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Jon C-B
I create vaporware
Registered
23/04/2008
Points
237
    
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21st August, 2010 at 23:47:28 -
I keep seeing a lot of people saying how useful it is. But hwat is it exactly? How does it change mmf2? does it add events or objects?
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Silveraura
God's God
Registered
08/08/2002
Points
6747
      
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22nd August, 2010 at 00:03:05 -
Yes and no.
HWA adds the ability to use pixel shaders and add hundreds of objects to your game with very little impact on the performance of the game. It does this by making the game hardware accelerated which is how it gets it's abbreviation "HWA" or "HardWare Acceleration." It uses the graphics card processor to aid in producing graphics. Games are still limited by the processing element of a game such as a lot of fast loops running at once, but thats rarely capped off and the usual cause for performance issues in MMF2 games are graphics, so in that regard HWA will seriously help you out massively.
As far as what extensions do and don't work, you'll find that since it's been out for so long, very few extensions will pose you absolutely any problem what so ever. You cannot use things like the edit box and button in full screen mode because DirectX doesn't support it properly however thats a very small price to pay.
One thing to be aware of though is that things like semi-transparency is now regarded as the alpha-blending co-efficient and like a lot of the other effects, run on a scale of 0 to 255 instead of 0 to 128.
Pixel shaders also come with a variety of other settings for example in Lens pixel shader, you can alter the strength of the lense at runtime by changing fCoeff value.
Now HWA is not compatible with other compilers, it's a compiler all it's own. So you cannot combine it with stuff like Java or Flash. So before compiling them, make sure you change the Display Mode from Direct 3D to Standard before trying to compile any of those.
HWA will install as a separate EXE file so you will not lose the standard MMF2 in installing it. Theres nothing to lose and a lot to gain in trying it out.
 Edited by Silveraura
http://www.facebook.com/truediamondgame
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Sketchy
Cornwall UK
Registered
06/11/2004
Points
1971
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22nd August, 2010 at 00:41:48 -
Unless you're making nothing but flash/java games, HWA is an absolute must.
You don't get a whole lot of extra features (just a few new shaders), but the performance increase when using large numbers of objects/effects is huge - and there's no real drawback.
And like Silverfire says, the HWA version doesn't overwrite the standard version, so you have nothing to lose by downloading it.
Caution: I suggest you avoid opening files created with the standard build, and re-saving them in the HWA build (and vice versa) if possible - this has caused me some problems in the past.
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Ricky
loves Left For Dead 2
Registered
28/12/2006
Points
4075
  
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22nd August, 2010 at 02:27:44 -
It's irresponsible not to use HWA. People paid for their GPU's and to have them sit there doing nothing while making the processor do all the work is a complete waste. Even the crappy Intel accelerators run games better under HWA.
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Assault Andy
Administrator
I make other people create vaporware
Registered
29/07/2002
Points
5686
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22nd August, 2010 at 02:41:42 -
You need HWA.
Creator of Faerie Solitaire:
http://www.create-games.com/download.asp?id=7792
Also creator of ZDay20 and Dungeon Dash.
http://www.Jigxor.com
http://twitter.com/JigxorAndy
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Silveraura
God's God
Registered
08/08/2002
Points
6747
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22nd August, 2010 at 02:47:29 -
Its about time everyone finally starts seeing why HWA is amazing.
http://www.facebook.com/truediamondgame
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Jon C-B
I create vaporware
Registered
23/04/2008
Points
237
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22nd August, 2010 at 04:08:31 -
Well i guess i should get it then... Does anyone have a link to the latest build of it?
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nim
Registered
17/05/2002
Points
7234
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22nd August, 2010 at 05:13:40 -
http://www.clickteam.com/epicenter/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=194022&nt=2&page=1
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