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[NCMagic]

It happened when I was starting starsector up, then it just crashed, a while later it stopped working and I had to reinstall to make it work again.
My cpu is intel B815 6ghz (can't see it very well on the laptop).

[Dark.Revenant]

Oh, I see your problem.  Your hardware is incompatible because you're from the future, where they can overclock 1.6 GHz CPUs by a factor of 4.

In all seriousness, to get your actual system specs, type 'dxdiag' into start and copy down what it says for your CPU, RAM, and display card.


However, I did some research and found that the Intel Celeron B815 is astonishingly low-spec and uses Intel HD 2000-level graphics, which is below the minimum specs for ShaderLib's lighting and distortion engines (the minimum is Intel HD Graphics 3000).  As a result, you are recommended to have ShaderLib disabled from settings.json, at all times.

[NCMagic]

I'm just going to qoute it from the program:
CPU: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU B815 @1.60GHz
Memory: 4096MB RAM

I'm not that great with computers. My apologies.
Edit: Oh and should I just set everything in settings to false?
Edit 2: Oh and what I presume is my display card (display-device-chip type)
Intel(R) HD Graphics Family

[Dark.Revenant]

Just setting "enableShaders" to false should do the trick.

[Lcu]

Is this Library compatible with exerelin?

[Dark.Revenant]

Yes (ShaderLib is compatible with everything), but Exerelin doesn't use any ShaderLib features as of yet, so all you'll get are lights/materials/normals on the vanilla ships/weapons.

Starsector+, Uomoz' Sector, and Vacuum use ShaderLib features.  Exerelin and (to my knowledge) Ironclads do not as of the time of writing.

ShaderLib Alpha v1.6

Full Edition

Includes vanilla normal maps and high-resolution ripple distortion

Download Alpha v1.6

(MediaFire Mirror)

Basic Edition

Vanilla normal maps not included, low-memory ripple distortion, and performance-optimized default settings

Download Basic Alpha v1.6

(MediaFire Mirror)

Alpha v1.6 (June 24, 2014)
- Added "reloadKey" option to settings.json
- Added method to ShaderAPI: void destroy()
- Added methods to ShaderLib: int getAuxiliaryBufferTexture(), int getAuxiliaryBufferId()
- Memory usage improved

[GeometryPrime]

if I don't like the normal maps, can I turn that off, or at least turn it off until Blackrock has it too?

[CrashToDesktop]

Yes, just go into the mod's settings.json in the main mod file and change the line from "true" to "false".

[Okim]

So what do i need to do in order to make Ironclads compatible with this lib? Just create a material and a normal file for every single ship and gun in the mod?

As i can see a material file is a heavily brightened/contrusted version of the original sprite? No alphas and etc.
Normal map seems to be created with some map-making plugin for PS... might be difficult to create. What is it for, actually?

[Dark.Revenant]

You aren't forced to use normals/materials.  You can skip an arbitrary set of ships/weapons, though obviously the ideal case is a map for all objects.

Basically, material maps are what the lighting engine uses as the color/brightness of the surface.  Dark pixels get reflected less, light pixels get reflected more, the color of the shading (especially when using normals) differs, etc.

Normal maps are used for the lighting engine to add depth to the sprite.  So if a light appears to a ship's side, it will light that side of the ship with respect to its geometry.  The normals are generated with Crazy Bump, but need to be edited to maintain the original sprite's alpha channel.

[FasterThanSleepyfish]

Maybe there are others, but I feel that a tutorial is necessary for both normal and material maps. A tutorial would also be an invaluable resource for upcoming modders in the future. 

[kazi]

Okay now that I've been updating my mod to use this, a few bits of observations/criticism on the Full Version of Shaderlib currently available.

Some comments for DR:
-The normal maps are quite impressive, but the implementation is a bit off for many of the vanilla sprites (a lot of the material/normal maps could use quite a bit of tweaking). Although most of my playing has been in the simulator, most of the midline ships and some of the high tech ones are WAYYYYY to reflective for their own good. It seems like they are always "whited-out" once they start shooting/taking fire. The Onslaught is the worst offender, it looks like a strobe light dance party as soon as it starts firing, which gets really distracting (probably because of the extreme "flashiness" of ballistic weapons).
-Normal maps for vanilla are a little too "deep/overtextured." Bright lights will sometimes make the hull normal map super visible, which makes some of the vanilla ships look really weirdly 3D textured (in a bad way).
-Weapons are slightly too bright and flashy, especially light ballistic mounts. Tone down the weapon flashes and the amount of lighting for these.
-Beams illuminate their entire "original path" regardless of if they hit something. A beam that hits a shield or hull will continue lighting up everything in its path as if it didn't hit anything. It would be nice if they didn't do that going forwards and stopped illuminating things once they hit something. (Not sure if I explained that well.)
-A mod-specific or per-sprite option for normal map depth should be made available. Chances are, quality/depth of normal maps will differ greatly between mods, and allowing modders to specify an optimum depth for each normal map will help keep the graphics standardized.

