So as I mentioned a few weeks back, since November 1st I quit my job and I’ve been mainly focusing on our next game for Different Pixel.
After a month, I think so far progress has been good. I’ve been able to work almost entirely on the game itself instead of the engine because most of the stuff is stable enough since Vizati.
It’s kind of rewarding now and instead of reading tons of docs of other engines each time something doesn’t work right I usually know where the problem may be and can fix it, as good as I can at least.
A few glitches here and there but so far so good.
I’ve managed to integrate GLSL to the engine after struggling a bit on the whole OpenGL extensions concept. Querying for extensions on the hardware/driver is a bit of obscure science, but it’s just a matter looking for them before using it.
Since GLSL isn’t part of OpenGL core before GL 2 if I end up placing any shaders, on older hardware (less than GL 2) I guess I’ll fallback to just fixed function. I’m still unsure about going “OpenGL 2 hardware required”, mainly because of integrated Intel cards. From what I could gather ATI supports it since the Radeon 9500 (2002), same time as DX9, so all ATI dx9 compatible should allow GL2 too. Nvidia since GeForce 6 Series (2004) I think, Intel is a bit of a mystery to me.
I’ve also added a DirectX9 layer to the Render but it’s not finished, It’s just successfully creating the device in a window, still ignores everything the engine asks to draw. It might be a good idea in the future finishing it, if the target ends up being Windows it’s probably a better choice to use DX or maybe having an option in the game.
Oh, Git has been a life saver, seriously. Every dev should use it.
My artist has also been hard at work and so far I’m loving what’s done.
Until the next update.