Where should I start being totally new to HWA?

Hi all

I'm a long time user of click products and know my way around them very well. I've just bought MMF2 Developer and downloaded the HWA beta. I played an HWA game where a baby was falling down and you had to dodge stuff. The display was very smooth and I was really impressed. I'm trying to now get that same thing going, but when I open the HWA beta, I don't really see any difference in the program itself. Are there options I'm missing? Or an extension or something? I have only used MMF 1.5 up till now so MMF2 is new to me also.

Thanks!

Hey.
The difference is the runtime. Just do this:
Put an active in your frame, assign a bouncing ball movement to the object.
Start of frame:
-Run loop "create" 300 times.
On loop "create":
-Create Active at 320,240
Active leaves frame:
-Bounce

This would run perfectly smooth using HWA (unless your graphics card is 10 years old). The framerate would prolly drop to 30 or something using the normal runtime. You can use it in MMF2HWA, too, by going to your app's properties, 3rd or 4th tab, and changing the display mode value (In normal MMF, you can choose between Normal and DirectX).
HWA also supports smoothr scaling and rotation. Just check it out.
Another cool feature in HWA are pixel shaders. They are like ink effects (You can't use ink effects in HWA, btw.)... but better! You're able to use awesome effects like blurring.

did they make it so that you cant use ink effects in HWA on purpose?, or is it a bug they are going to fix.

btw could you describe the pixel shader effects.

All standard ink effects are still present as effects.

then wat did looki mean by her post on ink effects?

Means that pixel shaders replace ink effects, so ink effects arent there anymore but pixel shaders do them one better without sacrificing anything.

could you list some of the better ones, and what they do?

Well now you have things like blur, ripple, sharpen, colorizing, brightness, saturation, flipping, cropping, we've even got a normal map shader which allows you to add lighting effects to objects. It's really quite impressive.

sweet!

The main limitation of HWA is that you can't have multiple pixel shaders, so if you have a semitransparent object, you can't blur it too. The only way to accomplish this is to write your own pixel shader that combines the effects

is writing a pixel shader hard?

So basically, HWA just keeps framerates smooth even with lots of objects? Nothing really else?

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Originally Posted by chrispiss

So basically, HWA just keeps framerates smooth even with lots of objects? Nothing really else?

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Well besides the addition of pixel shaders, yeah that's it really. It doesn't improve hard programed performance (events) but it defiantly does a hell of a job at sustaining framerate no matter what's graphically going on. :D

So all and all, I mean it's nothing stunningly special. It does do exactly what people such as myself, have been waiting years for though... so I welcome it with the widest of open arms.

yea!

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Originally Posted by Pixelthief

The main limitation of HWA is that you can't have multiple pixel shaders, so if you have a semitransparent object, you can't blur it too. The only way to accomplish this is to write your own pixel shader that combines the effects

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Well, semi-transparency is no shader. It's called blend coefficient in HWA. You can combine it with every shader :)

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Originally Posted by Looki

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Originally Posted by Pixelthief

The main limitation of HWA is that you can't have multiple pixel shaders, so if you have a semitransparent object, you can't blur it too. The only way to accomplish this is to write your own pixel shader that combines the effects

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Well, semi-transparency is no shader. It's called blend coefficient in HWA. You can combine it with every shader :)

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Just so I understand this, you can't use more than one pixel shader on a specific object? Or do you mean more than one pixel shader period?

you can't use more than one pixel shader *per object*. Each object in your game is treated as a polygon, and can only be under a single 'effect' from pixel shaders. However, the blend coefficient isn't an effect, and so you can use both one effect AND semi transparency.

Think of it like the old 'ink effects' in MMF, where you can only have one at at time. Except now semi-transperency is separate, and works with all of them (as does the RGB shift).


The problem is when you want to use more than one effect at a time. Say you want to rotate the screen in your game, by using a 'Rotation' pixel shader. Well then you can't also add a subtraction shader in order to do dynamic lighting, and you can't make it blurry, etc etc etc.

However, you CAN apply one pixel shader to an object in your game, and then ANOTHER pixel shader to your frame itself. And in the next release, you will be able to apply one pixel shader to your entire game window.

