Good shader editing and writing program

[SilverWarior]

Hi!
I was wondering if anyone could point me toward some good shader writing/editing program.

[User137]

Notepad++ ? ;) GLSL language is very simple in the end, not alot to memorize. It's the algorithms that are harder to come up with, and for that there exists some ready samples throughout internet.

[SilverWarior]

I have been looking the shader files using normal notepad already. But the main problem is that I have verry litle knowledge about shaders.

The main reason why I'm looking for ready shader editor program is becouse I would like to try converting some Level 4 pixel and vertex shaders into Level 3 pixel/vertex shaders. Why would I like to do this? I have recently bought alpha version of game Maia (http://maiagame.com/) which uses Level 4 shaders but my hardware only supports Level 3 shaders.
So I would hate to see that I threw 18€ for a game I can't play.
Yes I could ask developers to also write Level 3 shaders for their game but that won't happen soon as they have more work on other aspects of their game.

[laggyluk]

i'm no expert but there's a chance that some modern stuff is called from the game code an translating shaders won't be enough

[User137]

You can try some simple trick of reducing the #version number lower. Who knows they just set the number higher than they need to, without actually utilizing the features. I don't know, try #version 120, 200 or 300 or sorts (that just assumed GLSL shader syntax, DirectX is different).

[SilverWarior]

I just checked their forum and aparently developer plans on writing shaders for older graphics cards since there are quite a lot of pepole with similar problems.
So all I have to do now is wait and in the mean time work on my entry for 3rd Challenge

[WILL]

Someone who read this passed along to me the suggestions of "RenderMonkey from AMD and FX Composer from Nvidia" which are known to be free professional-grade tools.

[laggyluk]

they are outdated

[WILL]

Had a quick poke and they do seem to be both no longer updated. How about this one rom nVidia? https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-nsight-visual-studio-edition

I believe their outdated tool had a link to this one meaning it to be it's replacement tool?