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Does TorqueX support 2D shaders?(eg. can I make my screen glow?)

by John Klimek · in Torque X 2D · 08/20/2007 (1:11 pm) · 8 replies

Does TorqueX support shaders?

I'd like to apply a full-screen glow (to achieve that glowing-line/glowing-terminal effect) to a simple 2D game.

If this is possible, are there any examples that only require PS v1.1 or v1.3? (the minimum requirement for XNA)
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Torque Owner Thomas Buscaglia
#1
08/20/2007 (1:51 pm)
Yes, Torque X supports post-processing, but the interface for it in 1.0 is a little wonky and it only applies to the entire canvas (gameplay + GUI + anything else). In-house we have per-sceneview postprocessing effect support, which will be included in the next release.

Torque Owner John Klimek
#2
08/20/2007 (1:55 pm)
Ahhh... that sounds good. Hopefully Microsoft will allow you to release it soon (v1.0 took a looong time to come out) :)

Are there any examples of doing a simple glow effect for ps v1.1 or v1.3?

Torque Owner Thomas Buscaglia
#3
08/29/2007 (9:12 pm)
Glow is normally done with a "glow buffer" which is something we don't have in 1.0. Adam just added glow functionality to the engine earlier today, however, so it will be a built-in function of the next release.

Torque Owner John Klimek
#4
08/30/2007 (5:27 am)
Ahh, very cool!

Will the glow effect require a higher level pixel shader, or will it work with PS v1.3? (which I think is the minimum requirement for XNA, right?)

Torque Owner Thomas Buscaglia
#5
08/30/2007 (2:07 pm)
Currently the blur pixel shader for the glow effect is PS 2.0, but we might be able to have a PS 1.1 fallback. That's something we'll have to look into.

Torque Owner John Klimek
#6
08/30/2007 (4:22 pm)
I really hope you guys are able to have a 1.1 or 1.3 fallback. Games like Defcon have a really awesome glow effect and work on very low-end machines.

I'd like to make a Defcon (eg. glowing lines like on old terminals) type of game but don't want to require a high-end graphics card for a seemingly small effect like the glow.

Anyways, you guys are awesome. Hopefully you can figure it out and implement it...

- John

Torque Owner Thomas Buscaglia
#7
08/30/2007 (4:26 pm)
It's the blur in the pixel shader that causes the higher requirements. I'm sure that if we get to it we can get a lower quality blur for PS 1.1 fallback.

Torque Owner John Klimek
#8
08/30/2007 (6:50 pm)
Ahhh, cool. Hopefully you guys can get to it.

I'm a firm believer in the "lowest common denominator" for homemade games. While it's nice to have really cool pixel shader (or whatever) effects, I think homemade games have a difficult time reaching audiences w/o limiting their audience to only very recent video card owners.

Just my two cents anyways.

Thanks for the info Tom!