Can TGE look diffrent?

#1 That is because we are all working from the same template.
I can assure you that later dont the line the different project will loose some of their Tribes 2 look.

// Clocks out

#2 Shaders will be implemented later. I think Garagegames will implement it 1 up to 2 month after the v1.2 release.

Tim can tell you when it's going to be.

greetings
Daniel

#3 can someone please explain me what shaders are? i hear it lots of times but never asked what it was :)
Please and thanks

#4 Shaders are, to be brief, script driven dynamic textures. What this means, is that you can use a separate text script to define the behavior of the "texture" in quake, without having to recompile your map (most of the time) or change the actual texture files themselves in any fancy graphics package or compilation tool. The shaders use layers, or "stages" as they're called in shader-speak, each using its own texture map, and each one behaving in different ways according to the script.

What this means is you can have a metal grate in front of a rotating fanblade that sits in front of a flickering flame, all in one texture. Another advantage to this is there are minimal frames of animation to contend with as well, since most of the behavior is a scripted OpenGL operation on a single static texture, like rotation, pulsation, stretching, etc.

Of course, as they say, power has a price. In this case, that price is in r-speeds, which means your map will run more slowly with each additional shader stage. With a few, this isn't noticable, since there's only one extra rendering pass per stage, but with more ambitious and complicated shaders, the system can be brought to its knees.

#5 Mmm... and how do you make this textures that have more than one texture in it? using photoshop layers or i am still confused?

#6 Here is a sample shader script for Quake3; each of the bracketed sections is a stage that references and manipulates different images. These are blended together with the blendfunc functions.

textures/df_metal/df_brass01_shiny
{
qer_editorimage textures/df_metal/df_brass02.tga
{
map textures/df_metal/df_shimmer.tga
rgbGen identity
tcGen environment
}
{
map textures/df_metal/df_brass02.tga
blendfunc blend
rgbGen identity
}
{
map $lightmap
blendfunc gl_dst_color gl_one_minus_dst_alpha
rgbGen identity
}
}

Here is a link to the Q3 shader manual that will tell you about it from Q3's perspective anyway.

www.heppler.com/shader/

#7 thanks for all the replies...

I have a good idea of what being talked about but what I guess i was asking indirectly was if one would have to write his/her own rendering engine to get a specific look.

I guess a great deal could be done with better lighting and level design...but beyond that what else is there?

I will email Tim to see if he has some idea of what I'm talking about...

Theres a contrast between quake 3, when you hold it in the same light as tribes 2, I dont know if its openGL that does it, or directx rendering. But the way the goemetry, and textures are diffrent, and I'm wondering of the TGE can reproduce similar looks?

I dont know if i'm explaining this well enough...

#8 Getting a different look is entirely up to the team/developer. The games do not have to look like Tribes at all. Teams are not pushing the engine or the look. They are settling for what Tribes 2 did.

Jeff Tunnell GG