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A couple of personal records

Name:	Alex Scarborough
Date Posted:	Jan 31, 2007
Rating:	5.0 out of 5
Public:	YES
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Profile Page:	View profile page for Alex Scarborough

Blog post

Personal records recently set:

1) Most .plans in a one month period (This makes 3. Hopefully I won't break this record)
2) Longest continuous non-multiplayer gaming session (Alpha Centauri is really addictive)
3) Most code trimmed in a single day (Nearly 2,000 lines, or about 1/4 of the total size of the project).
4) Weirdest bug ever fixed (GCC apparently thinks that it isn't really important to use FrameAllocator before writing to memory that should be assigned by the FrameAllocator).
5) Largest personal project released to the general public (or at least TGE owners).

Ya, about that last one...

You know that thing I've been talking about on an off for a few months now? The shiny thing with the pretty pictures and the reflecting water and funky colors? Something to do with shaders and crossplatform and TGE. You can totally download the source code for that now. Isn't that just, like, awesome?

Now then, the whole "crossplatform" thing didn't quite work out. There is no Windows or Linux version at the moment. If anyone would like to help in porting this over to Windows or Linux (there shouldn't be too much work involved), let me know.

In the meantime, here are some screenshots which asmaloney (Andy) took. As far as I know, Andy is the first person (besides myself) to have integrated this into Torque, and also reported the first bug. Go Andy!

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Recent Blog Posts

List:	08/31/07 - Various musings 03/01/07 - Modernization Kit: Now on Windows! 01/31/07 - A couple of personal records 01/27/07 - Read a manual today! 01/04/07 - Old games and new tech 12/13/06 - Restructure, Refactor, Rewrite, Re... 11/10/06 - Just another month gone by 09/25/06 - Shiny pictures and upcoming resources

Submit your own resources!

Scott Coursey (Jan 31, 2007 at 06:36 GMT)

Now, that's a huge change. Mac first then port to the others? Nice. Makes me glad to be a Mac developer. =)

Must get... must get... must get...

Do you have any metrics on a performance hit?

Alex Scarborough (Jan 31, 2007 at 06:44 GMT)

Performance hit... umm... it ranges from a nice 15% FPS improvement to a nice 60% drop, depending on how complex the shaders are, how much VRAM the GPU has, etc. etc. etc.

For my personal computer, I still get the nice FPS improvement even if I'm using parallax mapping and DRL (depending on mission, this may not be typical for you). But once I turn on the water, my framerate is halved.

Thak (Jan 31, 2007 at 07:03 GMT)

Awesome Alex! Words fail me... sweet man!!!

James Urquhart (Jan 31, 2007 at 09:27 GMT)

For some reason, those comparison shots remind me of this.

Stefan Lundmark (Jan 31, 2007 at 11:46 GMT)

A little bit too much HDR for my taste, but whatever. :)

asmaloney (Andy) (Jan 31, 2007 at 14:55 GMT)

@James: almost lost my coffee on that one :-)

Timothy Aste (Jan 31, 2007 at 18:41 GMT)

Great stuff Alex!

Shaun Vantuil (Jan 31, 2007 at 20:10 GMT)

I love you, man.

Pat Wilson (Jan 31, 2007 at 20:14 GMT)

The force is strong with this one.

Tom Bentz (Jan 31, 2007 at 21:11 GMT)

Give that man a raise!

Rubes (Jan 31, 2007 at 23:41 GMT)

Sweet work, Alex. Looking forward to checking this out!

Alex Scarborough (Feb 01, 2007 at 00:01 GMT)

@James: You know, I did include a little console function to really crank up the bloom...

@Pat: These are not the shaders you are looking for.

Rob Sandbach (Feb 01, 2007 at 00:44 GMT)

Congrats Alex, I know a lot of blood, sweat, time and tears went into this one.

Can't wait for the shader IDE etc. :)

T Squared (Thanhda Tie) (Feb 01, 2007 at 03:41 GMT)

Nice Alex! This will be fun trying to port it to win32.

BrokeAss Games (Feb 01, 2007 at 10:02 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Woot!
Go go go!

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