NWShader is a framework for using modern Cg shaders and effects within NWN.
In simple terms, NWShader lets NWN do fancy modern graphics. As everyone has noticed, NWN's graphics are a bit old. There are a few projects to help with this, especially chico400's awesome NWNCQ and Project Q, but those only go so far. NWShader picks up with going under the game and turning on a bunch more features.
Things like depth of field, bloom, and even Crysis-style SSAO are possible.
NWShader supports fullscreen and material shaders. Fullscreen shaders are special effects added to the whole scene after the game draws it, and are used for color changes and lens effects. Materials apply to a particular texture and change how an object is drawn. Special effects such as skin, velvet, edge glow, normal maps, parallax and glow mapping are all possible.
NWShader gives artists an unprecedented level of control over how their work is shown in the game. Using a simple, but powerful, XML-based material framework, artists can add material without ever touching shader code. Shader authors can control every step of the drawing process, from vertex location to texturing to lighting, and add custom methods for any object.
An experimental plugin system is also available. With a little bit of programming know-how, PW admins and anyone else interested can write new script commands for their world and interface with NWShader, Windows/Linux, the internet, or even other programs.
Need your elemental planes to use a shader? Need to log each player who enters your area? Want to "tweet" from in-game? Want your module to automatically check for, download, and notify the player of updates? Plugins are capable of anything code can do, and can be written in a variety of languages (they are just DLLs).
NWShader is under rapid development, and any effort to help test and report bugs would be greatly appreciated. All comments, questions, complaints, or anything else is welcome, just post, PM, or email.
07.13.2010: "Chronepsis" released!
More script functions, dynamic shaders and material system, HDR, soft focus, optimizations, partial localization support and 5 packaged languages: English, Francais, Espanol, Deutsch and Italiano. |
Site
