Shadows

[rquader]

I must say that you have some impressive screenshots. However, are all shadows dynamic? If so, how much of an affect does it have on the performance of your engine? Keep up the nice work.

[Aeros]

Yes, all shadows are dynamic meaning their position will be affected by the underlaying terrain and the lighting source (the sun). I don't know exactly how our shadows work because I'm not a programmer, but the performance is based on the quality of the shadows which will be adjustable (lower end system will have lower quality shadows, or no shadows at all, where as higher end systems will have much better looking shadows).

The shadows are not something that won't be able to be rendered at more than 60 FPS on the average machine in 2006.

Right now they perform very well and will perform even better later on as more tweaking and optimising is done.

[rquader]

Well what are the frame rates that you are achieving now? Are they below or over sixty?

Thanks.

[Aeros]

We can't give out exact numbers since they won't represent the framerate you'll be getting when the game is finished.

2 years from now we don't want people going "What! How come I get 30 FPS when earlier you guys said you were getting ## FPS"

Also right now the frame rates are very high because there isn't all that much to render and the game doesn't have to do alot of the calculations for AI and other systems like it'll have to do in the final product, those systems have yet to be fully implimented.

[rquader]

Also right now the frame rates are very high because there isn't all that much to render and the game doesn't have to do alot of the calculations for AI and other systems like it'll have to do in the final product, those systems have yet to be fully implimented.

Thats true. Frame rates will plummet when you implement AI. Well good luck with the project, though I was mostly intrigued about the shadows.

[Dnas]

Maybe, for people with shadows off, you can use the AOM fake shadows.

[rquader]

It would be interesting to see the performance difference between dynamic shadows in OpenGL and DirectX. We are currently using blob shadows, but also have support for dynamic shadows.

[Wijitmaker]

Welcome to the forums Rahik.

Not sure about how ogl compares to dx because we have only been using ogl (for platform independance). Reverie Entertainment uses dx, you could check with them:

http://www.reverieentertainment.net/

BTW, hats off to the work being done at Templar Games, I've been following some of the progress you have made at gamedev.net

[rquader]

Thanks for the compliment Hopefully we will have more to show in the coming weeks. We are currently changing most of the art.

Anways, there is library by the name of GLScene for OpenGL (Delphi). I don't know whether you have come accross it or if you use it already, but it might be worthwhile to take a look.

http://glscene.sourceforge.net/index.php