Hello to all, I’m designing a small engine using managed directx 2.0 included with the december sdk, after reading several articles and tutorials about shaders I decided to develop the engine using (if possible) only shaders or at least avoiding as much as possible the fixed pipeline of directx. That’s mean I’ll using HLSL por lighting, texturing, meshes, shadows etc, although it may sound hard or very time consuming I believe is enterely possible based in the fact (that as far I know) any future engine that uses DirectX 10 will have to be based only on shaders.
Even it’s not the first engine I develop, its the first time I’ll try doing it using only shaders and I’m not sure about the benefits and tradeoff of this approach so I’ll like to have feedback, ideas even start a discussion about it if possible.
Thanks
Roygar.
MDX 2.0 Shader Based Engine... Feedback wanted...
laroj123
Quite simply, shaders are the way forward. It'll be a while before the Fixed Function Pipeline is completely gone/useless, but it doesn't make much sense to be writing new code that uses it for anything other than a "fallback".
You are also quite correct about the Direct3D 10 part - by working with HLSL shaders now you'll make it easier for yourself if/when you move on to D3D10. Note that D3D10 doesn't allow input of assembly shaders, so it's questionable whether its worth spending much time with them.
There is one small caveat - it all depends on your target market. Who is going to be using the application(s) you create using this engine If you're aiming at the low-end (e.g. more than 3 years old) or laptops then it's quite possible that you will need a fixed-function codepath. Shaders are common enough in gaming machines, but good GPU's are still relatively rare in "normal" office/laptop PC's.