Vincent_M

I've connected my games to databases in the past using HTTP requests to PHP as the middle man using libcurl and the libmysql connector. I wonder though, which would be more secure: libcurl or directly via libmysql? A direct connection means to me, that queries I send could be compromised, and TS better POSTing ambiguous data via HTTP requests a d sending the data back in a tokenized or possibly binary format.

What would be the best?

Hey Everyone,

 

Yesterday, I finally released a pre-alpha version of my engine, the Catalyst Game Engine. It's got quite a bit of work left in it, but it is possible to start developing games with it right now if you're a programmer who has some art skills or has others who can contribute their art skills!

 

This engine is designed to have only a few dependencies (FreeImage is the only one for now), so it should be relatively easy to setup. In its current state, I actively support Mac and iOS, but it should run on Windows although it hasn't been tested yet.

 

Here's the first setup tutorial for Mac:

 

Here's the second setup tutorial for iOS:

 

Here's my website where the project is being hosted:

http://www.truesoftent.com

 

There isn't a link to get the source code directly from my website (it's all filler content), but I've posted the link in the description for both video tutorials. I'll be releasing more tutorials throughout the week demonstrating other features of the game engine.

 

NOTE: I started re-working model shader library at the last minute, so although 3D model loading will work, the shaders and the uber shader management code needs to be fixed so everything renders correctly with lighting.

 

2D games, fonts and menus will work fine though.

 

 

EDIT: Here's a video demonstrating showing 3D assets from other games being loaded and rendered using my engine:

Supporting multiple libraries

I've decided to take the über shader approach. Due to this, I'm going to have all of my uniforms, attributes and varyings floating around at the top of my shader. I started using #ifdef / #endif preprocessors to check whether all this data needs to be included into the shader or not, but it gets messy quickly and difficult to read. Would it be a bad practice to just remove all of these preprocessors, and have the compiler optimize them out? Shader compilers typically do this anyway, so I would think this would possibly speed up the process since I wouldn't be including all the extra preprocessor text and those checks, right?

I'm trying to perform additive blending for my particle engine, and I'm having some issues getting this right. I'm using a 128x128 texture that's in a 32-bit R8G8B8A8 format. When I try rendering my particle with additive blending using GL_ONE for both source and destination alpha, I get flat colors with overall blending applied to it instead of blending applied from my texture. I have a screenshot showing that below. When I try using GL_SRC_ALPHA for glBlendFunc's source alpha, and GL_ONE for destination alpha, I get better results, but it's still not perfect. As the sprite particles move into themselves, you'll notice the dark, round edges of the particle cutting into adjacent particles. There's a screenshot displaying that as well. I've also attached the 32-bit RGBA texture I'm using as well. I also have GL_DEPTH_TEST disabled.

 

 

EDIT: Here's how I'm shading my sprite in the shader:

gl_FragColor = texture2D(u_texture, v_coord) * v_color;

 

v_color: vec4 vertex color

 

Here are the colors for each sprite:

 

sprite[0]->SetColor(Color32b(255, 64, 64,255));

sprite[1]->SetColor(Color32b(255, 64,255,255));

sprite[2]->SetColor(Color32b(255,255, 64,255));

sprite[3]->SetColor(Color32b( 64, 64,255,255));