A few questions for the vets

Hi all, I'm getting back into blitz after a few years absence just to have some fun doing this. I'm interrested in the communities opinions on a few things.

I'm interrested primarily in two things, lighting simulation, and then water/bump capabilities of the libs I have noted(AShadow for example).

As for lighting(shadowing), I am considering swifts shadow system(but would like input from those who know).

The other bits I was interested in I don't have a huge base of knowledge on as far as stability and performance. Devil-engine and AShadow seem to do the same things(not performance wise, but in the functionality side). So are they worth use, or would you say they will be more of a burden to use than a boon?

Anywho, I'm just looking for quick and dirty methods of boosting blitz's graphical capabilities without reducing it's broad stability in producing graphics. (I noticed some artifacts in a couple of the AShadow demos for example).

Thanks for any input in advance, and any bits of info you would like to pass along I appreciate as well.

I don't know if swift or Ashadow are soft, but DSS is not. I personally think DSS is great, but I can't get it to work in my game though. DSS does NOT work with animated .b3d's though, the shadow will not animate whilst the mesh animates. Not sure about the other ones though. On the other hand, DSS comes with a dot-3 system and a water system. I'm not really a vet, I just like the code archives :D

- AShadow's post process effects are the best thing it offers, the shadow system isn't that great thoe, but it's a good stencil shadow system
- Making great looking water in Ashadow is THE THING.
- Shadows in DSS is really easy and quite fesible for your project. Just make sure your models are closed meshes.
- Sswift's shadow system is good, but it's not a stencil shadow system, so the shadows don't look as sharp, and it's different to setup and use.
- Many other DX7 effects are possible, like cube mapping, bump mapping, spherical mapping, specular lighting, etc etc...

I don't think it's really that limited. YOu have to invest a lot of time thoe to build your project and make everything work together. Pust a lot of structure in your code and properly manage your types and your local/global stuff.

Yeah, I'm not worried about structuring it, just getting artifact free effects with decent performance over a broad array of graphics cards. So if something like AShadow or DSS will cover that, (or even if I have to write a DX7 hack DLL myself) I will be happy :).