BOUNTY for AmiDARK Engine source code release.

[wawrzon]

@gunnar

the question rather is what program would you run via this engine if it was available for amiga. when it comes to 3d on amiga there already is an opengl implementation called storm mesa all along the sources and examples available from aminet. there also is software that takes advantage of it.

so the potential alternative to assumably
amidarkengine>minigl>warp3d>hardware (unfinished, no software available ive heard of)

is

storm mesa>warp3d>hardware (tested, available for years, existing applications)

so i dont understand why not to use the later. in case there is custom hardware involved you will in any case need to write a warp3d driver, because minigl also depends on/calls w3d functions, while not being much if any faster than storm mesa, but rather slightly incompatible to opengl because of some changed (init) function names. now have luck with getting documentation on w3d to write a driver, except matthey and alain may maybe have some hints. personally i think the easiest would be to make a hardware accelerated backend for alain thelliers wazp3d.

[wawrzon]

replacing freetype, ftgl and glut seems a lot of work. freetype is available on amiga, i dont remember if only as part of afa, but i remember having linked against it. i also might have compiled ftgl as a static a library, but im not sure anymore. what concerns glut it is a part of mesa even if it may be missing on minigl.

what concerns linking against mesa rather than minigl, yes it should be possible, just it woulnt be just linking against other header i guess. remember also os4 minigl has been extended by hans, while mesa was not and certainly amiga(68k) minigl contains only a subset of both.

i dont discuss that basic style coding may be easier for noobs (like me) though the sole availability of this option doesnt effectively make people program anything, like for instance amiblitz example teaches us. although it seems a good option i can count programs done in amiblitz on fingers of one hand.

now, while you would link amidark against storm mesa and wait for people to write software with it there are still numerous opengl opensource stuff that might have been ported over and simply linked directly against mesa headers, been there, done that. im just too dumb and the hardware s too limited to make it work really well.

and about the hardware driver im still right. i think i know what gunnar aims for, as he isnt interested in a regular offshell 3d hardware but rather something like fpga core, he would have to write warp3d driver for, since whether minigl, storm mesa or your frontend all of them depend on w3d to hit the hardware.

[wawrzon]

MiniGL was originally created on the 68K, because StormMESA was on the slow side. From what I heard, it was significantly faster. If MiniGL 1.2 provides all needed features, then it might be better to use that over StormMESA.

yes, thats what ive been told all along. few years ago i modified the gl examples to be compil and run-able against minigl and mesa side by side. a simple measure, because minigl inits differently to the standard. blame it on my inability, but funny enough it occurred minigl wasnt much if any faster than mesa. btw, im happy to be proven wrong.

also the subset of features minigl provided in comparison with mesa didnt allow to compile anything i can think of. im pretty sure if sm3.1 was ogl1.2 spec then minigl was a rather narrow fraction of it. may be different if amidark can live without all that stuff so far, still im not sure if there is anyone left in the so called amiga scene, who would program 3d games or apps exclusively no matter what easy it was.

that said i addressed gunnar post about specific 68k solution rather than general discussion about the engine.

[wawrzon]

Well, performance differences will depend on what you're rendering (and how). You might not notice much difference with simple examples like the gears demo, but a game with a full immersive 3D environment... Even so, any performance boost would depend on how the game rendered its graphics.

EDIT: IIRC, using manual locking in MiniGL can boost performance. This means that Warp3D is manually locked and unlocked, so that you minimise the number of times that this happens. Locking/unlocking Warp3D is rather expensive.

right, that might be where the difference have been. once i have guessed the dynamic linking of sm3.1 might steal some performance yet, but likely it wasnt the case.

AFAIK, MiniGL's subset of the OGL spec was whatever Hyperion's game ports (Quake II, Freespace, etc.) needed.
Hans

right again. so it wasnt meant for general purpose. best would be both of both worlds, probably for os4 as well as for amiga.. we are left with what we have though.


..so far seems my points still stand. minigl may be faster (marginally or not, we must rely on word of its programmers that happened to be proven wrong in the past, perhaps except of you, hans;)) but its not open and therefore it isnt extendable if need be. i think it rules it out for amiga (68k). neither way gunnar would need his w3d driver

[wawrzon]

MiniGL is open. The source code is available for both the OS4 version and the old 68K one. If you want the 68K version's source-code, then just download minigl.lha from aminet.

ok, i stand corrected here. then if someone backports the os4 improvements it might be easier to keep amidark compiling against it.