Quote: "I see Chris that you have familiarize yourself with shaders very well, with very impressive results, as I can see in SF. Too bad that I have not tried to write something myself all that time. I don't know how to write my own shaders although I have some understanding of how they work."
Well, like everything else it is only hard when you don't learn it; after then it becomes easy. The more you get into it, the more silly you feel not learning it before; there are a ton of features I've yet to make use of in HLSL.
Quote: "I guess that I will have to use something more simple, if it doesn't affect performance."
Simple is not the same is bad; consider that my shaders are actually quite simple in concept, about a quarter of the size of AL. It is the knowledge color mixing, photoshop, texturing and HLSL that allows you to get the most out of little. My shader source code runs similar to the old shader pack, just load the shader and apply to the object.
Screen shading is a little more complex, but allows you to balance the colors and change the mood.
Quote: "I also tested the game with some very old jointed models that don't use bones and the game was running smoothly with no problems. "
That might be the solution; it all depends on which solution is least costly and most beneficial.
I DO NOT play these games and have not touched a console game for years (expect at the odd Wii Sports party ), so am not an expert.
But I always like to look at every single engine out there and look at and try to guess how they did this and how they did that; look at the give away signs.
Looking at your masterpiece, what I see is a great game that could look better with a number of things that are not actually shaders...
Looking at what seems to be your inspiration MK, I'm guessing in the 3rd battle the background is downsampled (blurred) to create a focal distance between the camera.
The normal mapping seems to be colorized with a full screen shader to create a balance of colors and the light sources tend to be oranges and blues (complimentary colors {boy do I hate spelling colour that way}).
The particles are either emitted from bones or possibly a bunch of vertex coordinates. I think you have already done so but these guys seem to put a light source at each lit particle emitter.
I think what tends to be underestimated is the sound quality; especially when you have a sub woofer; the sound quality even via YouTube stream brings you into the environment; every particle collision is felt.
Another thing I notice is camera shaking; when an impact is made the camera shatters around. You already made your camera shake, but theirs shakes way more dramatically, which reflects the extreme power of the characters. I am talking about what I see not what I have experienced playing.
Some guy in the early days before motion picture was invented created a technique or principle if you like that the camera should always be moving, even if there is just a slideshow on view, it should pan, pan prefered than zoom. (I cannot remember his name) Anyway, the point is the Mortal Kombat guys seem to have the camera position pan (think curvevalue) rather slowly to the focal point; it creates a sense of naturalism and life. Nothing is still.
Finally, what I see in the video is lots of grunge and floating particles. I see this in Counter Strike Global Offensive aswell, lots of dust particles and smoke all over the place. No scene is perfectly clear, in the real world there are glares, dust, insects, weed and dirt; basically 'grunge' in every place, be it clean or dirty.
Last few things is bold text, and anti-aliasing; if you can get it to work on every PC...
Notice the dirt and grime, the resolution of the textures and the glare and bloom? I provide this as an example because it is a game I am more knowledgeable about.
This is probably an OLD image, but it is still good. It is a simple one, but when it is simple like this the eye tends to concentrate on fine details.
I think this looks realistic, I like the clouds and the look of the whole scene; the expression on the characters face and the ancient antiques. I think the texture on the floor should be at least 1024 pixels square, per 5 meters; or 2048 pixels per 10 meters. I think it looks like you used 512 pixels for a 10 meter area. Do you not feel that this is true? Can you see the pixelation on the floor?
There are some wonderfully placed props in this screenshot, the purples and blues blend in together really nicely. The characters are A class in structure, but I think they need normal maps too. It requires more work, but if I were you I would normal map some of their clothing.
Here is an old screenshot of my normal mapped character; yes the texture is messed up, but it's an old normal mapped I used to use but it still makes the clothing look more realistic and less plastic. For all of your special effects, you could animate the normal map to depict reactions to particles and damage.
Also, cube mapping is good to use on parts of the clothing that is reflective; for instance any swords or metal plate limbs could easier be applied with one of those handy cube map shaders.
I like the posses in this image; I really like kung fu posses, I like king fu movies too. (OK these are not proper kung fu posses, but still they look cool and that is what counts) Everything looks 99% perfect in this screenshot; excluding the test shadows obviously; this is a good look. Now just imaging this scene with bump mapping and cube mapping, some dust particles and a high resolution floor. Wow.
Anyway, I know you know what you are doing, but everybody thinks differently, and atleast some of your audience will think like me since I am a game engine maniac. If you need help using the shaders just post up any questions; some other guys around here are brilliant with shaders too.