vining at pacificcoast.net wrote:
(Off course this does mean kicking the processor into MMX mode and
out, but I’ll live…)
Into “MMX mode”??? WTF is that???
There are definitely situations where it’s practical to use OpenGL’s
3D functions and polygon drawing to create something that LOOKS like
a 2D game (ehrmm, what are some examples? Myth 2 would serve, as would
what I’m currently working on… must show that to you, you’d like
it)… it’s when you use it to actually do it in the old fashioned way
that things get out of hand. Picking an example out of thin air,
would you want to use OpenGL for HOMM3 or Civ:CTP? Nope.
Baldur’s Gate 2 is going to use OpenGL I think, is that possible? If I
remember correctly, people generally said “huh?!?” after hearing this,
personnally I didn’t play Baldur’s Gate.–
Pierre Phaneuf
Systems Exorcist
vining at pacificcoast.net wrote:
Unfortunately, not true. We have no way of guaranteeing that an
SDL_Surface has not changed since the last upload (since we can
access the surface’s pixels directly without going through another
API), therefore we would need to constantly re-upload. A cruel world.
As for necessity, you’re right, but if you wanted to do something
like rewrite SDL’s video aspect to do 2D blits on top of OpenGL you
would have to. Sucky.
Actually, I already suggested to Sam that forcing people to use a
Lock/Unlock kind of operation would be a nice idea and would enable some
drivers to accelerate cases like these (for exemple, in raw Xlib,
Pixmaps can be faster than shared memory with XF86 4.0, and just as fast
with pre-4.0).–
Pierre Phaneuf
Systems Exorcist
vining at pacificcoast.net wrote:
Sure, but what game doesn’t work in some sort of three-dimensional
space? Even side scrollers have parallax, etc.
Pac Mac. 
Space Invaders. Tetris.
So that’s why you don’t use OpenGL in your games, Bill?
Gosh, you didn’t see “The Next Tetris” on PlayStation, right? It’s our
main competitor (our product is Quadra, URL below), right from The
Tetris Company LLC (AKA Blue Planet Software)…
http://ludusdesign.com/quadra.html--
Pierre Phaneuf
Systems Exorcist
vining at pacificcoast.net wrote:
(Off course this does mean kicking the processor into MMX mode and
out, but I’ll live…)
Into “MMX mode”??? WTF is that???
I was under the impression that in order to use MMX instructions you had to
switch a few things around which takes double digit cycles. I haven’t actually
tried MMX coding myself, I keep on meaning to.
Baldur’s Gate 2 is going to use OpenGL I think, is that possible? If I
remember correctly, people generally said “huh?!?” after hearing this,
personnally I didn’t play Baldur’s Gate.
I think that while not an FPS it does have 3D elements… it certainly ain’t
tile based.
Pierre Phaneuf
Systems Exorcist
Nicholas
vining at pacificcoast.net wrote:
I was under the impression that in order to use MMX instructions you had to
switch a few things around which takes double digit cycles. I haven’t
actually tried MMX coding myself, I keep on meaning to.
No, they simply are more instructions for you to use. You do have to
add some logic for fallback routines though. This usually comes in the
form of a function pointer. 3Dnow! and SSE are even more interesting
(MMX does only integer, 3Dnow! and SSE can do FP).
Baldur’s Gate 2 is going to use OpenGL I think, is that possible? If I
remember correctly, people generally said “huh?!?” after hearing this,
personnally I didn’t play Baldur’s Gate.
I think that while not an FPS it does have 3D elements… it certainly ain’t
tile based.
From screenshots I saw, I think it is tile based, with isometric view. I
do not know if each individual “items” (players, monsters and so on) are
drawn with multiple 3D polygons or are used in a “sprite” kind of way.
I am not sure from memory, but I actually think that BG2 will require
a 3D video card, much like Q3A (i.e. there is no software renderer)!–
Pierre Phaneuf
Systems Exorcist
vining at pacificcoast.net wrote:
I was under the impression that in order to use MMX instructions you had to
switch a few things around which takes double digit cycles. I haven’t
actually tried MMX coding myself, I keep on meaning to.
No, they simply are more instructions for you to use. You do have to
add some logic for fallback routines though. This usually comes in the
form of a function pointer. 3Dnow! and SSE are even more interesting
(MMX does only integer, 3Dnow! and SSE can do FP).
That’s what I thought originally… sheesh. I need to work more on my ASM
skills, I’m out of practice.
From screenshots I saw, I think it is tile based, with isometric view. I
do not know if each individual “items” (players, monsters and so on) are
drawn with multiple 3D polygons or are used in a “sprite” kind of way.
I am not sure from memory, but I actually think that BG2 will require
a 3D video card, much like Q3A (i.e. there is no software renderer)!
So they must be exporting isometric tiles as triangles, but doing some sort of
devious texture mapping. I could see a few immediate advantages, but wouldn’t
it be a pain in the tuchis to get all the texture coordinates working right?
And, I wonder, why not just implement camera control?
Now I wanna play BG2 just so I can see if I can work out how the engine works.
glAnalyze rules 
Nicholas
thats what glMame is for
wonder how slow bilinear filtering would be in SDL…
hmmm…Would probably be too slow…but maybe if I used
glDrawPixels()/glReadPixels() the OpenGL acceleration would help speed it
up.
Wow! This could be the Ideal solution to everyones problems. No matter
what they are!
On Wed, 5 Apr 2000, William Kendrick wrote:
I agree the snes9x emulator looks LOTS better with OpenGL. And it is
alot faster too.
Hehe - I can maybe see a game console emulator looking better because
I bet OpenGL would be much faster at rendering the artifacts one normally
sees when playing video games on TV’s.
For example, an Atari 2600 emulator looks crappy, IMHO, because it’s too
crisp and perfect…
I want to see static! I want to see little fuzzy rectangular ghosts
move up and down the screen as I twist the paddle left and right.
(I mainly just want to be able to use a paddle on a PC under Linux,
PERIOD. )
-bill!
Long live the confused,
Akawaka.
Bother! said Pooh, as Yoda told him of another Pooh.
wonder how slow bilinear filtering would be in SDL…
hmmm…Would probably be too slow…but maybe if I used
glDrawPixels()/glReadPixels() the OpenGL acceleration would help speed it
up.
glDrawPixels won’t do bilinear filtering.
With the amount of time the pixels will spend in the rendering pipeline
they’ll be ill-defined and blurry by the time to get drawn:)
Long live the confused,
Akawaka.On Wed, 5 Apr 2000, Nicholas Vining wrote:
Bother! said Pooh, as he yawned so hard he lost Piglet.