Graphics have never been my primary interest, however they can only be put off for so long. I've spent the last two weeks trying out a variety of XNA terrain tutorials to find a style that seemed like it would fit nice with my current design philosophy. I tried an example that used a complex geometry morphing system to minimize the amount of terrain that has to be drawn, but I couldn't get over seeing the terrain move. I also tried a fairly complex shader that blended different textures together based on heights.

I came to these conclusions:
1. I am currently brute forcing terrain (single model, no speed optimizations) and am having no problem getting 60 FPS, so a fancy terrain model isn't neccesary.

2. I'm simulating Russian plains, not the alps. Ground cover isn't going to change drastically through the map. Multitexturing always ended up looking silly.

I started with a multitexturing shader that Nemo Krad had adapted from one of Riemer's tutorials, and scraping out all of the fancy bits to leave a fast one textured bump-mapping shader. It works and its fast, which were my two main goals.




Did you see the Kubelwagon next to the bunker? I was really happy to see that the camo was pretty effective.