1. Graphics developer needed
I'm currently coding an 3D engine(It's not ready for pre-release yet(maybe
after few weeks :)) Would you like to help me and other Eu developers or
maybe do some business with me ?
Since I don't have enough time, I need someone Eu/graphics guru, who could
code me a graphics library. Hawke's TrueColor library is great, but it's
too slow.
The library should have features like this:
-320x200, 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768 modes with 16.7M colors (also with
8- and 16 bit colors if possible)
-clean, non-flickering, as truecolor is
-very fast pixel drawing routine (no other routines(box,ellipse,etc.)needed
:)
-Here's a better(?) idea o' mine how to display stuff to screen: first you
save screen stuff(while running) to sequence s1 in main program. Then when
whole 'screen' is in s1, you call the routine DrawTrueScreen(s1) which
draws then (hopefully fast ;) the whole screen. This means that the library
could be optimized to play graphics very very fast cause it's been called
only once with only one sequence, s1. The s1's form would be something like
this: {{B1,G1,R1},{B2,G2,R2},...,{Bx,Gx,Rx}} (the drawing would always
start from position 0,0 and end to scrMaxX,scrMaxY).
-If DrawTrueScreen() would be fast enough, no virtual screens, etc. would
be needed. These 'extra' routines could be added later if necessary.
I think many game developers (and why not other coders too) would find this
kind of library very helpful indeed ;)
The bottleneck to make fast games is almost always the graphics displaying.
If you're interested we could start to develop programs together. So, what
do ay think??? I really don't have time to wonder library stuff, since
other developing eats my time.
2. Re: Graphics developer needed
> The library should have features like this:
> -320x200, 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768 modes with 16.7M colors (also
> with 8- and 16 bit colors if possible)
> -clean, non-flickering, as truecolor is
> -very fast pixel drawing routine (no other
> routines(box,ellipse,etc.)needed
> :)
> -Here's a better(?) idea o' mine how to display stuff to screen: first
> you save screen stuff(while running) to sequence s1 in main program.
> Then when whole 'screen' is in s1, you call the routine
> DrawTrueScreen(s1) which draws then (hopefully fast ;) the whole screen.
> This means that the library could be optimized to play graphics very
> very fast cause it's been called only once with only one sequence, s1.
> The s1's form would be something like this:
> {{B1,G1,R1},{B2,G2,R2},...,{Bx,Gx,Rx}} (the drawing would always start
> from position 0,0 and end to scrMaxX,scrMaxY).
This is not the most most efficient way to store truecolor data in
Euphoria. A Euphoria sequence has 20 bytes of overhead, and it always
stores at least 4 bytes for each element, so you're effectively wasting
29 bytes for *every* truecolor pixel.
> -If DrawTrueScreen() would be fast enough, no virtual screens, etc.
> would be needed. These 'extra' routines could be added later if
> necessary.
Your best bet for fast graphics is to poke pixel data into a memory buffer
acquired with allocate, then copy that memory into video ram. Of course,
then your new bottleneck is how fast you can move that memory across the
bus. Full-screen truecolor images consume a good chunk of memory and
limitations of hardware come into play. AGP cards have a speed advantage
over PCI, and PCI is faster than ISA.
> I think many game developers (and why not other coders too) would find
> this kind of library very helpful indeed ;) The bottleneck to make fast
> games is almost always the graphics displaying.
Most helpful in my opinion would be wrappers to DirectX or OpenGL, where
we can take advantage of the hardware-accelerated operations on the
graphics hardware and let the cpu do more work on actual gameplay.
Later,
_______ ______ _______ ______
[ _ \[ _ ][ _ _ ][ _ ]
[/| [_] |[/| [_\][/ | | \][/| [_\]
| ___/ | _] | | | _]
[\| [/] [\| [_/] [\| |/] [\| [_/]
[_____] [______] [_____] [______]
xseal at harborside.com ICQ:13466657
http://www.harborside.com/home/x/xseal/euphoria/
p.s. some of you may think this kind of talk is a little "out of
character" for me, having written Neil and all...
3. Re: Graphics developer needed
Speaking of graphics, I downloaded Descent 3 the other night... HOLY COW!
