3rd draft gbuffer layout. HLSL only for this step. highpoints:
Alpha in the colorbuffer conflicted with GFXStateBlockDesc blending options. list can be found: https://github.com/GarageGames/Torque3D/blob/69838bdc8c9bc055b9b1ae76f42b0f28d2a33909/Engine/source/gfx/gfxEnums.h#L255-L270
as such, specular strength was shifted to matinfo.b (RenderTarget2), and power to matinfo.a in keeping withspecular maps storing gloss in thier alphas as a standard.
trimmed the  AL_DeferredOutput method by one variable, as we are already passing along matinfo, so no need to pass along gloss as well. (also, equation docs)
ReflectCubeFeatHLSL::processPix drasticly simplified
TerrainAdditiveFeatHLSL::processPix corrected for color buffer output blending
Terraincellmaterial's sgMaxTerrainMaterialsPerPass reduced back to 3 to stay within the headroom available to directx9 until such time as that is deprecated, at which point we can revisit that.
terraincellmaterial no longer shuts off rendering to the b and a channels of prepass materials, since now pretty much every material is a prepass one.

BUG/WORKAROUND: while I did attempt to preserve the capacity to aftermarket-tweak the specular/gloss map via the strength and power slider bars, the presence of both a specular map and the pixspecular toggle casued bleeding over into the normal map, so for now, it first checks for a map, lacking that, it checks if the toggle is on, and failing both falls back to setting matinfo.ba to 0s to ensure shader compilation.
proper initialization of specstrength if the value is not found. (sidenote: shortform initialization? :D who knew?)
flowup to: https://github.com/Azaezel/Torque3D/commit/f5870dc10732633266438180a3a04c7abc0d14bd OpenGL portwork pt1. We seem to have lost specular mapping though, so must be missing a catch there...
from tim: we need to call that be default for deferred to function period.
pretty sure this is still not the proper equasion, but: altered the specular/gloss map influence on the AL_DeferredOutput method. need to track down how we got from http://books.google.com/books?id=GY-AAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA112&lpg=PA112&dq=blinn+phong+specular+gloss+hlsl&source=bl&ots=q9SKJkmWHB&sig=uLIHX10Zul0X0LL2ehSMq7IFBIM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=DbcsVPeWEdW1yASDy4LYDw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=gloss%20&f=false to that.
so of the two, looks like gloss^specularResult gives closest to correct results, though still not quite right.
check for deferred color first when alphatesting.
deferredshadingfeatureshlsl/glsl.cpp - look up the right features prior to attempting combinations involving specular maps and sliders. (still shut off for now)
lighting.hlsl/.glsl - first, we kill off the torque-specific blin-phong specular angle calculation throwing things off further down the chain, then we plug the proper values back into   specularOut, properly accounting for gloss as a minimum clamp, as per http://books.google.com/books?id=GY-AAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA112&lpg=PA112&dq=blinn+phong+specular+gloss+hlsl&source=bl&ots=q9SKJkmWHB&sig=uLIHX10Zul0X0LL2ehSMq7IFBIM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=DbcsVPeWEdW1yASDy4LYDw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=gloss%20&f=false