Reflections on the Water Demo*

// March 7th, 2011 // My Graphics Programming, Portfolio

*Pun definitely intended

Since it was GDC time again, I ended up thinking about the water demo I created with my fellow grad student Ada. It was our first foray into shaders, and I think it turned out pretty well for a 10 week project. We had gone into the project thinking we might buy a book and follow a few tutorials. Instead, we were given the task of creating an impressive-looking scrolling water system that combined deep ocean & shallow water wave systems.

As is always the case, the more I look at the water demo the more problems and mistakes I find. I’ve been thinking about creating a new version for a few years now, if only to appease the constant requests for a boat. Since this project is comprised of the first real shaders I wrote, digging through the code makes me want to rewrite it even more. I’ve learned (and done) so much since we first toyed around with shaders.

It was originally written in XNA 1.0 Refresh, and upgraded to XNA 3.1 recently (before 4.0 arrived). Since I’ve been using XNA so much lately (mostly working on the Darkwind Media game Blocks), it might be nice to start over in C++ & DirectX 10. I’ve been itching to do something in that area again, and I think it’d be fun to improve upon the project that got me into graphics programming.

-Chris

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