hi there,

from reading the shaders forum i learned one special thing: shaders dont work with every video card.

as game developer my goal is to make my game available to a lot of people. but if i have a highend killershader that doenst apply anymore. only those with the latest 3d-hardware will be able to play the game and that tightens my audience.

so why should we implent shaders? just to make it look good for ourselves? take the cartoon shader for example. it lets you save a lot of work - but on the other hand it doesnt work for many people.
not everyone has the latest 3d - hardware.

btw. is there any way to dont use a shader if the engine detects no pixelshader?
even if that would work, the game would look ugly for those who dont have a good enough card.

iam really, really unsure if i should start implenting some nice looking shaders to eyecandy-up my game. i fear that once its ready it works only for 50% of the grapic cards.
when the shader works with my card and looks good, it may be possible that the same shaded model looks totally ugly and out of place on my friends graphics card - thats what i saw here a lot in the forums...

iam especially unsure if i should use a cartoon shader or not.

it would help me and others too i think if we could discuss a bit on that matter.

regards, -utz

Though I'm not sure how to script it, I think you can have an option to enable/disable shaders. If shaders are enabled, then process them. If not, don't. You can use fixed function effects (they get rendered once only) without any problems, however. You don't have to be going to the shader 3.0 features, you could stick with the older 1.0 or 1.1 features for more compatibility. If you can, I'd suggest using the highest shader version your card can handle and work from it. Then, on your options menu in your game, turn off shaders (or use lower version models) through one of the options (have it off by default for compatibility issues).

Probably your single deciding factor is going to be your target audience. If you're developing the latest, greatest MMORPG then you'll be targeting a group with upper end hardware (ps2.0+) and broadband connections. If you're developing for mass distrobution on the maximum number of PC's (for RealArcade for example) then you want to set your sights lower in terms of hardware for best effect. You can also use the "fallback" system to create multiple shaders and let the hardware pick the best one for itself. Obviously the higher end shader will "look" better, but it doesn't have to be "all or nothing."

Bottom line is this:
It depends on your cost vs. potential reward, target computer, target player, and game type.

okay is there a way to find out if anyone has a hardware capable of using a for example toon shader. and if there is no hardware present just use no shader?

also how shure can i be that a shader looks the same at different graphic cards without getting odd results at some cards? (read a lot about that here)

I remember seeing something in the manual about this. Try searching the manual. In short, it'd go like this within your action:

if (very_good_video_card)
{
my.material = very_good_material; // supporting shaders 3.x and under
}

if (good_video_card)
{
my.material = good_material; // supporting shaders 2.x
}

if (fair_video_card)
{
my.material = fair_material; // only supports shaders 1.x
}

if (weak_video_card)
{
my.material = no_shaders; // have no shaders at all
}

This would be the best way to do it. Add this before any while loops so it gets executed only once. I'm not sure, however, if it can be in a while loop to make it repeat each frame. You could probably use a shaders 3.x on a weak video card if it is only used once and not repeated every frame or frequently, but I cannot say if this is true or not.