In fact, I thought the exact same thing last year when I tried to make a shader. After days of figuring things out, I had finally made my own effect . I know ho...
Great tutorial!
A couple other tips:
- Use developer addon mode for faster testing (C3IDE has a built in webserver to support this.)
- Use some kind of glsl syntax checker before you test your effect. I use: shdr.bkcore.com . I just cut and paste my *.fx code into the edit box and fix any syntax errors reported. When it says the compile is ok, I cut and paste the fx code back into C3IDE. Note that the render won't display anything because the C3 uniforms don't match the ones used in this editor.