Sounds like great news, except that the "shader library" has been on the forecast for so long already that I don't really want to wait (and pay) for A7 to see it.
JCL, I know the forecast is nothing reliable and subject to change at any time. Nevertheless, something like a shader library was often suggested and found your agreement, and since A6 supports shaders, it wouldn't be fair to have that library only for A7.
Just a quick sidenote...

Just to let everyone know, I've finished converting the shaders. There are one or two I want to go over again to make sure they're integrated the best way, and then I want to write up some documentation of course. They don't really need much because they're set up to take your material and entity settings, but I want to document which shaders use which properties, and there are one or two "skills" which are used to pass other values as well. Like the offset with the parallax/offset bump mapping shaders.

I understand from JCL that this site will have a new shop system in a few months, and it may be that the shaders can be sold there, as an addon pack. However, since I took the time away from paying work to create the shaders this week, I'll be releasing this 3DGameStudio-ready pack on my site shortly. The pack contains almost all of the shaders from Pack 2, a few from Pack 1 and one new shader I'm particularly excited about which is currently unavailable to anyone else. I expect it will go for $49.95, the same as the other packs, which means that 3DGameStudio users are probably getting a slightly better deal than everyone else but on the other hand the shaders are tailored to 3DGameStudio so I won't have to support using them on an engine I'm not overly familiar with. I think it works out well for everyone.

Again, thanks everyone for your interest.

I'll post back when I've finished up the documentation and it's released.

Very interesting. Does it have a GUI, just like adding template
codes and preview the shader effect on screen or, you've to add
it manually in c-script?

Thanks.

Hi Vlau,

The shaders are used via material definitions. For example, a material definition for a normal mapping shader might look like this :

Code:

---

// Declare the material:
material MtlNormalMapped
{
	power = 100;
	ambient_red=32;
	ambient_green=32;
	ambient_blue=32;
	diffuse_red = 64;
	diffuse_green = 64;
	diffuse_blue = 64;
	specular_red = 255;
	specular_green = 255;
	specular_blue = 255;
	flags = tangent;
	effect = "TwoLights.fx";
}

---

The tangent flag has to be set for some shaders ( it will be documented which ones need it and which don't. ) The specular, diffuse and ambient colors are taken and used by the shader so you can customize the appearance of the material quite dramatically to suit your scene. The same applies to specular power. Then you just link to the shader in the effect="TwoLights.fx"

I don't have much ( well any ) experience with 3DGS before this week, but this seemed like the best way to integrate shaders. It gives you a lot of control over the appearance, and it's still very easy to use. ( It must be easy to use if I figured it out )

By adding the shader effect as your code above : effect = "TwoLights.fx";
then the .fx file will be a standalone text file, how can I encrypt the
file in this way? as I read the FAQ from your website that you mentioned
licensee need to encrypt the shader codes while publishing their games.

PS : Maybe it could be solved with liteC.

hey phil, looking at your example , are you already using material skills for passing other things than colors? for example the strength of a normalmapping or whatever aspect of a shader that is adjustable?

Encrypting the shaders can be achieved with two methods. With A6, either with the Pro Edition, or with one of the free packers. With A7, by copying the content of the shader file into the effect string. Then it's compiled together with the .c files into the executable.

There is no "list of confirmed cards". Every card has a shader version number - in fact that's the most prominent feature of any video card. So you know at once which shaders are supported by your card.

The A6 shader library was for version 1.3, Phil's shaders are for version 2.0. The future A7 shader library will be for 2.0 also.