought that don't look just like they do on the box Actually that might be just me and my Pentium II and Geforce 2

Xander
Bolt of Bolt Software Productions
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MikeS
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Posted: 14th Aug 2003 07:20
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Quote: "If the special effects really don't effect gameplay, and hence are disabled on slower machines, would it be dishonest to have screen shots on the website that show the game with all effects enabled?"


As long as you put that the recommended hardware is "blank blank, and blank", and then put a notice somewhere that it won't run on geforce/radeon/ whatever cards. You don't have to put it in big huge gigantic letters. Just somewhere maybe on the order form, or have a seperate page on your website(if ye have one) that you need this to run the game.




Website 50% done (May be out by mid-end August)
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BatVink
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Posted: 14th Aug 2003 11:06
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If you were showing screenshots that catered for all machines and graphics cards, it would have to look something like this:

"D3D could not be enabled"

That would cater for 486 DX2 66 machines with 4 meg RAM and a Hercules mono card.

Thanks in advance.
All the Best,
StevieVee
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adr
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Posted: 15th Aug 2003 15:51
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Every game I've ever bought always has the screenshots taken with all the detail/effects set on max. Who wants their game to look shit on the back of the box?

I opened the case to my PC today and thought, my exhaust fan sucks.
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aprilfan
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Posted: 17th Aug 2003 00:57
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Yeah the more effects and high end looking stuff you can jam in the screen shots the better. Oh yeah and please may I ask that you make vertex shaders instead of pixel shaders. I mean my machine is very, very new and it dosn't even look at pixel shaders and most people I know (some with very nice computers) don't have pixel shader support, but my computer can handle almost every vertex shader ever made. I don't think theres a huge difference but vertex shaders have more support all around... am i right? maybe not... pixel shaders seem like the i-macs of harderware effects, they look cool but no one owns one.

The Great Schism.- The Earths reaction to Heavons invasion.
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