shiny ground

[Sarras Volcae]

anyone who plays world of warcraft should know what i mean. it's some kind of lighting on terrain that brings out texture. like the moon's rays on grass or smooth stone. i can't remember what it's called, and this may be a dumb wish, but i figured it might be easy to implement. and it's pretty!  (besides the terrain now is sooo dull)

[thorgrin]

No idea.
I guess it could be bloom or bump mapping. It must be some kind of shader for sure.

[bloodedIrishman]

Shaders.

We're getting them.

You're welcome.

[Raekh]

Well, shaders, but what about all the bump maps?

So I suppose the shaders will be available right away from 0.5 - but according maps for having things visualized would take some more years (or in a more official way: soon(tm))?

Dont celebrate too early.

[Yaniel]

Do you mean multitexturing?

[sgtkwol]

Specular lighting?  Changes the way objects reflect light, looks a little more realistic as it reacts as you move around the object.

[Lhaa]

Not really "easy" to implement since you must make an extra b/w image to tell the engine where to apply more or less highlighting, meaning every single IG texture needs that extra file unless you're setting plain glass/metal textures. But I'd assume that this should be possible from 0.5 on, just means some extra work.

Here's an example with the 3 textures. The diffuse map is the original texture, normal map is the bump-mapping (used to simulate extra volumes and which WoW isn't using), and finally the specular map:

[LigH]

Normal mapped textures are being prepared, to get an effect like the bumpy stones in the "Podium" (the character loading place). But it is not as simple as it sounds: Where textures had been created with darker areas to simulate a simple static shadow, this darkening would have to be removed to not interfer with new shadows caused by normal mapping and shadow calculation. That sometimes means to re-make whole textures. What an effort... poor leisure time.

I believe Sarras referred to specularity, reflexes of the environment. Some armor already has that, I believe. The same for landscape is a bit more effort.

[Akkaido Kivikar]

Lhaa's got it right.

My Dsar work is fully bump (normal) mapped.

Note that at the moment PS armour has greyscale bump maps (not 'normal maps') with a rather odd shader that treats it like a normal map, causing issues with inverting of the light distortion (meaning grooves become bumps and vice-versa).

[Sarras Volcae]

yeah specular lighting, that's it! i wouldn't want the devs to waste time on prettiness now, but i think that, in the future, it would look cool...

[Akkaido Kivikar]

The prettier the game, the more intense the immersion gets

[weltall]

The prettier the game, the more intense the immersion gets

depends when the client freezes for a minute because it's compiling shaders it's not exactly immersive
btw the forum is missing a "poke smile"

[Sarras Volcae]

specular lighting is usually optional

[LigH]

btw the forum is missing a "poke smilie"

Like that?  


Or maybe even that: 

[weltall]

btw the forum is missing a "poke smilie"

Like that?  


Or maybe even that: 

exactly