RTS are not very enjoyable on consoles. Check out Warcraft II for the PSX, if you don't believe me. At least the Dreamcast has 640x480 resolution.
Most consoles also don't come with a keyboard and mouse. Playing Quake without a mouse and keyboard? Yeah, right.
Don't get me wrong. Consoles have their place. (Look at the amount of R&D Sega, Sony, and Nintendo are spending on the next generation consoles.)
Consoles were designed for one thing. Play games. PC's are more expensive because they are more versatile. Sometimes gaming is better on PCs, sometimes not. Soul Caliber on the DreamCast blows me away with the graphics and gameplay. Age of Empires II on the PC does likewise.
Arguing which one is better is pointless. They were designed for different purposes.
> MS windows buttons DO NOT have soft round edges to them Actually they do.
Win95 screenshots showing the beveled button edges http://pla-netx.com/linebackn/guis/w95statup.gif
> mswin has the most straight, hard, tight-assed bevels in the whole bloody industry. mswin reminds me of nextstep. At least, both of them look very polished compared to Motif.
Win 3.1 screeshots (looking like Motif) Notice the 2 pixel wide outline around the button in both white (top left) and gray (bottom right): http://www.windrivers.com/TIMELINE/310.HTM
History of GUI's http://pla-netx.com/linebackn/guis/guitimeline.h tml
> And what exactly does being a graphics programmer have to do with it? Because I find aliasing and other visual artifacts annoying. If you have ever written a texture mapper, you would be painfully aware of rendering artifacts.
If you want to see a fast, OO OS, go try Be. The thing boots in seconds.
It's funny what you can do when you start from scatch.;-)
> But is the speed decrease worth it?? That's a question *every* programmer asks before he starts a project.
"An ounce of design prevents a pound of optimization."
C++ _can be_ slow and bloated. Avoid RTTI, and Exceptions, if you want lean and mean code. (Or if you are trying to maximize performance avoid Templates, and Virtual Functions.)
As a game developer, we are allways aware of the speed issue.
OO wins in the long run, because 1. A *properly designed* OO system is easy to maintain. 2. Any minor speed hits are moot with Moore's law.
Can someone point the way to a FAQ on how the whole X system fits together?
I understand that KDE and Gnome are Window Managers that sit on top of X, but how do the rest of the widget toolkits, and other X software fit in? i.e. Where does Xt sit ? Xforms?
I've used xforms in the past, but the whole X picture is a bit hazy.
I've heard that X is big and slow. What does X implement? Is it just a networkable GUI system, or does it have more?
You do know that you have the RIGHT to travel, yes?
Travelling is a RIGHT, Driving is a privilege. You DON'T need a license to travel. I travel without one, and have yet to be given a ticket for speeding or for driving without a license.
>>> Also, without an SSN, you can't open bank accounts, or get credit cards. This means no renting an apartment. >> FALSE. > TOTALY ABSOLUTELY COMPLETELY TRUE. >You obviously have never tried to do this.
Tell that to my landlord, and my previous one.
I AM doing it. Is it illegal to live without a SSN??
> If you don't have a SSN, how the hell are you living here ? I have lots of American friends who don't have a SSN either. Do you want to tell them too, that they can't live here?
It IS possible.
> They don't HAVE to have laws for this. SO if the rest of society jumped off a bridge you would too??;-)
Until, someone can SHOW me the law that requires a person to have a SSN, I'm living without one.
> you are basically taking the research of others.. How do you think science works?? People BUILD UP from other people's problems and solutions. >.their discoveries, hard work, and insights... and stealing them. HOW do you steal an IDEA? The orginal person STILL has it ! I think you meant COPYING an idea. Patents protection the IMPLEMENTATION of an idea, not the idea itself. Proof: The law allows one to "clean room" reverse engineer. Cheers
> Traditionally, the term "embedded" denoted a system with minimal (or no) UI
This problem also extends to calculators. They have a cpu and minimal UI. Are they a computer? Technically yes, but since they have custom input keys they are classified as a calculator.
Heck, my 10 year old HP48 has 256K of ROM for its "OS" with a built in filesystem including hidden directories !
