Noob introduction

General Discussion
1

First I would just like to say hello, and whether you want it or not an introduction about me. I do this for two reasons, one to prove I am human and not a bot, and two because it is the polite thing to do. I promise I have a question and a purpose at the end. :slight_smile:

The first game development system I used was Dark Basic, which I actually forked out 60 bucks for. It was decent for a while, but after my skills improved I found the old non object orientedness and slowness of a Basic derivative annoying.

Basically, since that time, I have had to learn Java inside and out for my computer science class, and PHP for my web development class(just a side note: php is my favorite web language of all time, possibly my favorite language in general, possibly over even English . :slight_smile: ) I have also dabbled in assembly, even bought two books on the subject, but haven’t been able to devote much time to that enigma, which is a huge project on its own. If you can’t tell by now I am an active computer science student…

Anyway, The whole reason I came to your corner of the web, was that I was looking for a game engine that was easy to learn, powerful, and cheap as possible, I am a student after all. After looking at how easy python seemed to be to learn, and that it is actually pretty damn efficient for a supposed ‘scripting language’, I thought I would give you guys a try. It was created by Disney, how bad can it be :smiley: …

I actually really like the Panda engine, it is simple, it makes sense, and thank god, its object oriented! My biggest question right now is: I, like many other superficial gamers, like pretty things, and thus I have been looking at the shader aspect of things. One thing in particular, something that I really would like to have, is Normal Mapping.

I know I would have to write a normal mapping shader in Cg, but I know very little about the whole thing (basically the wikipedia entry on Cg is the extent of my knowledge, and I have been too lazy to find any tutorials at the time of this writing). So, here’s the question you have all been waiting for:
How would I go about writing a normal mapping shader, or, in the interest of laziness, is there one that is out there that I can use, or at the very least something that I can plagiarize some code from and make work for me. :slight_smile:

Thanks, rayman

2

There is a tutorial sample about normal mapping, and you may want to take a look at the Code Snippet forum section for more stuff.

Have fun !

3

Yeah, I should probably have looked through all the samples before posting…Sorry about my ignorance…I found an interesting problem though:
On my laptop, the normal maps work fine, while on my PC I get nothing but Grey and the glowing ball when normal maps are on.

I know for a fact that my graphics card supports shaders(it’s an ATI Radeon X800, which was top of the line not too long ago), so I am assuming it is either something wrong with the drivers or something along those lines. Any ideas?

Also does anyone know of any good shader and Cg tutorials in general. I would really like to learn how to write my own.

Thanks again, rayman :smiley:

EDIT: I replaced the shader that comes with the demo with the one in the code snippets section of the forum and it now works like a charm! Sweet, thank you for your support…Though I would still like to know if you guys know of any good shader tutorials… :slight_smile: