Just a hobbyist, me, with asperations to being a professional.

At the moment, I''m working on a generic tile-based engine. All the behaviours of tiles and units will be scripted, so it should be possible to run a SimCity-clone and a C&C-clone using the same program.

I''m using OpenGL, which I''ve found is so much easier than DirectX, and it''s portable.

Right now, I''m making an OOP interface to OpenGL. (I call it IGLOO, because it''s GL, object orientated)) When I''ve finished that, I''ll put the source and some documentation somewhere.


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If you''re interested in looking at OpenGL, incidentally, you can''t do much better than NeHe''s tutorials in the OpenGL articles section here on gamedev. And, if you have the MSDN, you get a competent reference of the OpenGL functions with that.


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Happily, no. Microsoft do provide a software implementation of OpenGL: indeed, when OpenGL first arrived on Windows, it hardly had any hardware support at all, so most people had no choice but to use software.

Incidentally, if you''ve seen Microsoft''s OpenGL screen savers, they use the software engine. For reasons that are unclear to me, you can''t even tell them to use any hardware you''ve got, they''re always software. Anyway, they''re about the kind of quality and speed you can expect from the software OpenGL engine.

You may find that some OpenGL games will refuse to run without an accelerator. There are some advanced OpenGL features that Microsoft''s software engine doesn''t support, but you are unlikely to need to use them. You just have to make sure that you tell Windows that it''s okay for it to use its software engine.

The only (slight) complication with OpenGL is that 2D graphics are a little more tricky than with DirectX - there''s no direct (if you''ll excuse the pun) equivalent of DirectDraw. However, I assume (haven''t checked, will do when I get home) that you can use the normal Device Context functions just like you can with DirectX.

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Well, if it ain''t broke...

IGLOO still needs to use DirectX for keyboard/mouse input, and audio output; DirectX isn''t entirely useless.

On top of that, I also want to make a version of IGLOO that uses Direct3D for any folks who don''t have GL. So, chances are I''ll still be looking into things that will interest you.

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Actually, there is a way to do "direct" drawing with OpenGL. You use a library called SDL(www.libsdl.org). Basically you can create an OpenGL canvas with it, then use SDL''s 2d graphics. I hear SDL''s API is DirectDrawish. I would not kow for sure cause I never used DirectDraw.

Using SDL is pretty much the same as using DirectDraw, or Windows'' GDI. It has the benefit of being fairly portable, but it isn''t actually part of OpenGL.

OpenGL itself isn''t good at 2D graphics, just like Direct3D isn''t good at 2D graphics. Actually, GL can do 2D vector graphics okay, but it''s not so hot at 2D raster graphics.

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