i didn’t want to spend time searching for a site where i could get a direct link to the image so i took Google and just found the first image that did look okay ^^... and i own a game cube.. and i know that version is much better.. ^^ a fantastic game... clearly the best game last year ^^

Nice to see you're making progess!

I have to admint that the pictures are looking better than I expected once.

Games that dont have per pixel lighting and normal mapping are very outdated. No game is being done now without it. The idea that you can get away with directX7 7 graphics nowadays is rediculous.

We are talking of hobbyist games not of professional AAA titles.

Yes, shaders today are very important but we are about to build up a game not just a techdemo for Acknex. I dont think that game development is only shader implementation, it is even better to have a game looking good without shaders and then adding different shader technologies to make it alot better. The other way round could be a very impressive techdemo but not a game.

The sphere plugin is great, Matt your giving us shader technologies but also you are building up outdoor and indoor limitations, which are very bad for a game like this. If sphere will be able to handle that in a better way we would certainly use it in some ways.

I think shader technology is the best way to optimize the graphics of a game. "Lived" isn't done until now and always open for new features. As a game developer we also has to concentrate on a good gameplay and not just good graphics without any gameplay features that are really new.

I think that you can get away with some money... You will of course not being able to sell it for the same prise as the big companies and not make a best seller or something like that :P.. But maybe get a start to go on.. And get enough experience so you can join a bigger company ^^.. And after that maybe make a bigger game on your own...
As I said before.. You will have to start some where ^^

Great pics. Have you made a video? I just want to see this in motion.

First read then post I also never said that shaders or unimportant, I said shaders are very important. What about combining parallax shaders in outdoor envirmonts with sun and water shader, sphere could not handle that. I also never said that we not want do implement shader technologies. We are really focused to use technologies like normal mapping , parallax, env mapping aso.

These days are really hard for new gameplay elements first every one wants to see are shader technolgies, graphics are always getting better but we forget about the game itself.

Why are you talking about publishers and there expectations ? It seems you missed the " free game" in the beginning.

But lets come back to more then just talking about shaders or not, from the beginning of the development we planned to use shader technologies in the next versions of the game thats a fact.