surely not outcast. it was one of the last voxel engine powered games and had awkward visuals.



but outcast had some really nice water effects:

the models actually had bump maps, take a look at that giant dinosaur thing here:
http://planet-adelpha.net/Outcast/screenshots.html

but yes, the environment (apart from the water i think, and the skymap) only consisted of simple voxels

... there once was a making of video online, where they show the process of skinning one of those citicens in outcast, with bump maps.. i'll try to find it, but i don't know if it's still online

edit:
http://www.outcast-thegame.com/gallery/index.htm

All I'm saying is that the number of games games made in 3DGS actually getting completed is low, and because of the lack of said "fallback" options the focus shouldn't be on the shaders, but on other things. Heck, sometimes you can achieve good-looking effects by faking them. As I said, if I have a small yet graphically appealing game made in 3DGS that I cannot even run on my PC, what is the point of making such a game? And don't start saying that I cannot run Crysis too, player expectations are higher now.... It will be a long time till someone creates a game like Crysis using 3DGS, so these kinds of games and 3DGS games are not comparable!
And I'm talking about the Demo Scene - it is actually called Demo Scene....

i understand, but your example is terrible. "demo scene" is designed specifically to show off slin's shader effects, not to show how good he can make it look without being too taxing on weak cards. it's not designed for pixel shader 1.4, which isn't useful for shadow mapping and other modern effects.

you're position is understandable, but use a more appropriate example. one that someone actually wishes to distribute widely at some point in time to a wide target audience, and perhaps make some money with.

julz

OK, maybe I exaggerated a bit when using the Demo Scene as an example, but it was just meant to show a growing trend in 3DGS games, at least judging by the posts in this forum. Everybody is trying to include shaders in their game, just take a look at ShowcaseI. If it is just meant for experimenting with the possibilities of the engine, then OK, but if the developer is really planning on selling the game, it's wrong.

Leonardo

fair enough. but if i were you i would buy a more modern graphics card from ebay though i've seen your games don't need shader effects to look nice.

julz

Thank you very much, I appreciate that! I am planning to buy a more up-to-date PC, with everything maxed out, if my budget allows me to do that, but it's still some months away...

You should not beat shaders down so much. You dont need PS 3.0 for making good visuals. The problem with very flat and bad lighted models in 3dgs can only be solved with shadowmapping or gpu lighting. Even the fixed function pipeline can render bump mapping, faked reflection through an environment cube map and other nice effects like cartoon rendering, lava and such.

There is really no excuse to not use such techniques. No talking about gameplay, old graphic cards ore whatever. You all can use it. Get you a copy of SMEE2.0 or just look into the WIKI. Every card can render the old stuff and it will improve lighting very much.

Why should a game look bad, only because it was made by a small team or one person? While we are talking here you could even have achieved it through just checking it out.

Otherwise it is better to stick to 2d-games. But even then you need fantastic graphics to compete with every standard casual game out there. Casual games are no excuse for bad graphics anymore. They look appealing, have a good mood and sell so good, that some companies made Millions with it.

Well, I agree that a game shouldn't look bad, but a developer (especially one who is using 3DGS) shouldn't sacrifice a part of the potential buyers by implementing shaders. It is alright with me, if a game uses such techniques that work on most of the video cards and still looks good. That's just great!!
But the difference between other games that use shaders and 3DGS games, I guess is the possibility to have fallback options, as others mentioned here. Well, here's a question - how hard would it be to implement shaders in a 3DGS game, but also have these fallback options, that somehow fake the shader? If that is possible with 3DGS and not very hard, then I'll stop ranting here! ^^

Leonardo