ShaderWorks’ update

Posted on August 13, 2003 by Ron

I got an eMail from Scott Bean of Mad Software with some updated info on ShaderWorks in which he addresses some of the comments of my earlier article and I thought I’d share his comments here. While a price hasn’t been set, Scott indicated that it’d most likely be free. Scott indicated that it’s geared towards experienced and non-experienced programmers as well as artists, students, etc., and that the visual graph approach makes it really easy to use.

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3DO assets to be bid on by 7 companies on Aug. 14th

Posted on August 10, 2003 by Ron

By the deadline, Microsoft, Turbine Entertainment Software, Crave Entertainment (all US), Eidos (Britain), Ubi Soft (France), JoWooD Productions Software (Germany), and Namco Hometek (Japan) have all filed to bid in the Aug. 14 auction. According to the court order bidders were required to place deposits of anywhere from $US10,000 to $US100,000 to bid on the various asset groups, which include the in-progress games Street Racing Syndicate and Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Bidders interested in all of the assets ponyed up $US250,000.

Update – Ubisoft got “Might & Magic” et. al. for $US1.3 million, Namco got “Street Racing Syndicate” for $US1.5 million, JoWood got “Jacked” for $US90 thousand, Crave got “Army Men” for $US750 thousand, Microsoft got “High Heat Baseball” for $US450 thousand, Patent Purchase Manager LLC bought some various IP and tools for $US75 thousand, and Trip himself bought some unfinished games and IP for about $US400 thousand. In all they got US$4.6 million, lower than expected. Looks like everyone got a good deal except for 3DO shareholders.

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Ace’s Hardware finds some skewed numbers running 3DMark03

Posted on August 4, 2003 by Ron

Are the days of benchmark apps numbered?

In an interesting review of testing systems, Ace’s Hardware ran 3DMark03 on systems from a 350Mhz PII to an 2.8Ghz P4. It turns out that while games show significant sensitivity to the CPU, 3DMark03 seems pretty much only sensitive to the video card. In fact the 350Mhz Pentium system was either even or better than a 2.8Ghz Pentium when the former had a RADEON 9700 Pro vs. a RADEON 9600 when running vertex and pixel shader tests. Since these tests were designed to stress the video cards it’s not that surprising, but it does bring into question if tests like 3DMark03 have any place in benchmarking over “real” games and applications.

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DirectX 9 Beta 2 SDK is available

Posted on July 21, 2003 by Ron

Microsoft’s Beta Place has posted the DX9 Beta 2 SDK. This update is 9.0b. If you’re a beta member then you can get the beta from the Beta Place. This will become a public release in “the very near term.”

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3Dlabs ships OpenGL Shading Language compiler

Posted on July 19, 2003 by Ron
3Dlabs has released the front-end OpenGL Shading Language compiler as an open source project (here). This is for 3Dlabs’ Wildcat VP line of cards (which will also require the OpenGL 2.0 drivers). This is just the front-end compiler – it reduces the shader to an intermediate representation. A target specific back-end compiler is required to generate machine code for a specific graphics card. It’s interesting to note that despite the ATI-3Dlabs OpenGL lovefest at last year’s Siggraph, we see no RenderMonkey stuff from 3Dlabs, nor any OpenGL 2.0 stuff from ATI.
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Mad Software preps ShaderWorks – a shader development tool for DirectX

Posted on July 19, 2003 by Ron

We’re a bit dubious of non-free strictly shader development tools given the plethora of freely available tools from graphics card vendors anxious to build up a market. Into this void steps Mad Software with ShaderWorks, a shader development tool. It seems to have a nice function-block oriented nature and FX file support, artist mode, HLSL 2.0 support and comes with an integration kit, so it seems to cover most of our desires for a tool kit. The only thing we see lacking is shader assembly support. Find out more here.

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Siggraph 2003

Posted on July 1, 2003 by Ron

Long before there was a Game Developers Conference, E3, Meltdown, Mojo Days, etc. there was Siggraph. You could expect to see the coolest, latest, and most memorable eye-popping stuff there. Siggraph was where academia, engineering, art, and implementation met in a week long frenzy of tutorials and lectures during the day, and partying, banquets, schmoozing and being schmoozed at night. It was (and remains) a bacchanalian graphics geek love fest where you can’t help but be impressed by some of the stuff folks are doing. My only complaint is that about 10 years ago Hollywood discovered that they could do really cool things with computer graphics and since then there’s been a very noticeable increase in the Hollywood-centric orbit of Siggraph, most notably plunking the thing in LA every other year. This year is slightly different – they managed to slide it down the coast to San Diego so at least there’ll be different things to do in those off-hours. If you’re in the area and you missed GDC, then sign-up for Siggraph this year! The courses are great, the Siggraph steering committee has been very interested in getting some input from and classes for game developers. Siggraph is still the big arena where graphics hardware and software announcements are made. It’s not as loud as E3, it’s less game-centric than GDC, and it’s got the coolest collection of art, demos, software, hardware, geeks and academics. It’s got day-care for the kids and an even ratio of white-haired professors to tattooed/pierced developers/artist to sharks in suits. At $US800 for the full conference pass it’s a relative bargain. Just attending the exhibition is much cheaper if you just want to see the latest from ATI, NVIDIA, 3DLabs, Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Softimage, etc. etc.. Siggraph 2003 – San Diego – July 27-31.

If you attend Siggraph, don’t miss the Game Developers BOF (Birds of a Feather) meeting, Monday, 28 July, 2 pm – 3 pm, Coronado Room @ San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina.

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Meltdown 2003

Posted on June 15, 2003 by Ron

One of the more technical DirectX conferences is Microsoft’s own Meltdown (July 16, 17 in Seattle or July 29, 30 in London) and is a premier chance to learn from the DirectX team directly. If you don’t get a chance to attend any of the other conferences and are interested in learning some hard-core DirectX programming then you really can’t beat Meltdown. Learn more about it here. Meltdown covers all aspects, from shader programming to QA’ing DirectX apps, including the test suites, where you can bring your code and run it on the latest GPUs and CPUs and talk to the engineers about how to optimize your software. If you’re just interested in graphics, however, you might want to wait till ATI & NVIDIA hold their own mini-conferences (typically in California and England). The European Meltdown is inconveniently concurrent with Siggraph this year. There’s a discount for early registration, so don’t dawdle.

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