A new term is probably the most un-ambigious way to go. Otherwise everytime someone mentions embedded, they won't know, just 'how minimal' is the system.
Following after the Real-Time OS's termonology, I propose the terms "hard-embedded", and "soft-embedded."
Meaning, the hard-embedded system has no GUI, and the soft-embedded system has some sort of interface.
Oh wait, this is/., if the moderators don't like your opinion you're moderated down.;-)
> not cheesy El Torito CD's that work by emulating a piece of crap floppy disk
I'm curious, what makes you say that ?
> other bogus limitations of Wintel PeeCee's.
I'll say. Assumptions always hold the progress of computers back. Nobody can plan ahead. i.e. stupid 8+3 filename syste, 64K segments, 640K, 1 Meg, 32-bit color, etc.
X needs a HUGE overhaul in order for this to happen. Its probably best to chuck X and start from scrath, getting rid of all that baggage, but that will never happen.
> so much for innovation in linux.
I think the focus is building a stable platform with familiar tools to the exclusion of trying something new. (Enlightment being the notable exception.)
While us game developers would love to port our games to Linux, until Management can justify the price of porting versus the number of sales, we're stuck in a Windows world.
> He doesn't have the right to use a computer, so what would he do with it??
Yes he does retain that right, since he didn't surrender it.
BILL OF RIGHTS ARTICLE X The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Unfortunately, Linux games aren't going to happen, until us game developers can get hard stats on how many sales we can expect from the Linux market.
Where I work, half of us game developers would love to see more games under Linux, but until Management gives us the green light, we're stuck in a Windows world.:-(
Funny how a Mac port is able to sneak in though. (No flames.)
Any one from LokiSoft reading? How do we start to get our games ported over to Linux!?
>> OpenGL is WAY easier to use then D3D. >This is of course very dependant on your skills in the area of the API. Take a newbie and get him started on D3D. Take another newbie and have him use OpenGL. Who will have working code sooner?
Granted, once you understand the 3d pipeline, moving to another API is not too difficult.
> If you don't get Binary Objects, if you don't understand OO, you'll NEVER understand D3D. Everyone can cook up a spinning cube, Seems like OpenGL is easier to learn then?;-)
> not everyone can cook up a 10,000 poly world running at decent framespeeds with a lot of different textures. Once you need to start worrying about Visible Surface Determination, the API isn't the bottleneck: Your culling / occlusion algorithms are, along with state minimization, and texture management. Wouldn't you agree?
> Some things are odd in OpenGL, I wouldn't call it orthogonal:) For the most part it is. I'm curious, what part of OpenGL isn't orthogonal? Last time I read the spec, I didn't see any discretions. Maybe Jon Leech can point out a few?
> Feature complete is somehow a bit stupid here. Compared to cap-bits?! Capability bits break when you have 2 mutual exclusive features. No thanks. Of the 2 methods, I'll take (slow) feature complete, over missing features. Its the best of worst worlds.
Let's not forgot "feature complete" and cap-bits, do not tell you how FAST something is implemented. Remember, some people prefer quality, others prefer framerate. Feature complete or cap-bits doesn't answer those 2 scenarios. At least your game will visually look the same on different hardware (assuming the drivers aren't broken.)
> It's however IMHO not correct to say: D3D is crap because they had a lot of versions in a short time. That's BECAUSE it's new. So you're telling me that you still want to use executive buffers from DX3 ? I don't see them in DX7 ! D3D is already 5 years old, thats not new.
>> Thats because Microsoft IS so bull-headed after buying Direct3D from Rendermorphics > I can only laugh about this.:) Man, do you really believe this is the issue?
MS shoved D3D down our game developer throats whether we wanted it or not. OpenGL works for games, as Carmack has shown us. They already had OpenGL on NT, why did they have to go and FIX ANOTHER API?
> If you know how d3d drivers are developped, you'd know that a vendor can create a d3d driver for his card with a very small piece of code.
I can't comment on this having never seen any d3d driver code. I'm not a driver writer, just a game developer. Have you seen any d3d driver code?
Ok, I'll buy the bit where OpenGL drivers are harder to develop then D3D drivers.
