TSE on non-shader video card

#1 Not currently

#2 Dedicated server, maybe...

#3 Dedicated what? Mind if we keep on topic here?

I'm not sure if Brian and C.o is planning fallback functionality to such a degree, but I know TSE is meant to be able to fallback pretty far, but maybe not to non-shader cards. Hopefully a GG employee will see this and shed some light :)

#4 You can make TSE work on a non-shader card but we're currently focused on getting an awesome shader engine going - not writing lots and lots of fallbacks for older cards.

#5 @stef - ouch man.. that hurt

It was late and I saw "run a game" and immediately thought server...

edit . . . oh so i added "a"

#6 Where do you see "run a game"? instead of your post or this one

edit . . .that is not what you have quoted

#7

Quote:IS it possible to RUN TSE game

but i will admit i didnt see this:

Quote:with non-shader materials

* I go away for a couple of weeks, come back and everyones is in such a bad mood..

#8 I am thoroughly confused now. :(

#9 Oh, my gosh... :)
I have no idea, but people usually start to flame in threads started by me #8-P. Funny.... Just kidding ;)

Ben, thanks for the answer, the purpose of my question is: I would like to maximize the market by letting people with weak video cards to pay low-quality version of my game without creating two independent version in TGE and TSE.
Just minimizing my indie efforts and saving time, you know...

What is the trick to run the TSE on non-shader cards? Where should I look at? Code? Materials?

#10 You need the code to fallback on older/less shader intensive materials, and as far as I know that's not a trivial change.

#11 Ok, well i'm actually going to attempt to add something constructive this time :)

Early on we did a little experimentation in trying to get a TSE client to connect to a TGE server. The thought process was something like this: If materials are going to eventually be client side only, and all objects were derived from the same codebase, why wouldn't a TSE client be able to connect to a TGE server, i mean techically, you you swap a few internal defines,stub out all the discrepencies, something SHOULD happen .. right?

First we synced all the scripts, we used TGE tutorial.base, removed the dif, and the water. Only a few changes were required to sync the game/server types and version to get stuff like serverquery,joinserver workng. TSE found the server and connected! It got all the way to ACK Phase 2, then the client blew up (on ghosting i imagine). I was planning on revisiting this later when the TSE code solidifies and it becomes more in sync with 1.3.


If all this were to actually work.. you could code your server and lower end clients in TGE then offer a turbo version using TSE and all clients could play on the same server.. Of course this all assumes a central server/farm type architecture..

edit : and if you wanted to go completely nuts T2D clients as well.. TAP would take on a whole new meaning...

#12 As far as making TSE run on fixed function cards, you'll just have to make it have a mode where it never sets any of the shader stuff, and uses... er... fixed function stuff instead. GFX has all the fixed function features of DX9 exposed, so you'd just have to write a bunch of code against that.

#13 It would be much easier to get TSE to render in fixed function than it would be to try and get a TGE and TSE version of your game running happily together.

#14 Thank you guys for the insight!
So, thinking I will be... (c) Yoda
:)