The picture shows how normals are pointing in my editor (and game) if an object is hanging in the air. If it's hard to see; the normals points away from any mass. This is also the case if there were more boxes. For instance, if a couple of boxes formed a grid like pattern the normals on top of the box in the middle of the grid would point straight up. The normals at the grid's edge would point like in the picture. This is nice because:

• I can have normals for graphics that are hand drawn. Normals that are perpendicular to the surface would give away the shape of the box (not so pretty when combined with organic graphics such as trees and people).
  

• I don't need any normal maps. I can interpolate these normals and get per pixel lighting (although it would be even nicer with normal maps).
  

This has been in place in my project for some time. However, the other day I got an idea that puts a very simple twist to it, with a nice effect as a result. I could push the normal of a vertex that lay on a flat surface to get a nice fake bump if I also push the surrounding vertices according to the bump. This would even work when rendering in standard fixed function and per vertex lighting.

I tried it out and quickly found out that I need a new drag-bar in the editor to accommodate this new feature. Here's the difference, topmost picture showing the old way (normals always uniform to the geometry) and below it the new bumpy version:



I think it brings more life to the scene without any new graphics or frame loss. Whoo-hoo! I think love it The bump height of an object can be adjusted with the drag-bar on the left side called "Raise:".

On another note; the actual game (Medieval Story) is still progressing despite new features added on the editor side.

Thanks for reading again!