Right, about time I checked in again - I still don't have internet access at home and there's only so much I can get away with in the office [grin]

I've started planning my next project in D3D10. I'm in no immediate hurry so I'm thinking it through before starting to write any code.

My current idea is based on the '3D Pipes' screensaver that's been a standard in Windows for 12 years. I generally don't use screensavers and prefer to have my monitor go into standby instead but when I do have to use a screensaver it'll be this one.

I'll be investigating the GS by having the CPU upload a line-list and get the GPU to turn these into the actual pipes complete with connections/joints between segments. Not 100% sure I've got the maths right here.

'3D Pipes' also offers a lot of scope for overdraw in an image, and the main algorithm I want to experiment with is deferred shading. I'm thinking about implementing some heavyweight per-pixel algorithms along with a conventional forward renderer so that I can do some experimentation between the relative efficiencies of the methods. There are lots of discussions about these two approaches but relatively little by way of example.

More on this as and when [wink]



I now own copies of 'Supreme Commander' and 'Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars'. I knew I was going to buy them as soon as I saw them on the radar, and as far as I can tell they'll be the only two games I buy this year (don't have much time to play games [headshake]).

I'm disappointed. Very disappointed.

I like my RTS games and, depending on mood the SupCom or C&C will satisfy my needs as a player.

Supreme Commander runs like a DOG. It's almost unplayable on a pretty decent system - Athlon64 3800+ with a GeForce 8800. In any sort of game with more than 2 players (human or AI) it gets horrifically CPU bound to the extent that I can measure performance in seconds-per-frame right up until I get my arse kicked because I can't react quick enough.

I quite like long epic games with 8 players and huge maps - many a happy memory of those in Total Annihilation. Looks like I'll have to buy a whole new quad-core computer to get close to that dream [oh].

On to C&C3. This one is just plain unstable - I've been unable to get more than 30 minutes of clean gameplay out of it. Odd graphical glitches, sound dropping out, hard-resets, failure to recognise the disk...

I can tell the C&C game is there in all glory and it is great fun to play. If I could play it.

Talking purely as a consumer, I feel outright cheated by both teams/publishers. How can SupCom justify needing a super computer just to go beyond the most trivial game modes? How did C&C3 pass QA? grr.