Shader support and stencil buffer
by Andy Hawkins · in Torque Game Engine · 08/24/2005 (7:54 pm) · 8 replies
With the release of Tim's Medievil Weapons I noticed a shot where stencil shadows are in the shot with the sword lying on the shield on the stone floor. Is this a TSE enhancement or can it be implemented in code in TGE1.3?
Is there also the ability to code / add DX8 / DX9 fx files in the TGE1.3 engine?
Is there also the ability to code / add DX8 / DX9 fx files in the TGE1.3 engine?
#2
So onto the main question, are stencil shadows and fx files possible via TGE and maybe a code change or two?
08/25/2005 (1:51 am)
Oh you posted the art in the gallery...So onto the main question, are stencil shadows and fx files possible via TGE and maybe a code change or two?
#4
Stencil Shadows in TGE
http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=5426
As far as directx specific things, I think TGE would need a native dx driver to work with that kind of stuff. Right now there is only a funky dx wrapper that converts ogl calls to dx (and basically halves the frame rate). A native dx driver would take some major work since all the code in the engine is so intertwined. I would suggest getting TSE if you want dx fancy stuff.
08/25/2005 (2:07 am)
Google is your friend.Stencil Shadows in TGE
http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=5426
As far as directx specific things, I think TGE would need a native dx driver to work with that kind of stuff. Right now there is only a funky dx wrapper that converts ogl calls to dx (and basically halves the frame rate). A native dx driver would take some major work since all the code in the engine is so intertwined. I would suggest getting TSE if you want dx fancy stuff.
#5
@Matt: Thank you :)
08/25/2005 (4:06 am)
@Mark: So are you saying that TSE removes the abstraction the dx device, or exposes more control of dx (8/9??)? That would be very handy. In that I mean does it allow actual directx calls, or wrappers to actual directx calls?@Matt: Thank you :)
#6
08/25/2005 (6:34 am)
Andy: I am not a TSE owner so I do not know the internals of it but since DirectX is the only driver in it at this moment, it would have to be a full native driver. I imagine, though, that the driver has an abstraction layer of some sort so that they can also put in the OpenGL driver when they do that. I would think it would be a setup similar to the way platforms are set up in TGE.
#7
08/25/2005 (7:39 am)
@Mark : Okay thanks for the clarification.
#8
08/25/2005 (3:38 pm)
TSE abstracts the rendering so that you can have multiple graphics "devices" (D3D, OGL, Software, Glide, Xbox DX, etc). This abstracted interface is very similar to Direct3D. In the current version of TSE you can make calls directly to Direct3D but of course that is going to break pretty quickly when you port it to other platforms. 
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