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[LucasUP]

All this technical jargon is getting me uncomfortably excited.
Can't wait to see this stuff implemented.
I may accidentally pull a few levers... IN MY PANTS
ehem...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

BUT WONT ANYONE THINK OF OUR ASCII HERITAGE? HOW CAN WE POSSIBILY BE COOL AND CLIQUE WITH A GAME WITH GOOD GRAPHICS?

[Baughn]

That would require some way to provide additional texture inputs to the pixel shader beyond the current color/alpha tile maps. Baughn, have you thought about that at all? I know you're making a bunch of changes to the texture atlasing...

Assuming I can get texture arrays to work (I will, by hook or by crook, but I'm really annoyed by the lack of good opengl debugging options in linux right now), then yes. Discussed it a little while back, but you can define tilesets to include any number of 2D texture arrays, each containing any number of tiles.

The non-shader modes just use the first 256 tiles of the first array (modulo graphics-mode, which I've thought a little about but won't deal with until I've got this bloody thing working), and if you don't explicitly name an array in a shader (or #ifdef it out based on runtime-defined constants, heh) it isn't loaded at all in shader-mode, so there's no overhead to that.

Meanwhile, you get any number of sampler2DArrays, each of whatever tile-size and layer-count you like.

That's sufficient, right? Or did you have something else in mind?

EDIT: Oh, I should probably allow you to specify other options than RGBA for loading the tilesets. No point in using four bytes per pixel if only one channel is meaningful, after all..

[Baughn]

Oh, by the way. Simple explanation of shader-mode constraints: It requires directx 10-capable hardware.

It does not require directx 10. I'm still using opengl. But you do need a gpu that, hypothetically, if you were to install vista or w7, could run directx 10.

(Some weaker GPUs will probably still be able to run it, by emulating lots of things in the driver. Performance will suck.)

[ginsweater]

Assuming I can get texture arrays to work (I will, by hook or by crook, but I'm really annoyed by the lack of good opengl debugging options in linux right now), then yes. Discussed it a little while back, but you can define tilesets to include any number of 2D texture arrays, each containing any number of tiles.

I had to debug a graphics driver crash in Linux once, years ago. I feel your pain.
I'm curious - had any luck with gDEBugger? I keep meaning to try it - it sounds really great - but have heard nothing from anybody about whether it works.

Meanwhile, you get any number of sampler2DArrays, each of whatever tile-size and layer-count you like.

That's sufficient, right? Or did you have something else in mind?

That should be plenty. I might still do some experiments with additional deferred passes (that's where my interests lie) but a lot of the stuff I'm thinking might be hackable with adjacent-tile lookups.

Only things I can think of are stuff like dorfs standing in ground mist and shallow water sort of situations?

My head is obviously too deep in lighting and shadow stuff! I was imagining various lighting effects that become possible with depth information. Ground mist effects are a neat idea, though! I bet I could do really cool miasma as an overlay...

[Artanis00]

Only things I can think of are stuff like dorfs standing in ground mist and shallow water sort of situations?

My head is obviously too deep in lighting and shadow stuff! I was imagining various lighting effects that become possible with depth information. Ground mist effects are a neat idea, though! I bet I could do really cool miasma as an overlay...

Like this, perhaps?

http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/04/Soft-Particles

[Turambar]

That is not what soft particles are for.

[WormSlayer]

My head is obviously too deep in lighting and shadow stuff! I was imagining various lighting effects that become possible with depth information. Ground mist effects are a neat idea, though! I bet I could do really cool miasma as an overlay...

Lighting and shadows would be pretty freakin awesome!

Miasma/dust/etc. is also something I was thinking about - At the very least we can add some semi-transparent edges to it even if we cant tell whats underneath.

Particle systems? Well shit I'll use them if someone can hack them in

It's going to be a lot of work just figuring out how to use all these new features never mind making the graphics :F

[ginsweater]

Miasma/dust/etc. is also something I was thinking about - At the very least we can add some semi-transparent edges to it even if we cant tell whats underneath.

Honestly, I think I may be completely hamstrung just by the fact that it's way more fun to code up effects and say "Look what I could do in theory!" than it is to actually put stuff in the game. 

[Artanis00]

That is not what soft particles are for.

Possibly. I was thinking about the concept behind them more than the particle part itself.

Basically, my train of thought was "depth maps to cloud effects to- hey, there's this neat effect over at the wolfire blog with nifty cloud effects via depth maps, maybe they'd like to see."

We don't have all the tile info, though, so blending cloud effects like that is kinda silly. At least until we can talk Toady into making multiple passes as mentioned earlier.

Hopefully that's clearer?

[Prastary]

Oh, by the way. Simple explanation of shader-mode constraints: It requires directx 10-capable hardware.

 

[Baughn]

Such is life. Earlier generations of cards aren't flexible enough; they're too focused on 3D graphics.

I might be able to backport some of this later, but no promises.

[McBeer]

It requires directx 10-capable hardware.

All right guys, maybe let's forget about it then.
It's becoming ridiculous a bit now.
Actually, my only need is having nonrestricted tile assignement(any number OF TILES) system.

[Deon]

It looked like this:
(D)esigner: This car can have a TV!
(C)rowd: Yay!
(D): Also it will have a rocket engine!
(C): Yippee!
(D): Also it can fly and swim underwater!
(C): Awesome!
(D): It will cost 10 million dollars.
(C): ...

[Vince]

It requires directx 10-capable hardware.

All right guys, maybe let's forget about it then.
It's becoming ridiculous a bit now.
Actually, my only need is having nonrestricted tile assignement(any number OF TILES) system.

That's Toady's part and it will be done. And you certainly won't need DX10 Hardware for it.
Vote for "Full graphics support" here, if you haven't already
We just try to have it earlier, which is hard, and needs the hardware, don't forget that.

It looked like this:
(D)esigner: This car can have a TV!
(C)rowd: Yay!
(D): Also it will have a rocket engine!
(C): Yippee!
(D): Also it can fly and swim underwater!
(C): Awesome!
(D): It will cost 10 million dollars.
(C): ...

Let's not forget that we are trying to work around given limitations here.
It's not that DF would necessarily need DX10 hardware to show some eye candy (like a tile for everything or "surrounding-aware" tiles) if some things were implemented from the start.

[Deon]

I don't say that it's bad, it just looked like that . I have DX10 compatible cards on 2 PCs but my Laptop won't handle it, so it's not critical but a bit sad.