But if you want to have a single object affected by more than one shader, unless clickteam implement multipass (which they won't), you need to write your own pixel shaders. Check out the .fx files in your Effects folder to get an idea

One thing to keep in mind though is that you can actually change the pixel shaders at runtime. So you can apply a pixel shader to an object and then change it throughout the course of the game. However like said above, you can only have a single pixel shader on an object at one time.

By the way. I've noticed that if you apply a pixel shader such as Add, to an object, and place it into a layer with a pixel shader, it appears to turn the pixel shader off. So even then, if you want to combine pixel shaders, you need to make a new shader with them both combined.

Thanks for the responses guys. I have one last question. Compared to the regular build off MMF2, aside from the things listed in the download thread by Yves, is the HWA beta a solid build to release stuff with? ie, if you're releasing a final version 1.0 of your game/program or whatever, is it stable enough for the open world, or is it best to stick with the latest update of MMF?

Thanks again

Should be. Games never randomly crashed for me.. there only are some limitations, I think.

Brandon, I haven't noticed that whatsoever. I've been using pixel shaders on both objects *and* the layer that they are in; I use a rotation effect on the full layer for the camera angle, and normal graphical effects like blurring on the objects. The idea is, after the object is rendered, its polygon is simply pasted into the larger, 'Layer' polygon, and then that polygon is rendered. So having a pixel shader apply to both shouldn't impede anything, unless its a trait of that specific shader (which could happen if the 'add' function requires data from the layer polygon).


I can understand multipass degrading gameplay if you recklessly abuse it, like running 20+ pixel shaders on a single polygon, but isn't it commonplace enough to have 2 or 3 at a time, on directX? Its one of the features I'd really like to see.


I'm very curious and hopeful on how the 'full frame' effects that Yves mentioned will turn out. If they apply shaders to the polygon created from all layers compiled, how will it interact with subapplications and multiple layers? Right now, I have to apply the same rotation effect to 4 different layers, which means I can't use any other effects on them (like subtract, for the lighting layer). If HWA works as I hope, I could apply individual effects and just rotate the end result. Otherwise I need to start programming workarounds, like calculating the rotated position of each light source on the subtract layer, so that it syncs with the rotated ones.

Just wondering something, if i import a project made with the standard version into HWA does it automatically get updated for smoother graphics etc? or do you have to make it from the start in the HWA version? thanks

It will automatically be updated. There are some mild compatibility issues with the transition though. For example, almost all graphical extensions such as the lens object or perspective object, will not work. I've also had on some occations, games just up and crash before they started. Not sure what the relation is here, but in all honesty I would much rather Yves focus on finishing HWA rather then making it flawlessly backwards compatible.

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Originally Posted by Zabooza

is writing a pixel shader hard?

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Yeah I'd be curious about this too. How exactly do you go about doing this? Do you have to do some sort of direct x programming or something to create one?

You should have some programming knowledge.
Shaders are written in HLSL.
Don't look at vertex shaders, only at pixel shaders.
Specifically, pixel shaders in MMF use a texture that the shader scans through. Just look at some of the shaders in your Effects folder. That's how I learned it.

Have most people here switched over to using the HWA version of MMF2 (rather than non-HWA) in order to avoid any backwards compatibility issues?

Many people here are using HWA, including me, MechaBrowser, and Nifflas. Those two guys are already working on two big projects using HWA, MechaSource and Night Game. I don't know of any other people who are using HWA as their main runtime.

Using HWA isn't a safe choice at the moment. It's a beta, and could have some deep modifications in any future version. You could end up having to recode things or start over some aspects of your game. If you don't mind, you could probably switch to HWA, but be aware you are advised not to do so in a serious project.

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Originally Posted by Corentin

Using HWA isn't a safe choice at the moment. It's a beta, and could have some deep modifications in any future version. You could end up having to recode things or start over some aspects of your game. If you don't mind, you could probably switch to HWA, but be aware you are advised not to do so in a serious project.

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The best thing to do would be to develop your game with the non-hwa versions as much as possible. I've been working on assets for a top down shooter for the last year, waiting for the next hwa build. :V

That sounds like good advice. I'll probably just stick with the non-hwa build and wait for a newer version. Nothing I'm doing is really graphics intensive anyway.

Thanks!