Natural Selection 2 News Update - New Materials System
Hugh
CameramanSan Francisco, CA Join Date: 2010-04-18 Member: 71444NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Developer, Pistachionauts
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Any word on how/if this is going to impact performance? :x
edit: and any chance of fishing for more screenies of the pretties? I know there's pics of the whip and Drifter and Egg model with transparency out there... any other cool stuff we could see? :D
ETA on patch?
However, I hope it does not affect FPS too much as many users still suffer from poor performance, including myself. Any optimizations in the next patch?
^THIS PLEASE
Also, Max mentioned something about transparent textures in there. Does this mean we'll get to see the eggs etc. properly rendered?
Will the ability to mod materials and shaders be available to those with beta access?
If so, or even not: I am begging for an object based motionblur (OBMB) implementation.
You guys were wondering about animation, i am personaly of the opinion that proper OBMB makes animations much better looking.
Please respond max!
(Need not necessarily respond, was responded to in the stream!) (luv u guys)
"Just add a little bit of code here, change some values there, and there you go! An astral dragon shooting bananas."
you are awesome :)
So we can have lighter or darker maps in servers. Zero is normal mode, positive numbers are lighter, negative numbers are darker.
yes, they look pretty crazy :)
+1
No, although I cleaned up some code which will make adding in transparency easier.
<!--quoteo(post=1919097:date=Mar 28 2012, 02:17 PM:name=Dictator93)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Dictator93 @ Mar 28 2012, 02:17 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1919097"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Will the ability to mod materials and shaders be available to those with beta access?
If so, or even not: I am begging for an object based motionblur (OBMB) implementation.
You guys were wondering about animation, i am personaly of the opinion that proper OBMB makes animations much better looking.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes, the material system is open for modding, however you couldn't implement object motion blur with it (you would need to know the velocity of each bone).
Darn. Still, that's good to hear it will be easier for you later.
Nice! Nano-Shielded Marine would look awesome :P
<!--quoteo(post=1919170:date=Mar 29 2012, 02:19 AM:name=yimmasabi)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (yimmasabi @ Mar 29 2012, 02:19 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1919170"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->+1<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
However, I hope it does not affect FPS too much as many users still suffer from poor performance, including myself. Any optimizations in the next patch?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I dont know how it internally works here but usually the script you see there is compiled and executed on the GPU(shaders). The Shadecode is not part of the game itself. Its compiled with an external compiler for DX shaders, which allows to recompile a shader and swap the old one with the new one. Per Pixel manipulation in a Scriptlanguage(or even on CPU) is a total overkill. So the execution itself should work as it did before, but with the advantage of flexible/editable modules which are not hardwired. There MIGHT be a very tiny tiny overhead. But thats nothing compared to the heavy taskload which is needed to process the shader anyway.
@UWE: Please correct my assumption if iam wrong
Greetings
Memnarch
I think the difference is that the Materials system has been re-worked. I doubt that we hadn't one before :D
My hat is from <a href="http://www.goorin.com/" target="_blank">Goorin Bros</a>. I won't stop until it is more popular than Notch's hat!
"Just add a little bit of code here, change some values there, and there you go! An astral dragon shooting bananas."
you are awesome :)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
+1
I just love how Max always manages to put some magic into "Making the magic happen" :)
Seems like it this adds a lot of cool new options for trying stuff out and it's gonna be interesting to see how this will help improve the already really good visuals even further.