BLESSED BOVINE! The graphics are incredible! Well, I've got a PII450,128MB
RAM, and 16MB AGP graphics (Riva TNT chip)... but HOLY COW! It's beautiful.
Now, can somebody write a wrapper for that graphics engine? 
Pete? Cuny? Ralf!? Rob Craig? Anybody?
Thanks!
ck
4. Re: Graphics developer needed
> Most helpful in my opinion would be wrappers to DirectX or OpenGL, where
> we can take advantage of the hardware-accelerated operations on the
> graphics hardware and let the cpu do more work on actual gameplay.
Thing is, I have compared games which do their own rendering, displaying, etc,
to games that render/display with DirectX, and (correct me if i'm wrong) I
have noticed that usually the games which do their own everything are a _heck_
of a lot faster than those with DirectX. Games I've tested, based on this,
were Forsaken and QuakeII... Forsaken uses its own "generic" renderer, and
ports it to the card, to which I can figure. QuakeII, on the other hand, I
believe does its own rendering, but ports it to the card via DirectX, making
the games noticably slower. (Unfortunatly, I can't say anything about OGL,
because all the software I have won't do ATI RAGE OGL... go figure)
> p.s. some of you may think this kind of talk is a little "out of
> character" for me, having written Neil and all...
Naw, not really. Ya sorta expect that from graphics developers ;)
--"LEVIATHAN"
5. Re: Graphics developer needed
C. K. Lester wrote:
> Speaking of graphics, I downloaded Descent 3 the other night... HOLY COW!
> BLESSED BOVINE! The graphics are incredible! Well, I've got a PII450,128MB
> RAM, and 16MB AGP graphics (Riva TNT chip)... but HOLY COW! It's beautiful.
>
> Now, can somebody write a wrapper for that graphics engine?
>
Descent Three? Hmm, where'dja get it? (Descent Freespace? hope not... Thats a
fast graphics engine!)
--"LEVIATHAN"
6. Re: Graphics developer needed
At 05:55 AM 4/20/99 -0700, you wrote:
>C. K. Lester wrote:
>
>> Speaking of graphics, I downloaded Descent 3 the other night... HOLY COW!
>> BLESSED BOVINE! The graphics are incredible! Well, I've got a PII450,128MB
>> RAM, and 16MB AGP graphics (Riva TNT chip)... but HOLY COW! It's beautiful.
>>
>> Now, can somebody write a wrapper for that graphics engine?
>>
>
>Descent Three? Hmm, where'dja get it? (Descent Freespace? hope not... Thats a
>fast graphics engine!)
>
> --"LEVIATHAN"
I downloaded it from interplay's site (www.interplay.com). It's NOT Descent
Freespace, though that one kicks as well. D3 is a 29MB download, so unless
you have an OC-3 (Pete!), it's gonna take a while... But, I think it's
worth it if your system has the power for it. Wow!
Although, I'm always disturbed by the fact that your lasers can destroy
armored enemies, but you can't shoot out a light source (lamp or
lightbulb)! Give me a break!
-ck
7. Re: Graphics developer needed
>C. K. Lester wrote:
>
>> Speaking of graphics, I downloaded Descent 3 the other night... HOLY COW!
>> BLESSED BOVINE! The graphics are incredible! Well, I've got a
PII450,128MB
>> RAM, and 16MB AGP graphics (Riva TNT chip)... but HOLY COW! It's
beautiful.
>>
>> Now, can somebody write a wrapper for that graphics engine?
>>
>
>Descent Three? Hmm, where'dja get it? (Descent Freespace? hope not... Thats
a
>fast graphics engine!)
Descent 3's graphics are better then FreeSpace's.
I have the D3 demo and the full version of FreeSpace. They are both stunning
games, and either graphics package would be more than enough to code a cool
game in. D3's has a dual engine that allows for different effects whether
you are inside or outside. (Read the developer's notes at www.outrage.com
while you download the demo
Although all I'm interrested in, for now (so I can develop a simple game,
then update the graphics later) is a simple graphics engine. Anybody
remember X-Wing or TIE Fighter? That's what I want for my first engine.
(When the game is finished, I can use a FreeSpace or X-Wing Alliance style
engine for better graphics.
