Spring RTS Engine

The ATI drivers won't update their Open GL drivers, so what I am asking is this: What about DirectX? It's supported by most game designers and you can download developers kit for free, so why can't we add some support for Spring engine?

So seriously, who's smurf is it?

FLOZi wrote:So seriously, who's smurf is it?

Can you explain in simpler terms?

Super Mario wrote:

FLOZi wrote:So seriously, who's smurf is it?

Can you explain in simpler terms?

Simplest possible terms: NO.

And why not? Ati won't update its diver open GL system only its Direct X driver and I don't think that everyone who owns a ATi card can afford a new graphics card.

It would probably cost you less to buy a new GeForce card for every Spring user with an ATi than it would to hire someone to write a DirectX renderer for Spring, and you're asking someone to do it for free.

Scikar wrote:It would probably cost you less to buy a new GeForce card for every Spring user with an ATi than it would to hire someone to write a DirectX renderer for Spring, and you're asking someone to do it for free.

Well every feature requesting is mostly free (When accepted) and I am asking to have a little Direct X support for the game. (There are Graphics error reports going on with Ati drivers users.)

One big reason: DirectX is a closed-source, Microsoft product. And it only works for Windows.
Seriously, either get a new GFX card, or HTFU and wait for ATI to update their OpenGL support in their drivers. Or maybe you could even look and see if there are any third-party ATI drivers out there with better OpenGL support and install them.

Super Mario wrote:

Scikar wrote:It would probably cost you less to buy a new GeForce card for every Spring user with an ATi than it would to hire someone to write a DirectX renderer for Spring, and you're asking someone to do it for free.

Well every feature requesting is mostly free (When accepted) and I am asking to have a little Direct X support for the game. (There are Graphics error reports going on with Ati drivers users.)

What exactly do you want by "a little"? I suppose I could probably get it to say SPRING in big letters in the middle of your screen, that would be a little DirectX support. Will that do?

Serious note: it would probably take me as long to do that as it would take any of the real devs to fully rewrite the OpenGL renderer.

didn't someone decouple the opengl renderer?

someone could try swapping it out for a dx one ^_^

aegis wrote:didn't someone decouple the opengl renderer?

someone could try swapping it out for a dx one ^_^

Sweet! So it finally got done? I remember that this one was like a dev MTR for forever.

Is Super Mario using spring not already a violation against the GPL?

it is only a feeling, but that feeling tells me, he should be sued.

It isn't *that* decoupled yet, if you ask me.

Either way, this ain't going to happen, it's really too much work. (Unless of course someone steps up who is going to do it, but somehow I doubt anyone will.)

It's like "can I have some diesel support for my car?"

You have to rip out huge chunks of Spring and replace them to get DirectX.

BTW my 4850 works just fine, no opengl issues except shorewaves and dynamic water in latest release. ATI OpenGL improved a lot this year, at least for the new cards.

The SANE answer Super Mario is that adding DirectX support would be a whole lot of work to only support Microsoft Operating systems while our current OpenGL base allows us to support Linux, Windows, MacOSX and any future operating systems who choose to use the Open standards that are part of OpenGL.

Not to mention the fact that switching from OGL to DX isn't just a matter of swapping out a rendering engine and a couple libraries... DX works entirely differently to OGL so basically every line of graphics code in the engine would need to be changed in at least some small way... and every LUA widget with a graphical component would need a DX version rewritten... and to maintain support for both Linux and OSX all this would need to be done while also maintaining the OGL codebase... effectively halving (or worse) the limmited number of volunteers we have already.

Not to mention that before we can do any of this we would first need to de-couple the graphics from the game-code (which will be done eventually... in theory).

BTW Super Mario, keep asking questions because it reminds us all of the kind of things we've forgotten were problems.

SinbadEV wrote:BTW Super Mario, keep asking questions because it reminds us all of the kind of things we've forgotten were problems.

but dont be an ass about it

Super Mario wrote:The ATI drivers won't update their Open GL drivers

Who did tell you that anyway?
ATI just put little work in OpenGL in the first half of the year because they wanted to wait for OpenGL 3 and the promised more easy way to handle things. As the responsible devs secretly trashed those plans about a year ago and just released a "OpenGL 2.1" as version 3 that hope was destroyed though...

Since they were bought by AMD there has been much more focus on OpenGL though and this still is the case. Lately there even was the first driver package that supports some of the new new OpenGL 3 functions. The functions still needed should be in one of the upcoming releases (or even in the new 8.11 - didn't read its changelog)...

Having DirectX as API would be nice as it's technically more advanced and has the better vendor support. The only disadvantage most certainly is it being Windows only (although that isn't a real problem anymore to Mac users). As told in this thread DirectX would only be a real option for an entirely rewritten engine and not for an "update" for Spring. So go gather some programmers and revive the Command engine project...

The funny thing is that initally, Spring used DirectX and no OpenGL, and it was rewritten as the Swedish Yankspankers developpers were replaced by some Open Source devs from elsewhere.

Or maybe it was only DirectSound?

Spring still uses DirectSound.