Shaders

Mugslugs · Post by **Mugslugs** » 02 Dec 2005, 18:55

i was wondering if the shaders needed reworking i have knoledge of cg and opengl but as far as i can see the shaders are not cg

Sean Mirrsen · Post by **Sean Mirrsen** » 02 Dec 2005, 18:59

Something does need reworking, but it's mostly the shadows that should work on some machines but get filtered out by the shadowhandler's GL extension filter. Also, if you are able, please make some less advanced shadows, maybe something more common like stencil shadows, not shadowmaps.

Post by **jcnossen** » 02 Dec 2005, 19:14

Well if you want to do something graphical, you might want to try improving the water rendering. IMO it needs a nice framebuffer effect (like supcom has). However that needs render_to_texture and pbuffers, so it needs some work (it also needs to be portable).
You would have to work on the berlios taspring-linux repository though, otherwise we have to merge the changes into both repositories. Speaking of the berlios repository, I would be VERY thankful if you can find out why font rendering goes so slow on the windows build of the port... there is no point in trying to improve rendering if that isn't fixed first.

Mugslugs · Post by **Mugslugs** » 02 Dec 2005, 19:19

so you want me to
a. improve performance on linux merging one.
b.improve water rendering.
i'm wondering if the linux one can be compiled on vc 2005 express as thats all i have
plus it would be better if cg was used for the shaders because then you wouldnt need a parser for the shader and plus they are of better quality

Dwarden · Post by **Dwarden** » 02 Dec 2005, 19:28

CG ? you mean NVIDIA way to be played ?

Mugslugs · Post by **Mugslugs** » 02 Dec 2005, 19:55

yes nvidia make cg but cg is just a high level shader language that is compiled into gpu instructions so it is cross compatible for ati or any other cards

Post by **jcnossen** » 02 Dec 2005, 20:13

i'm wondering if the linux one can be compiled on vc 2005 express as thats all i have
plus it would be better if cg was used for the shaders because then you wouldnt need a parser for the shader and plus they are of better quality

There is a VS 2003 project file, so you might be able to use that.

You need subversion to download the source, and generate patches of your efforts. You might want to download TortoiseSVN for that.
http://developer.berlios.de/svn/?group_id=4358

Cg isn't used that's right, but GL_ARB_fragment_program assembly is not very difficult to learn though. It's quite standard and doesn't need a parser as well.

so you want me to
a. improve performance on linux merging one.
b.improve water rendering.

It's what you prefer, after all I'm not paying you

But water rendering is something that's nicely seperated from the rest, so you can work on it without much conflicts from other people trying to change things.

Post by SJ » 02 Dec 2005, 20:35

The shaders currently used is in the shader directory and written in the older asm like shader syntax. If you want to move them to a higher level language glsl might be a good idea.

Mugslugs · Post by **Mugslugs** » 02 Dec 2005, 20:41

thank you SJ the higher level languages are much easier to work with and optimise.

//edit
zaphod if you could kindly attach the cg language specs to shader part of spring i could easily redo all the shaders with more features and more speed

Dwarden · Post by **Dwarden** » 03 Dec 2005, 03:52

well ... i know many graphics programmers who dislike CG ... because NVIDIA is simple NVIDIA ... and done some things in way it runs more crippled on ATI than it should ...

it depends lot on taste

but it's no wonder ATI and 3Dlabs prefers RenderMonkey
http://www.ati.com/developer/rendermonkey/
which uses OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) ...

Post by **jcnossen** » 03 Dec 2005, 13:58

I'd say if we switch to a higher level language it should be GLSL, because that's also where all the new OpenGL extensions apply on, and because there is no other reason to use Cg over GLSL.

But there is no reason to rewrite the shader if they're going to do the same thing. New features have to be supported with new C++ code, which takes a lot more time.

GrOuNd_ZeRo · Post by **GrOuNd_ZeRo** » 04 Dec 2005, 05:04

How about some god damn transparancy for textures? Spring's muzzle flashes SUCK major cock and we really need new explosions too.

How about you guys work on that?

Well I wish I could do it, but i'm too much of a n00b.

HEAR MY PLEE! oh gods of Spring!

Spring RTS Engine

Shaders

Shaders