I will implement a switch for this to either create 32bpp, 64bpp or 128bpp rendertargets. Please note though, that i will always try to keep the default value at 32bpp in order to support older hardware.





Pointlights can't cast shadows at the moment. While it is trivial to add shadow support for pointlights and it is also rather easy to make it look good, it is absolutely NOT trivial to make it performant. I have an idea how to implement shadows for pointlights in a fast way, but it hasn't been a high priority at the moment.





Only one projection texture per light. Luminancemask also made it into Shade-C EVO. Use:

in the shader to activate it (skin3.x defines where the emissivemask is located. You can change that to your liking) and also add either

to set emissivecolor by material.emissive_red , material.emissive_red and material.emissive_red
or

to set emissivecolor by sc_skill(entity, SC_OBJECT_EMISSIVE, vector(red, green, blue));.




While writing my masterthesis i also did some research on terrain shaders and how to keep them fast. There will be a terrainshader in the near future. About water: I have thought about some ways, but am not completly sure on how to implement it yet. Again, this is a matter of performance instead of "just" making it look good.




Shade-C uses deferred rendering. The initial setup "costs" more than in a traditional forward rendering setup. Even if there is nothing on the screen and no pp effects are activated, a lot is going on behind the scenes. The scene is renderet into 4 render targets by using MRTs, these MRTs are then processed, lighting is added and finally everything is added together. It doesn't matter if there are objects on the screen or not, these steps always need to be done. After these initial costs, deferred rendering is often faster than traditional forward rendering. It depends on the type of game you are creating though. If you only have one directional light in your level and no other lights, forward rendering will most likely be faster. If you add in shadows for the directional light, deferred rendering might or might not be faster (hybrid methods also exist were only shadows are deferred). If you have lots of lights and shadows in your game, deferred rendering is the way to go. Roughly speaking, deferred rendering speed depends on the screen resolution while forward rendering speed depends on the number of objects/lights drawn. Forward, deferred and hybrid rendering all have their pros and cons.



News:
- No news for Shade-C.
- Finished my paper "Power to the players: Developing a large scale MMORPG on a tight budget".
- Currently working on creating a company together with 3 other guys and finishing my course of studies as well as prototyping various (mobile) games as launch titles for the company.
- in general: much do to at the moment.