> It's however a shame not all of those cardmakers include all the new HW features in the ICD via extensions as nVidia does
That's for sure.
Question: How does a vendor provide extensions in D3D ? Oh wait, they CAN'T, unless they pesister MS to provide it in a future D3D version.
> 1. OpenGL much more than DirectX because of easier use,
OpenGL is WAY easier to use then D3D.
OpenGL is orthogonal. SGI had tons of experience with IrisGL before they cleaned it up and "re-named" it OpenGL.
OpenGL has a consistent design (look at Direct3D having 7 versions in 5 year!) OpenGL has gone thru 2 iterations in 10 years. Does that mean OpenGL has been slow to change? No, as vendors are allowed to add any extenstion they wish.
> 2. better performance, Not true. D3D and OpenGL perform very similiar.
> 3. more/better "API" (functionality) Today, the 2 API's are very similiar. OpenGL used to have more features then D3D back in the early days.
> and better graphics... Again, very similiar.
OpenGL also has a conformance test, guaranteeing that all OpenGL implementations are feature complete, unlike D3D. Does that guarantee speed? No. Drivers are allowed to "fall-back" into software.
>... because of some "politics" 3D accelerated graphics card vendors are prefering iplementing DirectX acceleration
Thats because Microsoft IS so bull-headed after buying Direct3D from Rendermorphics.
> so now i wonder (like you) if this "open sourcing" of OpenGL give some advantage to OpenGL
It will definately help Mesa. The video card manufactors ALREADY have the OpenGL reference code. They aren't happy having to support 3 API's either... 1) Their own API, 2) OpenGL, and 3) Direct3D
> also i'm looking for some more info about "OpenGL vs. DirectX" issue.
Sorry, you're late to the party. It was over 2 years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately some PC games just aren't suited for the console (and vice versa.)
Game genres on PC and Dreamcast
RTS are not very enjoyable on consoles. Check out Warcraft II for the PSX, if you don't believe me. At least the Dreamcast has 640x480 resolution.
Most consoles also don't come with a keyboard and mouse. Playing Quake without a mouse and keyboard? Yeah, right.
Don't get me wrong. Consoles have their place. (Look at the amount of R&D Sega, Sony, and Nintendo are spending on the next generation consoles.)
Consoles were designed for one thing. Play games.
PC's are more expensive because they are more versatile. Sometimes gaming is better on PCs, sometimes not. Soul Caliber on the DreamCast blows me away with the graphics and gameplay. Age of Empires II on the PC does likewise.
Arguing which one is better is pointless. They were designed for different purposes.
But what do I know, I'm just a game developer.
Cheers
Michael,
3D game programmer
> MS windows buttons DO NOT have soft round edges to them
f
h tml
Actually they do.
Win95 screenshots showing the beveled button edges
http://pla-netx.com/linebackn/guis/w95statup.gi
> mswin has the most straight, hard, tight-assed bevels in the whole bloody industry.
mswin reminds me of nextstep. At least, both of them look very polished compared to Motif.
Win 3.1 screeshots (looking like Motif)
Notice the 2 pixel wide outline around the button in both white (top left) and gray (bottom right):
http://www.windrivers.com/TIMELINE/310.HTM
History of GUI's
http://pla-netx.com/linebackn/guis/guitimeline.
> And what exactly does being a graphics programmer have to do with it?
Because I find aliasing and other visual artifacts annoying. If you have ever written a texture mapper, you would be painfully aware of rendering artifacts.
> Did you mean "graphics designer"?
No. I am a 3d programmer.
Cheers
If you want to see a fast, OO OS, go try Be.
;-)
The thing boots in seconds.
It's funny what you can do when you start from scatch.
> But is the speed decrease worth it?? That's a question *every* programmer asks before he starts a project.
"An ounce of design prevents a pound of optimization."
C++ _can be_ slow and bloated. Avoid RTTI, and Exceptions, if you want lean and mean code. (Or if you are trying to maximize performance avoid Templates, and Virtual Functions.)
As a game developer, we are allways aware of the speed issue.
