Quote:...but I figured it would be good to develop on a low end setup. I'm going to wait to upgrade until I'm done developing this game.

I think this highly depends on when you intend on releasing the game? Even if you get a better card, you could add features that appeal to the new card, and those fortunate enough to own a high powered card can take advantage of the extra things.

You can always make some switches that drop the graphics down.

What you dont want is to develop this game so low end that when you release it 6+ months from now, the technology is -WAY- low end. You know how the tech world works.

Quote:I want to add things like HDR lighting and all sorts of slick stuff

HDR > * [smile]

Anyway, there were a few papers from GDC/SIGGRAPH (I think) that showed how to fake HDR by storing the luminance in the alpha channel. Not sure if you're using D3D or not, but theres also a very good example in the DX SDK for packing HDR data into a regular 32bit ARGB texture.

Quote:What you dont want is to develop this game so low end that when you release it 6+ months from now, the technology is -WAY- low end. You know how the tech world works.

I'd be a bit careful with this assumption - it's definitely true if you're aiming at the "hardcore" gamer market... but the more casual/non-gamer market doesn't seem to upgrade as quickly. All depends who you're marketting the product at...

I don't have an electronic source, but in one of my magazines a few months back a commentator was suggesting that indie/non-AAA titles really should be prioritising the lowest-end hardware over the high-end hardware so as to maximise the potential market [smile]

I'm not talking about making Everquest II where the hardware to maintain the powerhouse-hit of a game requires a completely new system.

I love it!