Noob question about HWA.

[hitking]

Hi everybody.

I'm considering to purchase TGF2 in the near future. I've heard that HWA is now also included with it, but does it has all the same features as MMF2 ?

And speaking of these features, what exactly are they ? I looked throughout this forum and found the information about HWA to be rather scarce or too complicated to understand. Are there any tutorials on HWA effects ? I've seen video's with great explosions, smoke, fire...but nothing can be found here to study these (unless i'm looking in the wrong place, but i really looked everywhere here.)

[Yves]

Yes the features of TGF2 HWA will be moved to the build 252 of TGF2 (not yet officially released, will be done very soon).

The HWA features of TGF2 are the same as MMF2 (but the limitations of TGF2 do not change, you can't have 3rd party extensions, alpha channels are not supported, etc - you have to get MMF2 for that).

The HWA features are enabled when you select one of the new Direct3D display modes.

HWA features :

- accelerated display
- you can use pixel shaders as effect
- ability to apply a blending coefficient and a RGB coefficient at the same time as an effect
- global frame effect
- layer effect

There are also some limitations, including :

- no Windows controls (buttons, edit boxes, list boxes, etc) in full screen Direct3D mode
- the AND, XOR, OR effects don't work in D3D mode

[hitking]

Thank you for replying, Yves...i guess MMF2 will be better for me in the long run then. Do the limitations regarding the windows controls etc in full screen mode apply to MMF2 as well ?

Since i only played with TGF1 before, is it advisable that i first play around with the MMF2 demo ? Are there any tutorials or examples of HWA on there ? The HWA is what got me interested again, but since i can't find any examples about it, it's hard to decide if i can even get it to work properly.

[Yves]

Do the limitations regarding the windows controls etc in full screen mode apply to MMF2 as well ?

Yes.

The next update of the demo version will contain the HWA features. I'm working on it (I get disturbed very often with the other things I've to do, but this new demo is now on the top of the priority list).