Cant' help but notice/ask

[tcsoccerman]

in the game project, i noticed a directx folder and an opengl folder.

 

can you explain what you intend to put/code in these folders? are going to do the same thing for both?

 

just curious because it seems to me now that you are doing massive coding twice inorder to support both 3d renderers/engines.

[»doc flabby]

Ya, its more of a future intent, rather than anything that's going to be used now (or in the near-medium term). Going to get it working fully with OpenGL first, then add the directX support.

 

The advantage of directX is it has far better support on lower end computers ALot of them can only do Open GL 1.1 or 1.2 but can manage DirectX8 and X9 which is the equivielent of OpenGL 1.5 or 2.0.

[L.C.]

I think it would be a good idea to have both OGL and DX support simply because it would be able to reach out to a wider range of players (just this simple point being the reason). Although it doesn't necessarily have to be a part of the first few versions, but should be as a final, public release (the kind of quality to be able to meet the shelves of stores and retailers).

[»doc flabby]

I think it would be a good idea to have both OGL and DX support simply because it would be able to reach out to a wider range of players (just this simple point being the reason). Although it doesn't necessarily have to be a part of the first few versions, but should be as a final, public release (the kind of quality to be able to meet the shelves of stores and retailers).

Thats essentially my point

 

OpenGL is needed for the Linux/Mac support and Directx will probably be the render of choice for the windows version.

OpenGL and DirectX have quite similar API so porting stuff over once the engine has reached a good level of maturity shouldn't be a too difficult task.

[tcsoccerman]

but you will have to do massive coding for both open gl and directx? like the same thing twice?

[»doc flabby]

but you will have to do massive coding for both open gl and directx? like the same thing twice?

Ya but its less duplication than you might think. The hard bit is the 3d maths and physics stuff which will be same for both.

Basically you set up a vertex array which is then rendered. The array setup is pretty much the same in OpenGl and DirectX.

 

The hard work is setting up and manipulating the array, and getting it do what you want. I spent about 8 hours trying to understand the maths behind 3d rotations and provding the ability to have 6DOF (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_freedom)

 

But i see directx as something pursue next year, once we have a stable OpenGL engine working

Progress > Compatibility at this point.

[Samapico]

Having both options also gives a wider range of compatibility with some computers/cards, like even if a card is supposed to work with OpenGL, there's always some people having weird problems that could be fixed by switching to DX.

 

By the way doc, I've just had a course on Computer !@#$%^&*isted Drawing, in which we did some array operations to rotate, scale, translate, etc. So if you need help on something specific, I might be able to help you out