Taste It... It's Technical

Dragon · Post by **Dragon** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 5:46 am

have read a bit about PSM especially pro/con discussions. in general a nice idea but not the holy grail. solves one resolution problem but introduces another one. have not worked with shadow maps in depth yet though i don't go into a more indepth discussion (especially since you said now twice the same). has some nice papers flying around with other derivations of the shadow-map technic btw

Whisperblade · Post by **Whisperblade** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 6:26 am

In Australian

"Fuck this lets go for a beer"
Just so long as my poor compy dosen't go bang as far as I see it.

Post by **Jonas** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 9:27 am

CadeF wrote:If you still think it's not good, lets see you make something.

Or in other words: "If you can't make your own renderer, you aren't entitled to point out flaws in mine."? That doesn't seem to be a very good feedback-policy...

And anyway, the man is the lead programmer of his own independant game development team, just follow the link in his sig. I think if he really wanted to, he probably could do something like this. That's not to say your stuff isn't awesome, just don't dismiss his critique like that. It's not like he's insulting your work.

CadeF · Post by **CadeF** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 11:22 am

Sorry, it's just he's only posted the same problems in any shadow mapping vs shadow volume threads I've seen in the past year, but with no technical advice on how to actually get around to doing it.

Post by **Jonas** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 12:27 pm

Oh, heheh, I didn't realize this was the latest battle in an ongoing feud.

Damn you coder people and your incomprehensible discussions

CadeF · Post by **CadeF** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 12:29 pm

And I'm only 15, so don't expect insanely complex math stuff.

Dragon · Post by **Dragon** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 1:56 pm

CadeF wrote:Sorry, it's just he's only posted the same problems in any shadow mapping vs shadow volume threads I've seen in the past year, but with no technical advice on how to actually get around to doing it.

ok this is definitly not true. i had been engaged in exactly two discussions about shadow maps in the last time (including this one).

furthermore i simply state the obvious. both technics try to solve a certain problem and like always in programming you get a trade-off situation. i am not the advocate of shadow-volumes here simply because i use them in my default graphic module. i know myself very well the limitations of this technic and can compare it to others. carmack had a damn nice text file floating around which throughly talked about shadow technics in a pro/con way. so first you have to find the weaknesses in existing technics before you can tackle new ones.

i chose shadow-volumes for my first implementation of the graphic module as the technic is rather simply and straigh forward yet yielding ok results for the beginning. with my engine design it's anyways a piece of cake to do some other shadowing once upon time. i have my ideas too of how i can make the shadows better, mainly combining technics in a way to keep the advantages of both (if possible). so far that's an idea but i did not venture there yet as i first need to put my engine stable (as changing specs are hell for a complex module).

Shadowtruth · Post by **Shadowtruth** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 2:37 pm

errr... I'm sorry but i don't understand "geekspeak".... is this a new render for deus ex? is that it? will it not be more laggy then the original one? if not... then WOW!!!!! it looks great!!!

Post by **DDL** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 5:19 pm

Dragon wrote:ok this is definitly not true. i had been engaged in exactly two discussions about shadow maps in the last time (including this one).

I think he meant that what you were saying is exactly the same as what a lot of other people say on this subject in other threads, not you YOURSELF saying in other threads. It just wasn't phrased 100% clearly.

Mr_Cyberpunk · Post by **Mr_Cyberpunk** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 12:48 am

the fuzziness looks like Bloom from IWar.. lol

Could we try softshadowing next time? or is that too hard for the engine to run.

Looking good, I like the idea of improving the engine because it'll make HDTP of a much higher quality and thus attract a lot of people to the project.

CadeF · Post by **CadeF** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 8:40 am

The engine supports soft shadows, how it performs depends on your graphics card.

My engine isnt based on Deus Ex, it's based on Unreal, the same way that other engines based on Quake 3 can open maps & stuff made in any game powered by the Quake 3 engine. I'm not going to experiment with Deus Ex maps for now, scince the textures are low-res with no bump maps or height maps.

Mr_Cyberpunk · Post by **Mr_Cyberpunk** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 8:52 am

another question, how could bumpmaps be put onto the textures. I realise it has something to do with an overlaying texture, so is it feasible? I'm prepared to look into it for the levels but i dont know about implementing it given my lack of coding ability.

Softshadows run fine on my GC, so it'll be no prob to implement it. Could we get some screenies please of Softshads. Very interesting stuff indeed, i like it.

Dragon · Post by **Dragon** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 5:35 pm

bump maps can be done using simple multi-texturing hardware (magic word here is DOT3). it should be no big deal to do this. but then again a normal-map would be better as you can encode more details with less texture size there. bump maps can anyways be transformed into normal-maps (although you loose quality as you need more than one bump pixel to get one normal pixel).

chris the cynic · Post by **chris the cynic** » Sun Jan 29, 2006 3:19 pm

CadeF wrote:And I'm only 15, so don't expect insanely complex math stuff.

There's a reason any science fiction show that mentions education has 6 year olds learning calculus. Math is perhaps the simplest thing on earth. The only reason people don't learn it quickly is insecurity on the part of teachers.

(Most young US teachers learned what is now in elementary school in high school older ones didn't learn that stuff until college, if at all (many had to learn in teacher's equivalent of remedial classes.) When you suggest calculus for 8 year olds it?s taboo, suggesting it for six year olds is sacrilege.)

By your age your brain is fully capable learning advanced math stuff. Just don't learn from your teachers, most don't even know why a negative times a negative is a positive.

Dragon · Post by **Dragon** » Sun Jan 29, 2006 3:50 pm

i would like to throw in a small comment here regarding math as many people seem to get this wrong. game development math is not about calculus, it's about trigonomtry in general. trigo though is rather easy and you only need to understand linear equation systems, matrix calculation and simple triogonotrical functions ( only what can be done with sin/cos/tan ). everything else is anyways too time consuming for computer graphics or too complex to get your head around. the trick for speed is not knowing brutal math forumals but finding nifty ways to early-exit