Spring RTS Engine

So, I just got a 6600 GT, and when I run Spring with shadows, all the units get this shiney black look to them.

Interestingly enough, the same thing happens on my FX5200 on my other computer.

And yes, I have the latest drivers.

I have a 6800 GT and always have shadows off because they just don't look good.

-Buggi

my geforce FX 5200 makes everything of yours black (all units/buildings) :S they lag me neway! its a good enough excuse to turn em off

yup EXACTLY like that oh well i don't need em anyway *goes into corner and cries*
btw i have the latest drivers and XP SP2

I run shadows with no problem on my gf6600gt with forceware 77.30, winxp sp2.

yeah well that sounds like a sexy as graphics card! the GeForce FX5200 is kinda out of date (but inexpensive)

http://www.pricewatch.com

:D

Yeah, I got the 77.30 drivers too. Bleh. Waah. I want shadows.

I have shadows and a Geforce FX 5200 Ultra. I get what Neuralize gets with them BUT if I change the unit texture quality and ahve textures then they all turn out right and I ahve textures and shadows.

Given that shadows are causing problems for so many (I can't use them either), can I suggest that we at least support "gradient shading" for terrain (i.e shading relative to the angle the light hits the land)?

When I say "gradient shading", I'm talking about illuminating the terrain in proportion to the angle that the sunlight hits it. This is a very striking effect and gives you an excellent sense of 3D. In particular I think it would make craters and bumps in terrain a lot more obivious - at the moment you can see them if you're in Total War mode, looking across the top of them, but not if you're in ordinary TA view mode looking down on them.

I notice that during startup there is a "surface normals" phase, which is what you need in order to calculate the level of illumination, though I see no shading in game, so wonder if it does anything? Assuming it does, I also notice that it goes by in the blink of an eye, so I figured it could be rerun at intervals, to reshade the terrain (kinda like the LOS map).

It's not perfect, but hopefully it's better than no shading at all, and if terrain surface normals are already being calculated, should be fairly easy to implement.

Cheers

Munch

That sort of shading is alrady in... If you dont have a graphic card that only handles two textures then you will have to live with terrain looking crappy.

I have an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro, - I believe less powerful than the nvidia 5200 -, and shadows do work well here. There is a slight but noticeable loss of performance though.

Nah, An FX 5200 is not nearly as good as a 9600.

SJ wrote:That sort of shading is alrady in... If you dont have a graphic card that only handles two textures then you will have to live with terrain looking crappy.

LOL I don't even have a graphics card - my graphics are "on-board". However, these sorts of things work fine in most games....

I'm guessing from what you've said that you're adding the shading in dynamically? Obviously you have to do this with unit shadows because they're moving all the time, but the actual terrain is pretty static. Why not composite the original terrain texture with the shading needed to make it look right (at the start and then each time the terrain gets changed)? That way you only need to draw it once, instead of doing it in two layers.

Just a thought.

Munch

PS I notice that the minimap already has this!

The minimap and the main terrain has the same shading its just that the main terrain needs more texture units so your card cant handle it correctly.

For those who have a geforce fx 5200 and have the texture problem, I found I could ramp up the texture quality past 1x by downloading the latest forceware drivers, although anything past 3x shows the units up as white models similair to neuralizes screenshot, whereas before I couldnt get past 1x.

Shadows work fine on both my ATI 9550 and my Nvidia 6600GT.

Honestly, what ARE you people doing?

i got recentest drivers, textures are fine (although occasionally units look well ugly, no wait that was EvOTA :p) IT's SHADOWS that are the problem. When activeated units go completely Black and White :S and the shadows on the ground look pretty crappy too!

So! I turned on High Res Clouds, and what happens?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v722/ ... reen14.jpg

I magically get high poly units?
No!
Shadows!
Hurray!

Might want to fix that, also, could we get the health bars to hide too upon the mightyness of F5.