OO wins in the long run, because
1. A *properly designed* OO system is easy to maintain.
2. Any minor speed hits are moot with Moore's law.
Cheers
Exhibit B looks nicer.
As a graphics programmer, Exhibit A, looks kind of 'dull'. One reason: Its flat shaded.
And the Hilights (the white and black outlines around buttons) are too thick. Exhibit B, (and Win9X/NT) buttons have a "soft round" edge to them.
Cheers
Can someone point the way to a FAQ on how the whole X system fits together?
I understand that KDE and Gnome are Window Managers that sit on top of X, but how do the rest of the widget toolkits, and other X software fit in? i.e. Where does Xt sit ? Xforms?
I've used xforms in the past, but the whole X picture is a bit hazy.
I've heard that X is big and slow. What does X implement? Is it just a networkable GUI system, or does it have more?
Thx.
Cheers
> I HAD to get a US drivers license.
;-)
You do know that you have the RIGHT to travel, yes?
Travelling is a RIGHT, Driving is a privilege. You DON'T need a license to travel.
I travel without one, and have yet to be given a ticket for speeding or for driving without a license.
Here is a list of DOCUMENTED rulings.
Driver Licensing vs. the Right to Travel
>>> Also, without an SSN, you can't open bank accounts, or get credit cards. This means no renting an apartment.
>> FALSE.
> TOTALY ABSOLUTELY COMPLETELY TRUE.
>You obviously have never tried to do this.
Tell that to my landlord, and my previous one.
I AM doing it. Is it illegal to live without a SSN??
> If you don't have a SSN, how the hell are you living here ?
I have lots of American friends who don't have a SSN either. Do you want to tell them too, that they can't live here?
It IS possible.
> They don't HAVE to have laws for this.
SO if the rest of society jumped off a bridge you would too??
Until, someone can SHOW me the law that requires a person to have a SSN, I'm living without one.
I am not a number, I am a free man.
Cheers
> you are basically taking the research of others.. How do you think science works?? People BUILD UP from other people's problems and solutions. >.their discoveries, hard work, and insights... and stealing them. HOW do you steal an IDEA? The orginal person STILL has it ! I think you meant COPYING an idea. Patents protection the IMPLEMENTATION of an idea, not the idea itself. Proof: The law allows one to "clean room" reverse engineer. Cheers
Get an International Driver's Permit. There are valid in over 200 countries. You don't need a State Slave Number either.
> Also, without an SSN, you can't open bank accounts, or get credit cards. This means no renting an apartment.
FALSE.
You don't need a SSN to rent an apartment.
I don't have one, yet have a credit card, and rent an apartment.
Show me the law that REQUIRES one to have a SSN?
Cheers
> possessive form of "it" is "its", not "it's"?
Don't you love the consistency of English ?
Don't = Do not
Can't = Can not
It's = It is.
Oh wait, 's means possesion. Guess we'll have to drop the apostrophe then. Hence:
Its = It is.
That's the only way I can remember the darn rule.
Cheers
> Traditionally, the term "embedded" denoted a system with minimal (or no) UI
This problem also extends to calculators. They have a cpu and minimal UI. Are they a computer? Technically yes, but since they have custom input keys they are classified as a calculator.
Heck, my 10 year old HP48 has 256K of ROM for its "OS" with a built in filesystem including hidden directories !
A new term is probably the most un-ambigious way to go. Otherwise everytime someone mentions embedded, they won't know, just 'how minimal' is the system.
Following after the Real-Time OS's termonology, I propose the terms "hard-embedded", and "soft-embedded."
Meaning, the hard-embedded system has no GUI, and the soft-embedded system has some sort of interface.
Feel free to suggest better termonology.
Cheers
Oh wait, this is /., if the moderators don't like your opinion you're moderated down. ;-)
> not cheesy El Torito CD's that work by emulating a piece of crap floppy disk
I'm curious, what makes you say that ?
> other bogus limitations of Wintel PeeCee's.
I'll say. Assumptions always hold the progress of computers back. Nobody can plan ahead.
i.e. stupid 8+3 filename syste, 64K segments, 640K, 1 Meg, 32-bit color, etc.
