So I've been working with shaders most recently on my game engine (thats the code that makes stuff look pretty). And with it almost done, I decided to give a small taste.


In this render there is,
Texture and diffuse lighting,
two lights (one white, one green),
dynamic (non blurred) shadows,
and a glow map,

You might be asking, I thought you had more than that programmed? I do, but a magician never gives his best performance first.

Already programmed,
Bump maps,
specular lighting,
blur,

Yet to come,
HDR/bloom,
water,
fur,
particles,
advanced distance to object and velocity blurring (this is a maybe)
crepuscular rays

So I mentioned a little while back about how I needed to code up an update for the site, so here it is in all its glory. One single solitary line (well, sort of). Everyone should be able to see it in the top right corner of the site.

<div style="position: absolute; top: 79px; right: 100px; font-size: 10px; 

color: #555555;"> Posts: $amount[0] Technical: $amount[1] Comments: $amount[2] </div>

Yessir, I like inline CSS. For small single lines like this, it takes up less space and is more efficient. Dont fret, I still use regular CSS for large things such as a majority of this sites makeup.

As for the code, I needed a quick way of glancing and seeing the amount of posts, and specifically comments. That way I could always be sure if someone was posting something new and I could check it out.

I originally intended to have a nice cookie system setup, and it would link to the latest comment that the visitor had yet to see. But gave up after realizing it was much to large of a task for very little gain.

I still need to work on the admin panel (oh god), maybe a task for another day. I'm a bit busy codeing up my actual game engine. Did I mention I finished my map maker?

As some may know, I've been contemplating to use OpenGL (Open.TK), DirectX (Direct3D), or stick with good ol XNA.

So to help myself, and maybe some future peoples out in deciding, I've made a nice little chart of pros and cons of each. And my decision which future games will be made of. Check it after the rift.

One thing that\'s funny about XNA is its Model class. Almost every XNA game published uses it, yet, I do believe even Shawn Hargreaves - who co-wrote XNA - says it sucks (or at least is only supposed to be a stepping stone)!

Well, I decided I should just write my own model then. It could have animations, and custom effects, vertex and index manipulations, and more!

While I love to sit and program for hours on end, I will only be able to do so if what I am programming is interesting, unique, and dynamic. Working on the same $#&*#(* class variable left myself crazy. But I learned a very valuable lesson, check out after the break of how I tamed the beast Viewport. (for XNA)