Dark Age on new computer and shots of next release

After the posts of my new computer it was inevitable to show Dark Age running on the new computer.Before I got my new computer I was working on Dark Age on my crappy laptop(which died 2 the day I bought the new computer) with a geforce 8600m gs graphics card.It had a 128 bit memory interface so it was really fillrate limited.Currently I am drawing the terrain 3 times.First pass is for blending 4 different textures.Then another pass to blend another 4 textures on this.And then a final pass to add the shadows to the terrain.All the models are drawn in one pass with 1 diffuse map and a shadow map texture.So yes I added self shadowing and the entities are also receiving shadows now,not just the terrain.

Currently I have an list written in a private file on my webserver which lists a bunch of tasks that I want to finish for the next release of the game+editor.Once that list is finished I am going to post the game to my site and probably to GameDev and ask for help for character and npc models and animations.Someone named Marius Grafe took the goblin model and animated it and sent it to me without me saying or asking anything.It was a nice surprise and he did a very good job compared to my awful animations.But I couldn't reach Marius again he just disappeared.I emailed him a couple of times but no answer.Anyways maybe I can find someone willing to help.

I am thinking of finishing this post with a couple of screenshots from darkage.One to show the new shadows which has problems of course but not anything terrible.And then some screenshots from the game.Notice the screenshots from the game have very different frames per seconds.This is because in the first one the draw distance is set to maximum and more than 600 models are drawn,even if they are occluded by the terrain(note to self:look into occlusion culling).In the second shot the draw distance is reduced and only 170 models are drawn,also notice the fog closing in.And in the last shot the debug info is closed which adds another 30 or so frames per second.I guess sprite fonts are burning lots of cycles heh :)

Ahh and if you wonder what this place is.It is called Deheza a somewhat larger town located north west of Karatin the starting town.It has a place in the story line and you will have to eventually come here for some of the quests.Thats all from me for now see you in upcoming posts.

Shadows,houses and characters receive shadows to...


shots with different draw distance