Re: [AD] OpenGL

["Kirk Black" <runesabre@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm developing a commercial cross-platform MMO game that uses Allegro for
the client on Windows, Mac and Linux.

The Windows client graphics are rendered as smooth as glass when the
character moves around the screen.  Even on a Win98 machine I built 8 years
ago, the game runs very smoothly and looks beautiful.

Unfortunately, the Mac and Linux client graphics are not nearly as smooth
looking.  The frame rate is plenty fine ( I'm getting over 200+ fps on Linux
), but, the screen still looks fuzzy when scrolled; I assume due to the fact
that Linux or Mac Allegro don't support hardware page flipping.

Will the new Allegro provide true hardware page flipping on Mac or Linux?

It would also be nice to know at runtime what Allegro features are truly
implemented versus just emulated (like video bitmaps or show_video_bitmap).
Emulation is nice, but, often times doesn't produce the results you were
expecting.  

Knowing at runtime what features are real versus emulated allows me to build
a client that is able to dynamically respond on a per machine basis the best
way to operate.  This helps immensely in releasing a product that "just
works" on every customer's computer without clunky config options and
forcing the customer to have to figure out the best way to configure their
installation.


Kirk Black
President / Owner
Family Time! Interactive, L.L.C.
Mobile: 512.771.5762
Email: runesabre@xxxxxxxxxx
-----Original Message-----
From: alleg-developers-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:alleg-developers-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Elias
Pschernig
Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2006 6:44 AM
To: Coordination of admins/developers of the game programming library
Allegro
Subject: [AD] OpenGL

What are the plans for 4.3 OpenGL?

Does it seam feasible to somehow merge in all of AllegroGL, just so we
have working OpenGL again in 4.3, and then worry about refining this to
a new graphics driver structure later?

Or is it maybe better to start a clean OpenGL driver from scratch?

The former probably would be rather messy, but once it compiles, would
mean we get all the features already in AllegroGL. The latter means,
we'd initially start with only a minimal implementation, and then would
need to add the required features again step by step (probably peeking
at the AllegroGL code).

What I expect in the end is, that I simply can do:

display = al_create_display(640, 480, AL_AUTODETECT, AL_OPENGL);
glClearColor(0, 0, 1, 1);
glClear();
al_flip_display(display);

Each graphics driver would have a capability flag telling if it can
provide an OpenGL context or not. And graphics drivers would see in
their initialization function if OpenGL is requested, and initialize an
OpenGL context if so.

-- 
Elias Pschernig


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