Cheers
http://www.doxpara.com/minbars.html
X needs a HUGE overhaul in order for this to happen. Its probably best to chuck X and start from scrath, getting rid of all that baggage, but that will never happen.
> so much for innovation in linux.
I think the focus is building a stable platform with familiar tools to the exclusion of trying something new. (Enlightment being the notable exception.)
Cheers
Yes you are right about the the US Constitution
Unfortunately, today Corporations control the government who control the citizen.
Sad ain't it ?
Cheers
>1. And don't believe this "win2k is more stable" stuff they are spreading around.
NT 5 does seem to be more stable then NT 4. I've been using it for the last year.
> 2. They said that win95 would be more stable than win3.1, too.
I remember win3.1 GPF all over the place, so Win95 is more stable.
> 3. They said that win3.1 would be more stable than win3.0.
I remember crashing 3.0 more then 3.1
Of course my Linux box has only crashed twice in the past years. Pretty darn impressive.
Cheers
Now if us game developers could just convince management to do a Linux and BeOS port, we'd be in heaven.
While us game developers would love to port our games to Linux, until Management can justify the price of porting versus the number of sales, we're stuck in a Windows world.
Sign the Linux Game Petition here...
Linux Games Petition
Michael
3D Game Developer
Cheers
> He doesn't have the right to use a computer, so what would he do with it??
Yes he does retain that right, since he didn't surrender it.
BILL OF RIGHTS
ARTICLE X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Cheers
Unfortunately, Linux games aren't going to happen, until us game developers can get hard stats on how many sales we can expect from the Linux market.
:-(
Where I work, half of us game developers would love to see more games under Linux, but until Management gives us the green light, we're stuck in a Windows world.
Funny how a Mac port is able to sneak in though. (No flames.)
Any one from LokiSoft reading? How do we start to get our games ported over to Linux!?
Cheers
> Not one of these was supported by ALL cards. D3D is.
;-)
I don't see D3D drivers for our $10,000 video cards. I see OpenGL drivers, but no D3D.
> For gameprogrammers this was a blessing because they could now focus on 1 API.
You've never done any ports, have you?
D3D is not available on consoles. That's a BIG chuck on the games industry right there !
Use D3D and you're LOCKED into Windows. That's a curse, not a blessing. I'd rather use an API that lets our games be developed on several platforms.
OpenGL is portable among Win, Linux, Mac, even to a degree on N64.
What did Carmack say, how many lines of code was different for Quake3? 18K ?
> For me: display lists: it's a whole bunch of hoopla but no speed increase nowadays
I can see you've also never used the high-end SGI's. Display lists were faster, since the geometry had to be static.
But you're right, today on PC's display lists show no gain, due to bandwidth bottlenecks.
Cheers
I don't mind Microsoft buying allmost everyone one of their applications.
;-)
It's better then Apple having the NIH (Not-Invented-Here) Syndrome.
Nice Link ! I had seen it before, though
And was just as shocked as you !
Cheers
>> OpenGL is WAY easier to use then D3D.
;-)
:)
:) Man, do you really believe this is the issue?
>This is of course very dependant on your skills in the area of the API.
Take a newbie and get him started on D3D.
Take another newbie and have him use OpenGL.
Who will have working code sooner?
Granted, once you understand the 3d pipeline, moving to another API is not too difficult.
> If you don't get Binary Objects, if you don't understand OO, you'll NEVER understand D3D. Everyone can cook up a spinning cube,
Seems like OpenGL is easier to learn then?
> not everyone can cook up a 10,000 poly world running at decent framespeeds with a lot of different textures.
Once you need to start worrying about Visible Surface Determination, the API isn't the bottleneck: Your culling / occlusion algorithms are, along with state minimization, and texture management. Wouldn't you agree?
> Some things are odd in OpenGL, I wouldn't call it orthogonal
For the most part it is. I'm curious, what part of OpenGL isn't orthogonal?
Last time I read the spec, I didn't see any discretions. Maybe Jon Leech can point out a few?
> Feature complete is somehow a bit stupid here.
