My advice is that if your making a simple 3D game that doesn't need a lot of speed or power go with RM, otherwise learn IM; it will be more usefull to you later.
--TheGoop
RM vs IM question.
Ha! Im surprised its only %90, I was guesing it would be more like %99.9 of commercial apps used IM! Seriousely, though, IM is much faster and more versatile. Besides that work on RM has stopped, so nothing new will be added to RM. Thats not to say that RM is bad, because it does have many advantages. All i'm saying is that most developers need something more powerful than RM.
I have to agree with TheGoop here. While RM is easier to learn, and should be adequate for more simple 3d applications, if you want to do anything intense, IM is the only way to go, not only because of the speed boost, but also because you can do so much more (which is because of the extra control you have over the hardware). Furthermore, if you should ever decide to step up your game programming hobby to a profession, IM is basically your only choise, as (as far as I know) no professional game development uses RM anymore.
Peace,
-Nick
Suppose you want to make a game with a few people.
Then, STAY AWAY FROM IM. You will NEVER finish making a game. Please find a good game engine.
Another case: suppose you want to make a game engine instead of a game.
Then you should also consider OpenGL that has mush simpler interface than Direct3D Immediate mode with similar power (sometimes more powerful). Please do not forget that OpenGL can be ported to Macintosh platform much easier than Immediate mode. With Super Computer Power of Mac G4, I am sure much more people will buy Mac rather than PC clones.
Okay...you all told something, but not what the real difference is.
IM (Immediate Mode) contains less than RM (Retained Mode).
RM has a lot of advantages, so that you have to call only one function and that feature is implemented, unlike IM. In which you have to program all those features yourself.
That's the main difference.
IM is used in most of the games, though I've seen a friend of mine completing a little game using RM real fast, with a lot of features enabled. (in case you might wnder what kind of a computer (Voodoo 2, AMD 333Mzhz, 128 MB RAM).
Those are my 10 pound
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Dance with me......
quote:Then, STAY AWAY FROM IM. You will NEVER finish making a game. Please find a good game engine.
That has nothing to do with D3D Immediate Mode, it's not much harder than OpenGL anymore. Some time ago, it has been ugly (ExecuteBuffers), but now with DrawPrimitive it's quite easy. I wrote my first little engine within 3 days without any knowledge of D3D (supporting map-loader, texture-mapping, a simple bones system, ...). So the argument that D3D is hard to learn doesn't exist anymore. And do not forget, only a bit stuff in an engine is api-dependant, so you could easily port a well written engine from D3D to OpenGL within a few days, so it's IMO equal if you wanna use OpenGL or D3D IM, both are kewl, both are fast, nothing more, nothin less.
D3D RM is dead now, not supported anymore, so the real question should be Immediate Mode or D3DX Utility Lib. You can get cool stuff with both API's, IM is a bit faster than X so I'd prefer IM.
CU
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Skullpture Entertainment
#40842461
There might be misunderstanding when it is said "RM is dead."
RM application will continue working since RM will be included in future DirectX. So as long as a person does not need an additional features like multi-texturing, and as long as T&L is not popular yet, there will be still enough reasons to use RM due to easy import of models and animations.
The real time of death of RM will be probably when DirectX8 is introduced. DirectX8 is supposedly to include all features of RM and more.
In reality, the difficulty of using IM scales with how complex your 3D engine is going to be. If all you're doing is moving and rotating simple objects around the world, then IM shouldn't be too difficult to use to do what you want. If, however, you want to do very complex things like complex animation, it might be easier to go with something like RM or some other pre-build engine. The catch 22 here is that IM only provides real benefits for the more complex things.
As for the G4, I don't think it would matter if it is twice as fast as a pentium or equivalent (which it isn't). I don't see Macs ever gaining as large a slice of the market as PCs have. Not that I have anything against them really, Apple has just dug their hole too deep.
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