A lot of new shader updates has been made in the latest "Public Preview" , i had tons of request about converting my retro shaders to GameGuru , it is now done.

In settings.fx


The effect is hard to see in videos and screenshot so you MUST try it in your own games , Just add a old Amiga mod track and your ready.
( play around with the color/settings sliders to get a better retro look ).



#define MEDIUMIMPROVEDISTANCE
Medium terrain and editor now have pattern removal , so medium will look mush better and are now a good alternative to Highest if you want a speed boost.

#define WATERREFLECTIONMEDIUM
Add pattern removal to water reflection of terrain , so water reflection look the same as your terrain, give a mush better water look.

Distance use of basemap has been removed , so your terrain looks way better in the distance , and you dont get a visible transition between lod terrain levels.


Added a specular camera , that gives specular light following the player around , this will enhance the normals on a level and give a nice effect, try this and play with the "global specular" slider.

Normal terrain and procedural terrain is now detected , if you wish to use procedural terrain painting JUST add a variation map to the texture slot just to the left of the last "rock" texture , and it will switch to procedural terrain. I think Lee already added the variation maps to "\texturesource" the default terrain texture folder , you find 2 different variation maps here you can use.

Readded tri-planer rock texturing to terrain , just put "//" infront of "#define FASTROCKTEXTURE" to use it.

Also everything has been optimised for more speed.

Last a "//#define LAPTOP" option is added , if your running on a laptop and want a huge speed increase remove "//" from this line
It will make a empty level go from 28 fps to around 50 fps ( on my slow laptop ) , "Morning mountain stroll" with and without LAPTOP ( running on my laptop):





The LAPTOP option do remove some functions ( nothing that is important to the overall game experience ) and subtle things like removing grass normals in highest and using a predefined avg. normal instead ( all other normals are still working ). So give it a go and see if you can use this option to give your game a huge FPS boots. It WILL do wonders for LAPTOPs.

I wanted to make a video showing all the latest changes , but i just been so busy the last few weeks so this is it

Give a hand and help test the LAPTOP options , i think this option will be important in the future , so if you could post some "with and without" screenshots here it will help me ALOT , i will be able to see the differences in the levels and the speed boost it gives , so im able to add/tweak this function. Thanks

Thanks for all this Preben, your work is very much appreciated, Can't wait to try these out an see the improvements, you really go above and beyond!

Hi Preben

Great work, I can confirm a big speed up as you say, My Intel HD Atom PC standing in the same place as you in above pictures "Morning mountain stroll" went from 7FPS to 12FPS @1366x768 res.

Love the retro shaders, lots to play with.

You are calling this a Laptop speed up but a hell of a lot of desktops have laptop chipsets these days and this is ideal for them. My AMD 5350 with a R7 240 and the Atom with Intel HD graphics love all this new stuff.

Will give it a try on my laptop AMD A8 4500m soon and update you.

Thanks again this has got me back in Game Guru again. I was slowly fading away.

that retro shader is really nice.
thanks for your work.

thanks for your work here,
love the retro shader,

m2design: Thanks for trying the LAPTOP option , and its stuff like this i cant find myself , The problem has been fixed for the next update. Quick workaround as the very last line in settings.fx add this line:

If you could also make the screenshots including FPS it would really help me, Thanks.

If more could test the LAPTOP option , with screenshots before after including FPS it would REALLY help me , thanks

@Preben

Per your request (notice FPS). Hope this helps.

No laptop activated (Normal roof texture)


With only laptop activated (bad texture on one roof)


With laptop activated and better shadows added

m2design: Thats not a big fps boost you got ? wonder if the depthbuffer is still generated ?, could you try to run LAPTOP , and set the sliders for "SAO","DOF","Motion Blur" all to zero , and check the FPS , thanks

@Preben
Laptop setting not activated. Subject files preset greater than 0, FPS=29



Laptop settings activated. Subject files still preset greater than 0, FPS=37.
It appears the laptop settings for the subject files should have ignored my presets.



Laptop settings activated. Subject files set by hand to zero per request, FPS=41

m2design: Thanks those FPS numbers looks mush better, and i can see you still have BETTERSHADOWS , no problems with shadow cascade 2 bias , so a bit more to gain there in the next version

Unfortunately the depth buffer is still generated but not used , you can see this on the draw calls , so adjusting "SAO","DOF","Motion Blur" all to zero by hand is needed. This cant be done in the shaders, only Lee is able to automate that.