Say What?

Alright this is probably going to be the craziest thing I've ever said but here it goes: Shaders aren't all that bad.

Now this isn't just a random outburst caused by smashing my face off my laptop too many times; there is a story behind this.  It all began when I felt all traces of happiness exit my body and soul, right around the time when Hogue revealed his 'new and improved' exp system.  Before I go on: If you don't know me, I'm rather terrible at programming.  And moving on.

 
Being the (relatively) hard working student I am, I delved straight into this shader stuff, spending the first weekend setting up a framework for the homework questions as was suggested.  Now remember that whole thing where I suck at this stuff?  Yeah well I certainly hit a brick wall; I fought and struggled just with the shader setup stuff.  I think I had a hernia upon seeing the code in the 'vertex transformation' CG tutorial.  Eye twitches, tears of liquid pain, hating life, all that jazz.

It frightened me enough to put it off a couple weeks (I had rational excuses I swear).  But with the easy question deadline looming, I forced myself to get back into it.  Of course by this time a good majority of the easy questions were worth 0, and despair was increasing.  So I got all steely-eyed and said "Whatever, I'll just work on a more difficult one" D:<

Thus I began picking my way through the particle system tutorial code, adding it to my framework line-by-line, making sure I understood it every step of the way.  It was a long and arduous process, but there was no choice; all the (easiest)easy questions were worth 0 by now.  Once I got to the end I began changing things one at a time, gaining a deeper understanding of each function and etc.  I was starting to get it!

 
Then at long last Hogue realizes that his ridiculous exp system is a bit flawed and changes things.  All hope has returned!  Now at this point I'm feeling pretty badass working with easier shaders.  I go back to the first easy question to turn the screen blue.  Bombshell:  It's easy as cake.  I know exactly how to implement it and it shouldn't take much time at all.  It turns out delving straight into the tougher shaders made the easy ones..actually easy :O  (Edit: Maybe Hogue planned this...!!)



Ok so maybe it was a pretty lame story, but really I'm feeling so much better about shaders.  The whole first month was a stress-fest of knowing that my inadequate programming skill was going to cost me the chance of getting any exp.  But now there is hope, there is a chance.  I will prevail.  I'll even reveal my dirty secret: I kind of like programming shaders (now that I understand them).


BUT DON'T TELL ANYBODY.