THIS is why shaders are awesome!

#21 Shaders are fantastic, but I don't think the technology is mature enough yet to be main stream. Maybe when OpelGL 2.0 comes out eh?
I really don't want to have to really on DX only or vendor specific shader languages

#22 Then there's the rest of the world that runs on geforce2 era hardware...you guys seriously think that there is that much of an installed base of geforce3 and newer video cards? i think you're kidding yourself. there has anything buy a major resurgence in computer sales lately, if anything there has been zero games that have the major 'pull' to get video card sales up...

hl2 has the chance, as does doom3, if they ever finish these games...

in case you hadn't noticed, counter-strike is STILL the most popular online game, more than ALL the other online games combined...and you can play cs on a p350 in software mode no problem...

the majority of the computer-user population doesn't care about shaders, doesn't care about normal mapping, etc...

get them a game that runs fast on their machine AND is fun - that's your goal as game developers

when games like deus ex 2 come out and need a 2 gig machine to get piss-poor fps, you KNOW they are killing their sales by doing this...and these big companies wonder why gamers are buying consoles...

#23 I don't know where everyone gets this mis-conception that the shader hardware relies on DirectX 9 only, it is just as accessable thru OpenGL with the ARB extensions.

actually CS WON'T run in Software mode "no problem" since before it went stand alone retail, the bitching from the 1% of software mode users was unbearable, a TNT2 card was about the bottom end for any of the Half-Life mods with the latest patches, especially CS since it added HW T & L and 1k textures long time ago.

The lowend hardware market makes up the smallest percentage of the software sales, and the what everyone thinks is the small end of the market with the "modern" cards makes up for the LARGEST percentage of software sales. It just makes sense all around, won't or can't send money on the graphics card they aren't that serious about games and are not going to spend money on new games.

Spend money on new hardware you are definately going to buy all the software that puts that new hardware to use.

I don't care what this mysterious majority that cares about, I care about what the people that are actually buying hardware and software care about.

It is called Future proofing . . .

#24 I think its always the same story, updating updating updating...

always after a new tecnology game release, all have to upgrade video card/pc.

and shaders are the future.

#25 Nice thread. I brought this up on the IRC channel and think I'm going to target a higher spec system than the P2 400 I did for my last game. Probably go for a 1ghz machine with a GF2, but allow the graphics to be crippled for lower spec, and add some eye candy for those that can run RT reflections and normal maps on their higher spec systems :)

#26 Just an FYI - 3D Gamestudio added Vertex and Pixel Shader into their last patch upgrade (6.2) They run off of Direct X not openGL.

#27 Shaders went mainstream the day Star Wars Galaxies launched, with over 400,000 subscribers at $15 a month.
Granted Torque does not have them, I don't think you need them to make a good game. Even a great artist today will use ancient painting tools to make fantastic work. Same with torque and Indy's. Still possible to make great games with older tools. With the average 3-4 year pc lifecycle. In the near future about every system will have a shader 2.0 ability. Even more and more laptops are shipping with ATI mobility and Geforce 2 go chipsets.

#28 I'm with Adrian on this one. I spent a lot of time working in those large companies in the past and was still of that mindset when I decided to join GG and do some indie dev.

It took me a while to realise I needed to scale down my thinking a little from the "we must have all the latest everything" that went along with my old job. Thanks to a few people around these parts for making me take stock, and this thread of course.

I now see our target audience as someone that has a moderately decent pc but not necessarily the latest dogs whatsits. 1.8Ghz cpu with GF2 goes back a long way in time and is still a perfectly feasible machine to push a decent scene around and do some nice effects on. CPU probably could go lower than that unless you're doing something bizarrely complicated.

I'm now working on DX8 but using the fixed function stuff and no pixel shaders. Vertex shaders otoh are great and can be made to work in drivers for older cards like GF2. If you try stencil shadows with software made geometry silhouettes then see how ludicrously faster it is using a vertex shader you'll see they're a must have :)