Re: GNUstep for games

[Ivan Vučica]

On Fri, Jul 18, 2014 at 12:13 PM, Matt Rice <ratmice@gmail.com> wrote:

FWIW, in the past i managed to get the OGRE engine running inside

NSOpenGLView in gnustep (although this required patching, initial
hacks should still be in the bug tracker)... it is possible that this
could be done with SDL as well, i'd be suprised if SDL didn't work
embedded into other toolkits anyways.  so not exactly an either or
situation.

[I presume SDL 1.2. I'm unfamiliar with details of SDL 2.0.]

SDL's primary use is precisely to get a window and read inputs. I'm not really sure I'd want to draw anything using SDL's drawing methods; the primary benefit of doing so is being able to things like SDL_VIDEO_DRIVER=aalib, which is something I don't see as compelling enough.

SDL is supposed to be the thing that provides you with an NSOpenGLView, not to draw into an NSOpenGLView. It's not an engine. OGRE is a full-fledged engine that happens to also be able to handle inputs and open windows.

Its drawing methods are mostly a leftover from we-need-to-port-DOS-games era and not-everyone-has-a-3D-accelerator era.

And as far as I am familiar with SDL's architecture, hacking SDL to draw into surfaces not managed by SDL would be... nontrivial. Among other reasons, because of SDL_VIDEO_DRIVER, which lets you draw into an aalib-managed surface (and window) as easily as into a D3D-backed surface (and a win32 window).

--

Ivan Vučica

ivan@vucica.net