Game Development Community

Question about fragment shaders and TSE...

by Ted Southard · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 01/14/2005 (10:48 am) · 5 replies

Okay, so I know that TSE has the awesome shaders and did quite a bit of reading up on it. It seems that it might be a better fit for my project than TGE, which I'm currently using, because of quirks and problems in the terrain, and features that I'm looking to put into the game that would be better served with shaders, and thus a question which I'm pretty sure I know the answer to, but would like to have the last doubts erased by someone who can answer:

1) I want to have characters' geometry customizable, such as you see in many games that allow character customization features. Does TSE allow for the "morphing" of geometry to allow this (or is it instanced like TGE and the changes would affect all the instances in the game)?

2) Shaders on the terrain is a great feature, though I was wondering about using heightfields larger than 256x256. I know that the terrain was being reworked to allow for larger terrains, and possibly multiple blocks, but I was wondering if terrains of 512 or 1024 are possible now?

Thanks in advance!
NextNext Thread
PrevPrevious Thread
More from Torque Game Engine Advanced


Torque Owner Brian Ramage
Black Jacket Games
#1
01/17/2005 (1:05 pm)
1) Not sure exactly what you're talking about, the characters are instanced on a low level, but the player class would support customization of skins and you could attach various pieces of geometry to characters at that level for further customization.

2) They will be possible with the new terrain system.

Torque 3D Owner Ted Southard
#2
01/17/2005 (1:28 pm)
Thanks for the info, though for the players I don't mean attaching geometry as much as morphing what's already there. Likethis thread which talks about scaling the verts around a bone node, but at a lower level- actually altering arbitrary verts of a model to get features such as different facial features based on the same model.

I should have phrased it better, it sounds like I was asking for the feature itself, instead of the foundation to implement it. I meant the application of vertex shaders on DTS models, which would ultimately allow for target morphing and such to be implemented. I haven't read that it's not implemented, though I only hear about the pixel shaders, so I was wondering.

Torque Owner A. Botorabi
#3
01/19/2005 (3:56 am)
Hi,

here some questions:

1. is the TSE compatible with Synapse Gaming's Lighting Pack, or is it rather a replacement for the lighting pack?

2. is the TSE compatible with the Show Tool Pro? is there a kind of material / shader editor in TSE just like Show Tool Pro provides?

cheers
boto

Associate Tom Spilman
Sickhead Games
#4
01/19/2005 (11:34 am)
1. The lighting pack does not work with TSE at the moment, but it's something that John is working on.

2. ShowToolPro is TGE based and does not have any TSE shader support at this time, but it's possible we'll see that change too. At the moment the only way to edit material settings in TSE is via a text editor.

Torque Owner Brian Ramage
Black Jacket Games
#5
01/20/2005 (3:38 pm)
@Ted - yeah the skinning code is still software driven, so I think what you are looking for would be possible - it's the same as TGE.


Dave has been working on a TSE version of Show Tool. I don't know what the current status of that is.