The Most Excellent Shader

[Ray Jones]

Mmm. OK. So..

 

Because I was not able to get me a copy of the game plus the fact that I constantly have tons of the month left at the end of the money, I decided I must get at least a hold of the o-so-fine-and-exclusive DEMO. I somehow managed to get access to some DSL and downloaded the demo.

 

To get to the point: What's with this Pixelshader? Granted, pixelshaders are great. I love them. But I (personally) don't got one. So I am excluded from even playing the damn demo. Everyone who's not having a pixelshader is screwed. Excluded. Kicked in the behind. The one everyone with a shader is laughing at in the big break.

 

I have nightmares.

 

And no, I can't get a new graphics adapter, because (a) I own a notebook, and (b) I would not have the necessary money to buy a new one (especially not one that will last for the next 2-3 years).

 

And there are games which use pixelshaders if present, but if not the game will still run (e.g. FarCry). Or you can simply disable the shaders.

 

So I digged a bit and found some nifty tool called 3D-Analyze. It is able to at least fake the presence of shaders and other Directx capabilities.

 

This way I managed to run the demo on my work-notebook with a Intel-Extreme-Graphics-Crap-de-la-Crap-card.

A bit more than a bit ugly, maybe, but it runs and FarCry wasn't looking any better.

But on my Notebook FarCry looks good without that tool, except missing water reflections (pixelshader) and animated vegetation (vertexshader). Using 3D-Analyze I even get the shaders emulated! That's why I thought there might be something missing but I could at least play the demo. I thought could ..

 

Unfortunately, I have a nVidia Card (GeForce4 420 Go) and for some strange reason I cannot use the tool together with the demo because it simply crashes.

Fortunately, after the intro when the birds should fly, so the demo itself loads, if I use the tool. But it doesnt help me.

 

 

Question: Was Double Fine fine enough to show us some luurve and to tease us with some parameter-thingy-function to disable pixelshaders? (This is not uncommon. Really.)

Or do they receive free disney world tickets by the graphic card industry? :/

[Jake]

Most modern games use or require per pixel shading.

[Ray Jones]

*sigh* I know. :|

And some of them I can play (like Doom³, FarCry) because they just render without shaders if not available, IT IS a loss in quality, but..

 

 

 

..

 

Pah, who cares, in five years I can play all those games at 500 fps.

 

 

Although.. I'd love to play the game/demo NOW.

[Smon]

Yeah.. I got the Ps2 verson of PsychoNauts and got an Xbox two weeks later. To this day I regret not waiting. Cuz buying another copy of the same game just on a different console makes me angory.