Synapse Gaming: Lighting Pack Mac OS X Demo - Public Beta
by John Kabus (BobTheCBuilder) · in Torque Game Engine · 06/11/2004 (2:28 pm) · 6 replies
Synapse Gaming is entering the final stages of the Lighting Pack's Mac OS X demo release and members of the Garage Games community are invited to participate in the demo's public beta test.
The demo uses the Lighting Pack's 1.0 feature set, which includes:
Lighting Model
-Enhanced lighting and rendering models create brighter and more vibrant worlds (affects all lighting including existing Torque lighting).
-Extended lighting intensity allows special effects such as overexposure and 'false' specular highlighting.
-Increased contrast creates more vivid and better defined lighting and shadows.
-Two per-light sub-models for creating 'sharp' (natural lighting) or 'smooth' (pseudo 'global' lighting) lighting.
Mission Lights
-Mission light objects allow lighting to be edited in the mission editor without recompiling interiors.
-Mission lights uniformly illuminate multiple interiors, DTS objects and terrain.
-Static light objects support omni and spotlight baked light mapping, which allows complex lighting and shadowing without impacting performance.
-Static light objects support both lighting sub-models.
-Dynamic particle system light objects support flicker and flash effects that are directly related to a linked particle system's intensity.
Static Objects
-Static DTS objects cast shadows onto interiors and terrain.
Additional Features
-Does not create any additional rendering overhead.
-Supports the Torque volume light resource.
-Code is very simple to integrate and well-documented.
-Includes In-depth modeler docs.
The Lighting Pack required a few endian changes for the Mac demo. These changes will be released as version 1.0.6 when I've confirmed that the demo is free of any platform-related bugs.
Synapse Gaming: Lighting Pack Mac OS X Demo (beta)
I appreciate your help and feedback!
-John Kabus
Synapse Gaming
The demo uses the Lighting Pack's 1.0 feature set, which includes:
Lighting Model
-Enhanced lighting and rendering models create brighter and more vibrant worlds (affects all lighting including existing Torque lighting).
-Extended lighting intensity allows special effects such as overexposure and 'false' specular highlighting.
-Increased contrast creates more vivid and better defined lighting and shadows.
-Two per-light sub-models for creating 'sharp' (natural lighting) or 'smooth' (pseudo 'global' lighting) lighting.
Mission Lights
-Mission light objects allow lighting to be edited in the mission editor without recompiling interiors.
-Mission lights uniformly illuminate multiple interiors, DTS objects and terrain.
-Static light objects support omni and spotlight baked light mapping, which allows complex lighting and shadowing without impacting performance.
-Static light objects support both lighting sub-models.
-Dynamic particle system light objects support flicker and flash effects that are directly related to a linked particle system's intensity.
Static Objects
-Static DTS objects cast shadows onto interiors and terrain.
Additional Features
-Does not create any additional rendering overhead.
-Supports the Torque volume light resource.
-Code is very simple to integrate and well-documented.
-Includes In-depth modeler docs.
The Lighting Pack required a few endian changes for the Mac demo. These changes will be released as version 1.0.6 when I've confirmed that the demo is free of any platform-related bugs.
Synapse Gaming: Lighting Pack Mac OS X Demo (beta)
I appreciate your help and feedback!
-John Kabus
Synapse Gaming
#2
Definitely the upcoming releases will replace the Lighting Pack's 1.0 download, which appears in 'My Garage' under 'Downloadable Products You Own'. Existing owners can download the latest releases from that link.
I'll post releases in the GG news section as they become available, which should keep everyone in the loop.
-John
06/11/2004 (5:21 pm)
Hi Adrian,Definitely the upcoming releases will replace the Lighting Pack's 1.0 download, which appears in 'My Garage' under 'Downloadable Products You Own'. Existing owners can download the latest releases from that link.
I'll post releases in the GG news section as they become available, which should keep everyone in the loop.
-John
#3
06/12/2004 (6:19 am)
This may sound really stupid, but what is the relation between synapse lighting pack and TSE ? As I understood they are different products ? How do they relate/compare ?
#4
I checked it out. Great work.
But sometimes I missed what to look for. The first difference I notice was the "haze" on the hallway lamps shown on the picture ( 1st mission ) above that weren't in the second mission. But that almost passed unnoticed since I had to reload the mission.
As a suggestion ( if possible ) would be to include everything in only one mission, with some map or sign to show the difference : A sign in the wall that reads : this is a smooth light, this is Torque's default and so on. Other suggestion is having a map in a separate file that would contain those refferences, what to look for & compare.
06/12/2004 (6:59 am)
Jonh,I checked it out. Great work.
But sometimes I missed what to look for. The first difference I notice was the "haze" on the hallway lamps shown on the picture ( 1st mission ) above that weren't in the second mission. But that almost passed unnoticed since I had to reload the mission.
As a suggestion ( if possible ) would be to include everything in only one mission, with some map or sign to show the difference : A sign in the wall that reads : this is a smooth light, this is Torque's default and so on. Other suggestion is having a map in a separate file that would contain those refferences, what to look for & compare.
#5
The Torque shader engine is a complete rework of the Torque graphics layer to support modern shader hardware and effects. It will also include many lighting enhancements, but most of these will not port back to non-shader Torque as they will require some level of shader enabled hardware.
06/14/2004 (5:01 pm)
@Bruno: The lighting pack is an enhancement to the lighting in the existing Torque engine, created by John Kabus independently of GarageGames.The Torque shader engine is a complete rework of the Torque graphics layer to support modern shader hardware and effects. It will also include many lighting enhancements, but most of these will not port back to non-shader Torque as they will require some level of shader enabled hardware.
#6
The Lighting Pack enhances TGE's lighting/rendering models and adds new mission light objects/tools that significantly improve modeling possibilities. Most (if not all) of these tools and enhancements will be ported to TSE.
You can find more information here:
Lighting Pack product page
Lighting Pack 1.1 update info
Originally the two missions were created to show that the pack supported the volume light resource, but did not require it. This has caused a lot of confusion, so the 1.1 update will only include one of the missions (along with a few new missions that show different features in action).
All,
Download of the Mac demo was very light. Due to this and the short period of time between the 1.0.6 and 1.1 updates I've decided to roll 1.0.6 into the 1.1 release. If anyone requires the endian fixes now send me an email at jkabus@synapsegaming.com, I'll be happy to send you the changes (they're very minor and easy to update).
Thanks!
-John
06/15/2004 (6:58 am)
Hi Bruno,The Lighting Pack enhances TGE's lighting/rendering models and adds new mission light objects/tools that significantly improve modeling possibilities. Most (if not all) of these tools and enhancements will be ported to TSE.
You can find more information here:
Lighting Pack product page
Lighting Pack 1.1 update info
Originally the two missions were created to show that the pack supported the volume light resource, but did not require it. This has caused a lot of confusion, so the 1.1 update will only include one of the missions (along with a few new missions that show different features in action).
All,
Download of the Mac demo was very light. Due to this and the short period of time between the 1.0.6 and 1.1 updates I've decided to roll 1.0.6 into the 1.1 release. If anyone requires the endian fixes now send me an email at jkabus@synapsegaming.com, I'll be happy to send you the changes (they're very minor and easy to update).
Thanks!
-John
Associate Adrian Wright
Max Gaming Technologies