Software Water

Although I hope that some day Decade is a high end 3D engine supporting the most advanced technologies and rendering techniques, at present I want to make sure that almost anyone can play my games.


My full blown water will be rendered using Bump Maps and Stencil Reflections, which not all Graphics Cards support therefore I have first implemented a simple alpha blended tessellating mesh with a sphere mapped texture. Results are not very realistic however give the impression of water with semi-realistic movement.


In Wire frame one can see the mesh clearly. As the water mesh is constantly moving and is alpha blended it does not have to be as high a resolution as the terrain. The terrain is the images shown is 512x512 whereas the water mesh is only 60x60.