Off The Deep by Fulcrum [web] & Brainstorm [web]
Off the Deep by Fulcrum and Brainstorm ====================================== Yep, its very slow, my apologies. I got a new card that's 3 times as fast as the old one, and as we wanted to do a story 4K, speed considerations went overboard... Credits: -------- Code, design: Seven/Fulcrum Music: Kabod/Brainstorm Design Parsec/Brainstorm 3th party tools used: 4Klang, Crinkler, and Shader Minifier Requirements ------------ * A very fast video card with lots of Pixel Shader 4.0 compatible shader pipelines. * 300 Mb ram for the Crinkler decompression * Windows XP or higher * 4 kb diskspace * a soundcard if you like your intros with sound About the intro --------------- At TUM, we decided Fulcrum was going to do a co-op with Brainstorm for Revision. Things went downhill fast, from multiple hardware trouble over illnesses to SDKs not supporting VS2012 forcing us to use the way-overdue-for-a-facelift 4KStudio. The intro was finished at the partyplace, where we could finally discuss the finer points of the design, screaming to each other over the demoshow and DJ sets. Yes, Franky, the soundsystem was excellent this year. The intro contains some per-pixel effects that are impossible to do with cone marching, so this uses very basic raymarching. Unfortunately this does a hit-and-run on the the term "realtime"... Thank you to... --------------- - Kaatje & Merel for support - IQ for Shadertoy.com and a faster FBM noise routine. - Rune L. H. Stubbe (Mentor/TBC) and Aske Simon Christensen (Blueberry/Loonies) for Crinkler. - Dominik ´Gopher´ Ries and Paul ´pOWL´ Kraus of Alcatraz for 4klang. - Ctrl-Alt-Test for their Shader minifier. - Mr H.P. Lovecraft for inspiration Troubleshooting --------------- * Help, it crashes! Hmm, sorry for that. If you want to help troubleshoot this (test debug versions and send back logfiles), mention the crash at the Pouet.net page for this production. Note that the intro doesn't use any exotic libraries, only opengl32.dll and stuff like kernel32.dll. So even though it was compressed with Crinklers /UNSAFEIMPORT (which does not warn if dlls are missing), that really shouldn't be a problem. * I can hear the music, but I only see a red screen! This means the video card drivers could not compile the shaders correctly. First, you need a Pixel Shader 4.0 compatible graphics card. Next, *UPDATE YOUR VIDEO CARD DRIVERS*. To save space, this intro uses some tricks such as using integer numbers instead of floats, which saves a byte (no dot needed). This is allowed in recent OpenGL Shader Language revisions, but old drivers are more strict and will refuse to compile the shaders, even if the hardware could run the shader. So, update those drivers! The intro has been tested on ATI and Nvidia cards. Intel HD chipsets probably can't run this, sorry. * Man, this thing runs slow! As with all raymarching intros, the speed depends only on the number and speed of shader pipelines on your graphic cards, versus the number of pixels that need to be rendered. The speed of your CPU, the amount of RAM, the amount of video card memory etc have very little influence. Try running one of the alternate versions at a lower resolution. Also make sure to disable all other programs that draw on the screen, such as WinAmp in always-on-top mode, or stuff that displays notifications. * My anti-virus program says your intro is a VIIIIRUUUS!1!! Your anti-virus program is overly paranoid. The intro is compressed with the latest Crinkler version (1.4), which does lovely little tricks like storing data in unused fields of the executable header. This make the executable look unusual and scares your AV program. Feel free to report this intro as a false alarm, but don't hold your breath. Demoscene programs are not a priority for AV studios...
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