Plan for Benedict Walmisley

I've begun experimenting with Pixel Shaders. These beasties are well sweet - far, far easier to use than the standard DX8 pipeline. I'm using them to blur a texture thats regenerated each frame, using the pixel shaders gives me a big speed up over the old way. Its a shame all cards dont use them as you still have to write a second path for all the 'old' cards around.

AI is about the hardest thing you can write. Making your enemies behave reasonably (IE neither too knowledgable nor too dim) is extremely tough. Any bot writers got any tips here? :-)

The second hardest thing to do is scaling. Making a game run at 100fps on a GF3 is easy. Making it run fairly well on a Voodoo3/PII-233 as well is a nightmare.

I'm always surprised by how much difference the little things make. Fixing a particular bug or finishing that skybox won't give you a warm fuzzy glow but it will make your whole game a lot more professional.

Beta
Yes folks I will distribute the beta to the beta guys this week. I know I've said this before but I've decided to bite the bullet and get it done.

If anyone wonders what I'm wittering on about go and take a look at

wolfdevelopments.togglespin.com

Benedict