Don't you just love family sometimes?

For some time now i have been trowing longing looks at the SunBurn lightning and shadowing Engine for XNA, all the eye candy i could ever dream about, put together in one neat little package!

only problem? the PRO license was 300$ alone, and since i am very Very poor(stuck on welfare atm) and my family is not much better off, i was not sure i would ever be able to get my hands on it.

To be honest, 300$ is allot for my family at any given time, and it is proberbly 2-4x what i normally would get in total from my parents and grand parents together in xmas present...

until tomorrow that is, because my grand mother/father decided to help me out!


Since my goal with this project is to improve my current horrible economy and start my own company in the end, i guess they consider it money well spent, hooray! :D

So by this time tomorrow, i will be making the order at http://www.synapsegaming.com , for a SunBurn PRO license, sweeeet! :D


So what will i be able to do with it you ask?

How about: Deffered shadows for realistic real-time shadows, and Fill-lightning to mimic Radiosity(indirect lightning) like effects. it could look something like This(this movie is from the Crysis engine and not SunBurn, but the technique should be the same).

Normal & Parralax mapping for extra depth to textures, could look something like This(test I'm doing for the style on my stone blocks).

HDR rendering to emulate how our eyes work around bright light, this is the official SunBurn HDR tec demo(it also shows Deffered shadows), or you can check out a stalker video witch uses all of the above.

Al these eye-candy i get almost for free, with the awesome SunBurn engine, i cant wait until i got my hands on it! :D

Minertopia: the begining

Only creating this blog to make sure the name 'minertopia' is safe until i have more info to share about this project :)

but i might as well summarize what mindertopia will have:

• Real-time shadows, HDR, normal maps, HL2 like water, and other sweet eye-candy graphics.

• More realistic textures in higher-quality.

• Near-infinitive Procedually generated terrain.

• Night & day cycles.

• Whether effects such as rain/thunder storm, wind, snow(with real game-affecting attributes, ice/rain would make blocks slippery and so on).

• Possibly seasons(winter, summer,autumn and so on)

• Interesting and unique monsters rooming around during night.

• Some form of crafting system.

• Considering implementing ways to upload your creations, and distribute in other clients during Single-play(similar to Spore)

• Will be a commercial project.

• Awesome secret game element! I don't want to mention it just yet, because i don't want to risk that other people who make clones implement my feature before i do, but i have a feeling it will blow your mind! :)