Sprite Dlight (Dynamic Lighting via Normal Maps)

That looks really cool. But how to implement this in Fusion? With shaders?

I also think it's similar to this Please login to see this link. look at the mfa called 'spritelamp'

It would be cool if someone could implement this into Fusion.

look, few developers can freehand a normalmap (I can and maybe you). In this case depth is sought for and that's not the strength of a normalmap shader. Its strength is surface distortion by light ie having a cracked stone surface. If a developer want this implemented efficiently for animation there "should" be a 3D base. As in a polygon character with skinning, rig, texture and animations. by that point fusion isn't the suitable package for your game, as your resources are 3D.

Dipping into prerendering, this method is efficient for 2D when the base isn't optimized with texturebased shaders like normalmap, specularmap, ambientmap etc (names and type may differ between groups/companies). Even making an optimized UV is unnecessary as the source texture isn't brought into the final game.

The 2D normalmapping technique & idea thereof has been around for 10 years (inside educational facilities). There is a reason why it hasn't been implemented. I'm typing this because I'm invested into Fusion and this would hurt other functionality of Fusion 3 that I believe this userbase and myself need more.

My point
There are areas in Fusion that require attention much prior to normalmap shading. Ie external sources, keyboard/mouse input, network, encryption.

Collaborative suggestions
No one is stopping you guys from getting together and make the support by extension as Anders did. SolarB is making an isometric engine with fallshadows maybe he wants some help. People here are much more friendly than on other places. More examples; a scaleable tile-engine (zoom) with camera. Spline/spriter support, the files are asci they can be parsed with fusion.

yes, you are absolutely entitled to your opinion. I see now that parts of what I wrote is unnecessary forceful.

I'd like to have a way to iterate individual pixels native to fusion to gain this effect, it would result in other interesting shaders (that the developer could make).. if this feature leads to that it would be great (I'm excluding surface object atm).

I honestly have no idea, but I just assume implementing a shader for this one feature wouldn't be too much work (I could be wrong) so I don't really see it as a trade off of getting support for say, Spline/spriter support, because that'd be a lot more work.. certainly not a quick thing to implement into F2.5.

I'm not planning on using normal maps any time soon anyway.. so if it's something for F3 it would be fine by me.

Anders' normal map shader has a good example file along with it, that link is worth finding and holding onto. It's relatively simple to implement but one caveat is that it requires a separate active for the normal map along with your original diffuse. If nobody finds the official link I can upload it. Also it's not hard to convert standard height maps to normal maps, plenty of tools will do it. I think we'll be seeing more 2d games using this tech in the future.

A scalable tile map with zooming is possible to do native at good fps provided you don't need a 1920x1200 grid of 16x16 actives.

Just thought I would point it out, but Skullgirls uses this technique so the 2D art can be lit dynamically. I'm sure it is more straightforward in their engine, since it would be flat polygons rendered out anyway, but at least you can see how useful a normal map system could be in 2D.

I think a better feature to request rather than built in normal mapping would be allowing each frame in general to have a second sprite/texture for each frame to be used for any shader, then use normal map shaders on that.

Modified the normal shader to do precisely that to get it working with tiles. Uploaded this example:

Please login to see this picture.

That is so friggin' cool

I want to check it out, but I can't seem to find where it's been uploaded!

The zip file has been taken down, and just incase it goes up in the store I will not make it available on my website. You can contact SolarB.

Marv

Marv pointed out an issue so I deleted the old file and posted a new one, I guess it hasn't been re-attached yet. It's a free example but for ClickStore Kisguri said i can't upload it with Jump Jack, is anyone interested in donating a sprite?