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Technology Behind ARC and projects I want to see ported to D

 
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clayasaurus



Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 857

PostPosted: Mon Jul 24, 2006 1:16 pm    Post subject: Technology Behind ARC and projects I want to see ported to D Reply with quote

Windowing/Input - SDL (252k). Was going to switch to GLFW until I realized that the author of the GLFW project left. I do not think a full D native port of GLFW would be very benificial as well. SDL seems to have a brighter future with SDL 1.3 planning to be released which will fix current SDL problems (OpenGL context windows, multi window support, better API)

Drawing - OpenGL. The only cross platform choice.

Sound Effects - SDL_mixer (1.64MB), want to switch over to OpenAL soon to allow pitch changing.

Image Loading - SDL_image (329k), I would switch to DevIL to allow .png saving but I can't get DevIL's pixel access function to work. Pixel access is needed for various reasons, including programatically defining a polygon around an image frame. If someone gets this to work I'll switch to DevIL
for image loading.

FreeType (368k) - The best technology in font rendering available.

-- Future Technology Implemtations --

Scripting Language - When MiniD comes around I will be using that.

Networking Library - I want to use RakNet and see it ported to D native and so does Walter! Smile If no one takes this upon themselves (I will double check before I would 'officially' start) then I would create a native D RakNet port and probably call it .... FishNet! Razz

The only problem with RakNet is the license + fee's for commercial projects. An alternative would be to use HawkNL and write my own networking routines on top of that.

Package System Library: PhysicsFS (horrible name, should be GameFS) looks promising. Maybe I will native port this thing to D.

2D Physics library: I should probably take the physics code I have graciously received and ported to D and try to make a 2D Physics API.

AI Library: After I get to play with AI enough then someday, far in the future, I should write an AI library.


Last edited by clayasaurus on Tue Jul 25, 2006 12:07 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Lutger



Joined: 25 May 2006
Posts: 91

PostPosted: Tue Jul 25, 2006 11:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Is glfw really dead? That sucks, I like it because it's so small and to the point.

Do you see any chance for some dependencies to be modular, so that if you don't use it it will not get sucked in? With what you listed right now the size of arc by dependencies alone will already be around 4 to 5 mb I think?

For example, I actually only need to load png's and have some code ported to D from someone that does it in 8Kb, it would save perhaps 300-800 Kb if I could override the texture loading function. (and not have SDL_Image or DevIL linked in).

I understand if this not a priority of yours, but I'd like to hear your take on this for the future.
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clayasaurus



Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 857

PostPosted: Tue Jul 25, 2006 12:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

GLFW isn't dead, just the author is gone and now someone else is off maintaining it.

As for modularity, adding too many options adds maintanance costs that I can not afford as a sole developer. For example I'd have to test my library with

-version=PNG_ONLY
and
-version=IMG_ALL

to make sure it works for both instances. Now imagine if I added options for
-version=GLFW
-version=SDL
-version=NO_IMAGE
-version=NO_SOUND
-version=NO_INPUT
-version=DIRECTX
-version=OPENGL

etc. This can quickly turn into a huge time waster for myself only to get a different technology that does the same thing or to save a few hundred kb, and testing my library will become harder which will effect my libraries stability.

If you want to decrease the footprint of the image loading code, then I suggest you recompile SDL_image with only support for PNG's.

If you see there is one library I'm using (such as SDL_mixer) that takes up a lot of space and know a better alternative, then I'll probably switch to that, but I will not support both at once.
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Lutger



Joined: 25 May 2006
Posts: 91

PostPosted: Tue Jul 25, 2006 3:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well yes, that sounds reasonable. I can always work something out myself if I really want to, as arc is open source and the code has a clear structure.
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JoeCoder



Joined: 29 Oct 2005
Posts: 294

PostPosted: Wed Jul 26, 2006 9:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think John Reimer's been working on a port of raknet. Could be wrong. But even still, a completely free solution would be better.
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clayasaurus



Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 857

PostPosted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 2:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

But I wonder if he is still working on it? Would be very nice if he was.
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