This video walks you through creating a basic shader that can fade, and tint the color of the rendered object. It also demonstrates how to animate the texture coords from within render monkey.

I have also included the render monkey project in the zip. I have also modified the project slightly and have added a better solution to the effect shown in the video. This new effect called "TexturedFixed" uses two render passes. The first render pass renders the back facing polys, and the second render pass renders the front facing polys.

Also my blog does not seem to be getting displayed on my main web site page. I am currently trying to fix this.

ATI Render monkey basics

I have just released a new untility I have made for doom 3. It allows you to select the doom 3 folder, then perform a search for files within any of the *.pk4 files in the Doom3 folder. (or any folder for that matter). There are hundreads if not thousands of files that make up the doom3 game and this utility is very usefull for searching for tracking down cirtian file(s) you are interested in. As far as I know the Doom3 editor does not provide this functionality.

This utility may become one of a number of tool I may make for Doom3.

CBXDoom3Tools.zip <link to file missing>

Oh god make it stop make it stop, it's so painful to watch. I'm watching it right now for the third time and it's just so lame! I definitely got to redo that video. My apologies if any of you have suicidal thoughts while watching it.

I'm really really sorry! What ever you do don't watch this video on basic DX9 shaders! BasicShaders.zip <links to missing file>

Video demonstrating basic intro to DX9 HLSL shaders using VB.NET.

This video walks you through everything from start to finish, creating a VB.NET app, writing the Managed DX9 code to render a mesh, as well as writing a simple HLSL shader program from start to finish by hand. The video runs about 49 minutes. I kept the technical stuff to a minimum, this video is just intended to introduce you to shader programming and how to go about getting started using them. It is not intended to be a detailed analysis of the process.

Goto Video Page

I have just started up a contest on my site at http://contest.createdbyx.com/

You can win a copy of VB.NET 2003 standard and more! Go check it out!

I have also been doing some research and looking into making a mod for a game engine. I have doom 3 and it's great for modding, but the unified lighting engine has issues and it does not have built in support for vast outdoor terrain. The lack of drivable vehicles is also an issue.

UT 2004 which I also have, is good, and a worthy candidate. It has drivable vehicles as well as flying ones. It has support for both terrain and indoor areas. It also does water, something doom 3 doesent do easily.

The game I think I have decided upon, to use for modding is FarCry. It does everything I need it to do, Realistic water, outdoor terrain, indoor environments, phisics, vehicles both land and air, and comes with the tools and utilities that I am most familiar in using. Mainly 3DS MAX.

I am still hoping to get a copy of Half-Life 2 and check that out and see if it can do everything I need it to. But for right now farcry is my game of choice for modding.