Well before critiquing the demo too much , Lets all load our included gamestudio demo , then see the video of the demo again , so we can compare. LOL.
I'm not saying the vide is the ultimate thing i've seen , I would say for now Crysis is the winner in that category , it definately looks incredibly nice , As if it can be done with gamestudio , yes , it can , we all know it can (or at least pretty close), the biggest problem i have with gamestudio and shaders is the lack of fallbacks and such , where if you get a shader from the wiki , and build ur level with it , it might not work on the next guy's computer , and fixing that requires a lot of programming that general users like myself arent really familiar with. It was the same problem with Sphere , it was a beautifull plugin , and really made gamestudio look like a next gen engine , but in the end it became unusable because of it's lack of support for wide range of video cards , it's many bugs , and lack of fallbacks. I'm not saying gamestudio is too behind as an engine , but as a tool , specially as a tool geared for the non programmers (i.e. the artists and hobyists) , still , I do believe that making a level like the one in the video is possible , the question is how much extra work it would involve to put it together with gamestudio than with torque , as from what I see torque has a much more robust and userfriendly shader system than gamestudio , with a very nice fallback system so your shaders are backwards compatible all the way down to shader model 1 , which was the point of my post.

TGEA's Shaders:

TGEA - Custom Materials

TGEA - Procedurally Generated Shaders

and crysis does? well, i think not. those are games you need to by a new computer for, in most cases , at least if you want to play it fluidly

I don't think that the shaders are the problem of the Crysis performance issues. Crysis needs a multi-core processor for all the scene-management, AI, physics and similar stuff. I am sure they have good shader setup with fall-backs like TGEA has.

The system of procedurally generated shaders is also very good. In TGEA you can add in your material a normal-map texture and it automatically genereates the needed shader code for it. If you add a spec map another part of code gets attached.

Other tools like Gamecore use tons of conditional statements in a multi-purpose shader to reach the same goal. There is much more possible with shaders than we see in our Wiki.

This kind of shader code, material code and application of shadows is a proof of good programming other than Inestical said in his last post.
In the TGEA editor you can place any polygonal model and press the re-light-button to get new static shadows. This is good programming as well.

This really shows what your real problem is... If you own A7 commercial or pro you don't really need Sphere anymore, in fact it won't work. Ventilators tool is awesome indeed, but only if you know how to properly use it, same goes for the whole A7 engine. It's not Torque and it's not Beyond Virtual.



But the ones that would fit into a 'next gen' demo as you would like to see are never free.



Which is mainly why a lot of us say that these kind of demos would theoretically be possible with A7 too.

Then show me a level with parallax-mapping plus real-time soft-shadowing. Sphere was able to render this a few years ago. I did not see such a project from you, from Conitec or anybody else.



So you say that all users of this engine don't properly use it? Otherwise we would see similar project like we can see on other engine forums.
I visit them all often when I do announcements. The world is not standing still.



Ok, I understand. You will not create it. So you don't have to find more excuses.
If it really would be possible then somebody would have made it for the last "create something good-looking" contest. The best of the best did not make it. So I understand your situation



And this little word "theoretically" is the point. There is no proof. Are all A7 users dumb or lazy? I don't think so. So there must be another reason for it.

I offered my help and my contents even for free to many users. I offered Slin (an experienced shader coder) complete model packs to make a few scenes.
I contributed textures, models and levels to some other projects.

But still I achieve something better in shorter time in other free tools like IrrEdit, C4 or in the demo version of TGEA as you can see at our Dexsoft page.

I would use A7 render images for advertising if they would be superior. I am no fanboy, I use what works best for me.

About the video:
it looks all nice but they just show very little. If the level really is big, why don´t they show those parts?

Gamestudio gave me a great introduction into gamedevelopement and that is what I really like it for. It is very easy to use in the beginning and gets harder when you want to do more than template stuff but stays always doable.
Lite-C is a really small change for beginners but opens a lot of possibilities for more advanced users and I really like it for that.

Why_Do_I_Die, why do ou say that hobbyists want to create levels and models? I think most users here are wether beginners or people that like to write some nice scripts and sure some others but I think that those are a minority and are already using other engines. I have a lot of fun to create codes to improve the visuals at the moment and I just don´t want to have an engine that already has all that usable through a few sliders

This thread is already off topic now so I´ll go on with that
I would try to create a similar scene with gamestudio if there are people contributing the models for it (I don´t have the money to buy them) and someone who wants to do the leveldesign.
I would do the Lite-C and the shaderpart. If there really is some interest in this, I would start to build up the base and then have the leveldesigner bulding the level and telling me what he needs. I would like to leave the design part completely up to the leveldesigner and it would only get a graphicsdemo for now.
I could also combine shaders with lightmaps using another uv-set but am not able to create the lightmap and such. Other than that I would stick to stencilshadows (maybe with a little blur...).

The whole thing could at least end in some nice shaders for the wiki and hopefully a level with great graphics.

Would you contribute artwork for this? single choice
Yes	64%, 7 Votes
No	36%, 4 Votes
Total Votes: 11 Voting on this poll ends: 0 seconds ago

Phemox: If you would simply start then you´ll get enough artwork from Frank.
He has made an offer and he won´t disappoint you.
To say it with HeelX: "Seriously".

But I´ve to say that DavidLancasters work has the same or even more potential as this demo.
Regardless if it´s done with Notepad or Unreal.

Hey Slin, you know that I offered you help and model-packs. We talked about it once.
Maybe you and fogman should work togehter on a project

...