@Cyber_Sneak
"(i) Does DBPro support CG or dx9's HLSL? Or do you have to code shaders in assembler"
To use CG you normally have to link your program with the CG runtime in order to use the shaders. Although you can precompile CG into assembly it's generally not recommended because it then stores a precompiled version of each program for each profile. This, unfortunately, sacrifices the future optimizations that future compilers could offer. So to answer your question, yes, you could use CG but only in it's pre-compiled verison unless you wrote a dll to link your program to the CG runtime library(which I "think" is possible). HLSL i haven't really looked into although i assume its the same(maybe, I don't know.)
"(ii) Does the engine support vertex fogging? If not, how does fog work?"
In theory, yes. But i'm not sure.
"iii) Networking--is it peer-to-peer or client/server based?"
Both. You decide how you want to set it up.
"(iv) Does DBPro have a portal engine?"
Not to my knowledge, though i haven't really looked into the BSP/Portal issue so i could be wrong.
"(v) Can you use per vertex coloring with DBPro?"
Maybe. Although I don't know if there is a direct command for this, it probably could be done with shaders.
"(vi) What about Realtime stencil shadows and dx9 things like two sided stencil buffers"
Yes. I believe the command for stencil shadows is "SET SHADOW SHADING ON objectnumber" Two sided stencil buffers could probably done with shaders.
"(vii) Does DBPro have dynamic lighting with directional, omni, spot, and lightmaps?"
Yes. SET DIRECTIONAL LIGHT lightnumber, nx, ny, nz. For omni i think a regular MAKE LIGHT lightnumber would do(that should work though it might not because i haven't experiment with the light commands yet so i don't know for sure).SET SPOT LIGHT lightnumber, inner angle, outer angle.
Since lightmaps are just simple texture yes.
"(viii) Can DBPro do realtime tessellation?"
Although there is no specific command for this I think its possible to code this given the level of access that the 3d math commands provide.
"(ix) Would the terrain engine allow the terrain to be deformed?"
Not quickly, no. The terrain engine right now isn't that advanced because Mike and Lee are really busy optimizing the pipeline to improve speed. This while most likely change very soon w/patch 5 or 6 because many people have been asking for better terrain commands so its probably next on their priorty list.
"(x) On the home page, one of the screenshots shows the terrain with a bunch of soldiers or something walking across, however, the terrain doesnt seem to have detail texturing. Does the engine support this?"
What do you mean by "detail texturing"?
"(xi) Realtime lighting on the terrain?"
Absolutely.
"(xii) Is in-game heightfield editing possible?"
Not yet no.
"(xiii) Is there a way to directly control the D3D rendering states?"
No.
"(xiv) Does the BSP loader load in all the shaders and does it support curves collision detection?"
I don't know about the shaders, but i don't think curved surfaces are supported yet.
"(xv) Does the DBPro support octree subdivision"
I think it will be in latter patches or at least i hope so.
"(xvi) How many passes, and up to how many textures per pass?"
I think that is more of a hardware issue than an engine issue.
"(xvii) I know DBPro supports bumpmapping, but is it Evironment bumpmapping or DOT3 bumpmapping, or both?"
Both.
"(xviii) Is the engine good enough to do Texel-lighting (using pixel shaders)? By that I mean could the engine run it reasonably well on a system with a GeForce4 and plenty of RAM."
Absolutely.
"(xix) What input devices does DBPro support? (mouse, keyboard, joystick, gamepad, wheels, light guns)"
All directx8 compatible devices i think.(I don't know about light guns though.)
Phew! That was a lot of questions.
