Those of you who want to develop shaders for use with FPSC(R) and use Dark Shader might be interested in this:



Dark Shader update for FPSC(R) available



Before the update it was very difficult to edit and test some of the shaders used by Reloaded. Hopefully that problem has now been resolved.

This is great news! Thank you for pushing for a reloaded compatible version. I've tested it with the new preview window and it works as it should. The only strange thing is that I get a "not enough textures" warning when using the entity-basic shader even though I have the D, S, and N. However, it looks correct so not sure why it is giving me that message.



Haven't tried exporting anything yet but from the tests I've done with the existed reloaded shaders in-game, the results look to be identical in Dark Shader so I think it is good to go.



I am hoping that TGC adds a ton of new shaders for reloaded that we can fiddle with. I've tried to sit down and learn DX9 shaders in the past but I think I would need a year of intensive study to gain basic competency and that is not going to happen so Dark Shader is a huge help.



Thanks again. I wouldn't have known of this development had you not posted here.

I'm not sure about the "not enough textures" issue but I guess it's the missing shadow maps which would be provided by the application, i.e. FPSC(R) itself. That's always a problem with testing shadow map shaders or similar. I'll check later as I have to go out now but I'm fairly sure that's the issue.

We need for sure a post processing full Screen shader that reflects the PP Pipeline you control in other engines via integrated tools.

Adaptive Bloom with tweakable Settings is a really good start, could be HDR, too, however we still need color correction tweakables, too. Saturation / Contrast / Color shifting on shadows, Highlights and mids is a must-have nowadays.

HDR with tonemapping would be amazing.

I heard Dark Shader had been updated but am yet to download it. I may have more luck than I have so far, messing about trying to add a normal map. It works in Blender, but I can't seem to get it to stick in FPS Reloaded.

If the model shows correctly in FPSCR without the new entity shader then it should be straightforward to get normal mapping working with the new shader. There are various things you need to do:



1. Close FPSCR.



2. Make sure your texture, object and fpe files follow the naming convention used by the stock entities, e.g.



my object.X (this name must be the one used in the fpe file)

my object.fpe

my object.bmp (a 64x64 thumbnail for use in the editor)

my texture_D.dds (this name must be the one used in the fpe file)

my texture_N.dds

my texture_S.dds



The strings "my object" and "my texture" can be anything unique and convenient to you.



3. After making sure the above files are in place, delete the old "my object.bin" and "my object.dbo" files.



4. Edit the fpe file and make sure it has the following line (and note especially that it doesn't have a ; at the beginning)



effect = effectbank\\reloaded\\entity_basic.fx



5. Restart FPSCR. You should be able to browse to the new object in the usual way.



[Edited points 4 and 5. ]