Compared to cap-bits?! Capability bits break when you have 2 mutual exclusive features. No thanks. Of the 2 methods, I'll take (slow) feature complete, over missing features. Its the best of worst worlds.
Let's not forgot "feature complete" and cap-bits, do not tell you how FAST something is implemented. Remember, some people prefer quality, others prefer framerate. Feature complete or cap-bits doesn't answer those 2 scenarios. At least your game will visually look the same on different hardware (assuming the drivers aren't broken.)
> It's however IMHO not correct to say: D3D is crap because they had a lot of versions in a short time. That's BECAUSE it's new.
So you're telling me that you still want to use executive buffers from DX3 ? I don't see them in DX7 ! D3D is already 5 years old, thats not new.
>> Thats because Microsoft IS so bull-headed after buying Direct3D from Rendermorphics
> I can only laugh about this.
MS shoved D3D down our game developer throats whether we wanted it or not. OpenGL works for games, as Carmack has shown us. They already had OpenGL on NT, why did they have to go and FIX ANOTHER API?
> If you know how d3d drivers are developped, you'd know that a vendor can create a d3d driver for his card with a very small piece of code.
I can't comment on this having never seen any d3d driver code. I'm not a driver writer, just a game developer. Have you seen any d3d driver code?
Ok, I'll buy the bit where OpenGL drivers are harder to develop then D3D drivers.
> It's however a shame not all of those cardmakers include all the new HW features in the ICD via extensions as nVidia does
That's for sure.
Question: How does a vendor provide extensions in D3D ? Oh wait, they CAN'T, unless they pesister MS to provide it in a future D3D version.
Nice job on DemoGL.
Cheers
> i heard that developers of 3D visual apps like
...
... because of some "politics" 3D accelerated graphics card vendors are prefering iplementing DirectX acceleration
> 1. OpenGL much more than DirectX because of easier use,
OpenGL is WAY easier to use then D3D.
OpenGL is orthogonal. SGI had tons of experience with IrisGL before they cleaned it up and "re-named" it OpenGL.
OpenGL has a consistent design (look at Direct3D having 7 versions in 5 year!) OpenGL has gone thru 2 iterations in 10 years. Does that mean OpenGL has been slow to change? No, as vendors are allowed to add any extenstion they wish.
> 2. better performance,
Not true. D3D and OpenGL perform very similiar.
> 3. more/better "API" (functionality)
Today, the 2 API's are very similiar. OpenGL used to have more features then D3D back in the early days.
> and better graphics
Again, very similiar.
OpenGL also has a conformance test, guaranteeing that all OpenGL implementations are feature complete, unlike D3D. Does that guarantee speed? No. Drivers are allowed to "fall-back" into software.
>
Thats because Microsoft IS so bull-headed after buying Direct3D from Rendermorphics.
> so now i wonder (like you) if this "open sourcing" of OpenGL give some advantage to OpenGL
It will definately help Mesa. The video card manufactors ALREADY have the OpenGL reference code. They aren't happy having to support 3 API's either... 1) Their own API, 2) OpenGL, and 3) Direct3D
> also i'm looking for some more info about "OpenGL vs. DirectX" issue.
Sorry, you're late to the party. It was over 2 years ago.
> do someone got some URLs?
All this history can be found here...
http://www.vcnet.com/bms/features/3d.html
Cheers
3D Game Programmer
> why oh WHY did they not just help mesa out ?
/. at: 1 2223
Brian Paul (Mesa author) ALREADY has the OpenGL reference driver and code.
You can find some info on
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/01/18/12
And at: http://www.mesa3d.org/
This current release is just icing on the cake.
Cheers
Does this mean we'll FINALLY see an OpenGL driver for 3Dfx cards?
No flames, but the OpenGL driver has been in beta now, for what, a year?
Cheers
DirectX/Direct3D isn't portable.
OpenGL is available on almost all major/minor platforms. For starters: Win, Mac, Linux, Be, etc.
First glQuake, now OpenGL source. Its a good year to be a 3d programmer.
> I'm sorry, I had to; the irony was just too thick.
;-)
Now that was funny. Nice thinking.
Since you didn't attempt any rebuttal I guess the argument is over
Cheers