Tse Vs Tge + Tlk + Cg

#1

Quote:
TGE + TLK + Cg has only 2 shaders

Huh, you can add as many shaders as you want with TGE + TLK + Cg.

Naturally TSE will be the better product in the end however in it's current state it can't match TGE in terms of performance, cross platform ability, stability and working features. Thus people are expanding TGE.

#2 Just heard from the grapevine that the people who had ported Cg into TGE + TLK had only done so with 2 shaders, a water one and 1 other. I also heard, through same source that Cg was cross-platform, which would be a real good benefit obviously.

#3 CG is nVidia's custom shader format, so although you might get some sort of cross-platform OpenGL shaders out of it, you are still only standing on one foot because you are only able to supply your game to a small segment of the market (roughly assume nVidia has 25%, ATI has 25% and Intel has about 50% with their imbedded stuff).

IMHO the only benefit TGE (with enhancements) has over TSE right now is the dynamic lighting and shadows and it won't have that benefit for very long.

#4 Yeah, we here at my company are definitely on the verge of making the TSE jump.

#5

Quote:
CG is nVidia's custom shader format

CG works on ATI based cards. Helps to not have ancient drivers but it works.

#6

Quote:CG works on ATI based cards. Helps to not have ancient drivers but it works.

I was under the impression it worked on all graphics cards, but you're saying this isn't the case?

Quote:roughly assume nVidia has 25%, ATI has 25% and Intel has about 50% with their imbedded stuff

With this statement are you saying that nvidia and ati TOGETHER only hold half the graphics market? I can't imagine this is correct. When you go to the store, you see 95% of the cards are either Nvidia or ATI. In fact, a lot of the times I don't even see an Intel option (can't even think of a single time off the top of my head now that I think about it).

#7 Jonathon:

You should take a look at what Dell sells :) Most (or at least their most popular) of their standard consumer laptops & desktops just use standard on-the-motherboard Intel graphics, rather than a separate card.

Does this demographic represent your target audience? I dunno. Probably the pure casual market, I'd imagine.

#8 @Jonathon

Graphics in retail systems have been, until recently, primarily integrated Intel chipsets. There has been a shift in the last year or so (I work electronics retail so I can see this trend from experience) to integrated PCIe GPUs with PCIe risers. This trend, like I said has only been in the last year. Off the shelf for years Intel has been a primary source for GPUs.

@Anyone who cares

CG shaders work fine on my laptops ATI X200, the thing's not a speed demon in the first place, but everything renders correctly.

- Alan

Edit...Jay, you beat me by seconds!

#9 That's for cards that you can purchase, not cards which come with computers. Many people who are purchasing advanced shader games have purchased upper-tier hardware as well. But people who are content to use the embedded hardware often have the Intel chipsets.

#10 I didn't even think about the 'shelf' systems as I only build my own. If you are building a game with TSE or shaders at all, wouldn't you want to target in teh range of the non-onboard cards?

Well, I'm getting off topic to my own post... really I wanted a good comparison to people who have a choice of either using TSE or TGE + TLK + Cg.

In my eyes, I still see TSE as the winner...

#11

Quote:
IMHO the only benefit TGE (with enhancements) has over TSE right now is the dynamic lighting and shadows and it won't have that benefit for very long.

well, plus TGE is a pretty heavily-tested and stable codebase, right ?

#12

Quote:well, plus TGE is a pretty heavily-tested and stable codebase, right ?

I can see this point of view, but look how many are using TSE and have been for awhile? So I'd imagine this isn't TOO much of a bonus point for TGE, as MANY people use TSE as well. Bugs are usually found quite quickly.

#13 How many are playing with TSE and how many are/have actually acheived something with TSE are very different things.

Jonathan, you sound like your mind was made up before you even started this thread :p

#14 Good point Ian, and yes, I've pretty much made up my mind. Was posting here more for a broader view as I was only getting a few people's opinions in the other thread.

#15 Just thought I'd mention that I've had good luck with TGE+Cg on Dells with integrated Intel graphics as well as ATI and nVidia hardware.

#16 Going with Cg shaders in TGE is only good if you need rapid enhancements to graphical quality and can't wait for TSE to have lighting/shadows and crossplatform capabilities. Cg is also a good idea if you don't want to bother implementing real OpenGL shaders. Real shaders are better than Cg though. Cg has a tendency to produce inefficient code from time to time, and does have little quirks on ATi cards.

There is obviously no limit with what you can do with the source code. There are two major Cg shader resources for TGE right now, and those are probably the only two that get any attention, but it isn't impossible to expand shaders to other parts of rendering too if you're willing to do the necessary work.

As for TSE vs. TLK + Shaders, there's no comparison. There is more to rendering than shiny shaders. TSE is a modern engine, TGE is not. By the time you make TGE a truly modern engine, congrats, you've made a hacked up version of TSE.

In short, buy TSE already, before the price goes up. If your game isn't going to come out for another year or so, then TSE is definitely the best way to go. If your game is coming out next month, hack shaders into TGE and hope it doesn't explode.

#17 Quick question... since TSE is derived from the TGE code base, I'm guessing that a lot of my existing data will be easy (or even no-effort-at-all) to port over once we finish our prototype... but that I'll probably have to work a bit more to port some of our code.

Is this a fair assumption, or should I talk to the budgetmaster about getting us licenses for TSE now? We were kind of hoping to get a basic "playflow" prototype done before we upgraded.

#18 I would buy TSE before it leaves Early Adopter (I did ;) especially if money is an issue. TSE MS 3.5 is pretty stable. However, from my perspective, I'm not nearly experienced enough to think about polishing TSE to completion before GG can. I'm sticking with TGE for my prototyping and alpha/beta stage. When my featureset is complete and GG is done with TSE, I'll finish porting it over.

edit: TSE is a million times nicer to work with than the Cg additions to TGE. IMHO.

#19 You will have to re-export .dif files. .dts files you can pretty much drop straight into TSE without modification. You'll need to map Materials to the textures in the .dts though. And some animation options (vertex morphing, UV animation) are no longer supported due to their inefficiency.

#20 Midhir - I tend to be a bit of a penny pincher, but we have enough budget that the savings isn't really a big deal... I just tend to like to save money when I know I'm going to buy something.

Brian - Thanks, I have a good idea of what to expect when I do make the move now.