Some comments for other modders looking to use this library:
-To create normal maps from 3D models, apply this material to your models in Blender. http://matrep.parastudios.de/index.php?action=view&material=57-normal-map&fc=14 Render as usual, and it will create a perfect normal map. Render baking DOES NOT WORK if you rendered your sprites in perspective (render baking only seems to create orthographic normal maps). I also advise against having lots of "little details" in your normal maps, the "major structural details only" approach works great and won't appear "overtextured." Don't worry about hard edges in the final map. (I can't help you if you're starting from 2D sprites.)
-Normal maps are not the be all, end all graphics must-have. Although they can look good, the change in graphics quality isn't all that huge and depends wildly from sprite to sprite. They aren't very noticeable at all on flat ships, but really add to ships with a lot of depth in the z-axis. So far normal maps only seem to be really "worth it" for cruisers and capitals.
-Normal maps can look REALLY REALLY bad if done poorly, and your ships will look just fine without them if you don't want to go to all the effort needed to implement them.
-Material maps do not appear to be necessary if you have a good normal map, although this might depend on your mod's color palette.

[MesoTroniK]

Spoiler

Nothing http://i.imgur.com/ifpEC7G.jpg
Material + Normal maps http://i.imgur.com/szDIzt8.jpg

Nothing http://i.imgur.com/oovTmXi.jpg
Material + Normal maps http://i.imgur.com/KNYVq9c.jpg

Nothing http://i.imgur.com/LknUbkZ.jpg
Material + Normal maps http://i.imgur.com/Qqe7Ccj.jpg

Nothing http://i.imgur.com/dT7eyFl.jpg
Material + Normal maps http://i.imgur.com/lceFhLr.jpg

Nothing http://i.imgur.com/TgFtkqf.jpg
Material + Normal maps http://i.imgur.com/GVjSwpM.jpg

[close]

That stuff is a copy paste from my own thread showing ShaderLib stuff from a obsolete dev build of EXI. This is just my opinion take it as you will, but material maps are more important than normal maps.

And on top of this, without material and normal maps I would rather that dynamic lights do not exist at all. And for the record I still love the vanilla Starsector style...

[Dark.Revenant]

-The normal maps are quite impressive, but the implementation is a bit off for many of the vanilla sprites (a lot of the material/normal maps could use quite a bit of tweaking). Although most of my playing has been in the simulator, most of the midline ships and some of the high tech ones are WAYYYYY to reflective for their own good. It seems like they are always "whited-out" once they start shooting/taking fire. The Onslaught is the worst offender, it looks like a strobe light dance party as soon as it starts firing, which gets really distracting (probably because of the extreme "flashiness" of ballistic weapons).

I've already redone them once before. I will never go back and do them for a third time, unless I'm paid to do it or something.  If you didn't know, in vanilla alone there are over five hundred material and normal maps to deal with, with more to come when the next update hits.  If someone else wants to do hand-tweaked high-quality material and normal maps for the vanilla ships/weapons, I will be happy to include them in ShaderLib with full accolades.  Otherwise, they're staying as-is.

-Normal maps for vanilla are a little too "deep/overtextured." Bright lights will sometimes make the hull normal map super visible, which makes some of the vanilla ships look really weirdly 3D textured (in a bad way).

There are multiple options in the settings file that deal with this.  If you have different defaults in mind, please do post your settings and illustrate why they are better, and I'll include them as the default settings in the next version.

-Weapons are slightly too bright and flashy, especially light ballistic mounts. Tone down the weapon flashes and the amount of lighting for these.

They have already been toned down multiple times.  I'm not sure how much more they can be toned down before an individual shot's light becomes impossible to perceive.  I'll try a 25% reduction in intensity.

-Beams illuminate their entire "original path" regardless of if they hit something. A beam that hits a shield or hull will continue lighting up everything in its path as if it didn't hit anything. It would be nice if they didn't do that going forwards and stopped illuminating things once they hit something. (Not sure if I explained that well.)

This will be fixed on the next version of Starsector.  Before that, it's plain impossible to fix the issue.

-A mod-specific or per-sprite option for normal map depth should be made available. Chances are, quality/depth of normal maps will differ greatly between mods, and allowing modders to specify an optimum depth for each normal map will help keep the graphics standardized.

I can add a column for this in the texture data CSV, but keep in mind that depth-transformation is not free and requires more GPU power.

[kazi]

Perhaps darkening the worst offender's materials maps with a levels adjustment might solve the "over bright" issue.

For the ballistics, it might not be an issue with the shot itself, perhaps just the "flash" effects (particularly with the autocannons)? Non ballistic weapons seem to be in a good spot right now in terms of lighting.

Looking forwards to the beam fix.

And yeah, I can see the sprite-specific depth column helping keep things consistent. I mainly see people using it to flatten certain sprites.

edit: after playing with things a bit, it looks like most of the issues I was griping about are just caused by the autocannons (esp. the Mark IX) and the assault chaingun. Those look like the only weapons that really need to be toned down.