hey,
I'm not sure if i will publish this only because I designed it exclusivley for Ground Tactics. HOWEVER, I still OWN the rights to Iridium so I will talk to my partners and see what they think.
To be honest I did not expect this much demand for the engine. It is very likely that this will be available (for a price) for use with commercial projects.
Because you all seem very interested, I thought I might share the newest (version 5.0b architecture) with all of you
This system is still defered, but now runs on an advanced BSP tree system that only renders lights, shadows, and effects based on the viewing frustrum. This system is based on the standard 3DGS BSP engine but uses meshes to convey "true" lighting boundries (a light could be around a corner but still add radiosity). Because the engine is deferred and only renders currentley used lights (the boundries are dynamic btw), the number and speed of rendering lights is greatly improved. Up to 255 dynamic shadow casting lights can be rendered in one view at a time - this is only limited because the system stores the cull values in a single BYTE variable.
Post Processing effects are easily integratable. In fact, bloom, HDR, and emissive lighting (glow) as well as reflection and refraction are built into the engine and are used by default. Because the engine is deferred, the equivelent of ultra-high quality full screen anti-aliasing and infinite LOD mip-mapping are default and literally have a 0% performance cost.
Right now, I am working on an organized API with which client programmers can set resolution, upscaling, gamma scales, HDR , and other variables with simple i_function(parameters) functions.
Because the engine is designed to be commercial, there are several useful professional release tools included! An advanced program can detect and set optimal graphics settings based on the individual machine. Another program dynamically monitors performance and GPU core temperature to maintain a smooth, safe, and optimal playing experience.
When (if) the engine is released, it will most likely cost the developer a fixed price. I am not sure how much to charge, let me know what you think is a fair price
-Mike-
