quote:Original post by Dalik
You cant really get good performance with a 2d api

Oh dear, this could go on and on for ever, but I won''t start it ; )

Let''s just try to revitalize this poor forum...

I understand that you can use 3d for 2d graphics but many n00bs dont, they will use DDraw or sdl etc for there 2d games.

Also, you dont get as good performance as you do with 3d graphics, when I programmed with sdl, I did some basic stuff, and was geting about 45fps it was a pong game. Then I added fonts and it dropped to about 30. If I added about 50 chars of text the fps dropped to 20''s if I added more and more it dropped more. I didnt even bother to make it go faster. I wasnt very pleased with it. I didnt know and still dont know asm but it seemed if I had to much going on then I was getting less then 30fps, I didnt even have sound. If I turned on 32bit color at 800x600 I was in my 20''s with 3 different images.

But with 3d its much different.

Hmm a background image, three full screen alpha blended images, a thousand particles and 2700 fps in software, you just have to know how. Except, you can''t see anything then, so that figure is utterly useless =p Once I actually transfer the finished backbuffer across the agp bus and flip it onto the primary surface, I''m capped at 280 fps, and not a penny more, because of Agp transfer rate, nothing at all I can do about that, but heh, for a 2D game, I''ve got enough fps and then some.
Using stuff like sdl or Direct Draw for 2D graphics is fine, but as you say, it''s not the best...

(Oh how I miss the good old days of 2D acceleration)

as for me I dont bother trying to decided what API is best,

my engine''s core makes use of a logical interface that can be used with any 3rd Party api if an adaptor (dll) is written for it, so far it works pretty good, and no more worries about having my engine running on top of somthing that may suck in a few years=)


Raymond Jacobs,

www.EDIGames.com
www.EtherealDarkness.com

quote:Original post by Dalik
I understand that you can use 3d for 2d graphics but many n00bs dont, they will use DDraw or sdl etc for there 2d games.

Also, you dont get as good performance as you do with 3d graphics, when I programmed with sdl, I did some basic stuff, and was geting about 45fps it was a pong game. Then I added fonts and it dropped to about 30. If I added about 50 chars of text the fps dropped to 20''s if I added more and more it dropped more. I didnt even bother to make it go faster. I wasnt very pleased with it. I didnt know and still dont know asm but it seemed if I had to much going on then I was getting less then 30fps, I didnt even have sound. If I turned on 32bit color at 800x600 I was in my 20''s with 3 different images.

But with 3d its much different.

I''ve had the same experience with SDL, and CDX, I''ve since switched to my own 2d classes and I''m getting better results. The problem with SDL is that it''s designed to run on any platform, so it sometimes uses OpenGL to do the rendering.

Just a thought but how were you adding text? if you were using the GDI then that would drop your frame rate a lot as it has to lock the surface, get a DC handle, write the text, release the handle then finally unlock the surface, so if you were writing 50 chars 1 at a time, then your frame rate would be hit very hard.

When I find my code in tons of trouble,
Friends and colleages come to me,
Speaking words of wisdom:
"Write in C."

carinswm,

not sure what we can do to help, but we need to do somthing.
the turn out for this forum is pittiful, perhaps we could stage our own game contests *not sure what a prize would be*.

I think perhaps some more articles would be a good idea, here are some sudgestions based on the pits i fell into in my own development.

- my recent problem, large structures (im considering doing an article on it)

- an article that explains in depth how to properly recover from an alt-tab when using exclusive directdraw.

- an article on resource management in a 2D game engine, how to swap images in and out of VideoRam, SystemRam and VirtualRam/HDD
as well as explain models to centralize your resource loaders etc...

i think we need more articles that center around real world game development, things that you can actualy implement that are tried and true.

maybe our forum moderator has some ideas, TANSTAAFL?

all I can say is that im becoming rather disillusioned with the forum, I check it every day and im lucky if I see one new reply to an existing post, and one new post a week.



Raymond Jacobs,

www.EDIGames.com
www.EtherealDarkness.com

I used true type fonts, its one of the libs for std, that really killed my fps, I could have an avg of 10 chr showing and it hit my ftp, then I switched to a bitmap font class and was much better but was very ugly, but again I took a hit. This is with basic stuff going on, very little of it too. But I can always use 3d to make a 2d game with the 3d frames, which is good since I want more then a few objects along with sound.