Messages

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General discussions / Re: SFML 3 - What is your vision?

« on: May 08, 2014, 06:54:29 pm »

If you've seen GOG.com and their community voting each idea has a vote counter and then comments. I don't know if there are any easy to deploy options for this but it may be an option. It gives people the ability to easily search and add features and discuss them.

With that option each feature would have it's own discussion so that items are not lost in the shuffle.

But in the end it's about creating a useful tool within the constraints of the development teams time and effort. Even GOG has features that have been sitting at number one for a long time but they haven't had the time, power (man or influence), or some other reason to add them. I'm sure we all understand that we are using a library created by people volunteering their time and effort.

I'll admit when I looked at this thread I only looked at the first couple of a pages before replying. It's become rather larger and hard to get started on if you jump into the mix now.

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Window / Re: Modern OpenGL for Windows

« on: May 08, 2014, 05:33:24 pm »

OpenGL will reign supreme again. Just like before DX9 came out.

I still think that Linux will see more adoption, especially once SteamOS is out of beta.

Either way I will continue to focus on OpenGL and Linux. I'm not a fan or Mac of Windows.

But back to the original question +1 for core profile support in SFML 

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General discussions / Re: SFML 3 - What is your vision?

« on: May 08, 2014, 05:29:08 pm »

I'm wondering if it wouldn't be helpful to find another way to gather all the feature requests into an area people can vote on. Like GOG.com does with their community. It would still be up to the developers but I think that would help point the library in a direction that benefits the most people.

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General discussions / Re: SFML 3 - What is your vision?

« on: May 08, 2014, 04:54:23 pm »

As seen here we don't have the money to do that.

I didn't mean SFML do it directly. I'm mean people outside the dev team put out bounties, just like the commercial support option. We obviously can't enforce any of that but maybe by mentioning it in the forum it will be brought to the attention of people who are looking for certain fixes or features.

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General discussions / Re: SFML 3 - What is your vision?

« on: May 08, 2014, 04:21:37 pm »

I think that commercial support would greatly help, even if it isn't on the scale of Valve and SDL. Competition is healthy and SDL and SFML do similar things but with different goals. I was using GLFW before I came to SFML but I made the switch because SFML will save me some time on my current project.

I don't know how popular https://www.bountysource.com/ is but it could benefit SFML if people are willing to put bounties on bugs and features. Might get us to version 3.0 a little sooner

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Window / Re: Modern OpenGL for Windows

« on: May 08, 2014, 04:16:02 pm »

If only the CryEngine would run on OpenGL... Maybe AMD/Nvidia would actually care more about supporting it for gaming...

Ah but it is going to http://crytek.com/news/conference-attendees-can-also-see-a-brand-new-mobile-game-extra-engine-updates-and-much-more-at-crytek-s-booth

Pretty much all the major engine announced Linux support this year. Most are coming out with native SDKs as well. Expect much to change in the Linux driver and gaming sector in the next year.

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Window / Re: Modern OpenGL for Windows

« on: May 07, 2014, 10:58:08 pm »

Yeah mesa is always behind but they are moving a lot faster now that linux is getting more gaming attention. I missed the part where they planned to implement compatibility profile.

As for the performance, I've read that using the core profile automatically increases performance in OGL because of the reduced overhead. At least that is what Graham Sellers states in the OGL Super Bible.

I'm not writing anything so intense that I need to edge out as much performance as possible, I just like to use the most efficient methods heh. But many people probably can't even see a performance difference between core and compatibility, unless it's Crysis 3

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SFML projects / Re: Squeak

« on: May 07, 2014, 10:53:15 pm »

Is there any noticeable delay with this? I see in the video when you make some rapid movements the cursor software cursor lags a little? When it lags do the clicks and position reflect the current position of the software or hardware mouse?

Otherwise it looks very nice.

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Window / Re: Modern OpenGL for Windows

« on: May 07, 2014, 10:07:49 pm »

Does anyone have a neat little hack to get a 3.2+ core context for windows? I'd like to use SFML for Window Management/Sound/Networking. I'm quite comfortable with writing my own OpenGL code.

I got it to work on OS X and linux, but I can't get it to work on windows. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Did you get the actual core profile or just OGL 3.2/3.3? Like binary1248 says, they don't have the ability to specify a profile. The other question would be if you did get the core profile what GPU are you using?

There are subtle differences between a true core context and a compatibility context, but nothing that should make people worry about not wanting a compatibility context..

Doesn't the performance automatically increase when you specify a core profile over compatibility? Also I believe mesa on Linux doesn't do compatibility with anything above 3.2. I could be wrong but when I tried to use use compatibility profile with OGL 3.3 mesa would crash.

Yeah if you look at the release notes http://mesa3d.org/relnotes/10.0.html it states that compatibility context isn't supported.

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General discussions / Re: Question on donations

« on: May 07, 2014, 06:20:16 pm »

First let's make things clear: we're not talking about big numbers

So yes, it mainly pays the website hosting, and I've also bought one or two things (like an ATI graphics card -- only got nVidia ones) to help for the development of SFML.

As long as those donations get put to good use and help keep things going, or make it easier, I'm happy. Might have to switch my recurring donation from ToME to you guys since I don't have much time to game lately.

Making games FTW 

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General discussions / Question on donations

« on: May 07, 2014, 05:58:56 pm »

I wanted to ask how donations for SFML are used. I've read that some projects get funds but never use it because they don't what to do with it.

Do the devs get paid? Is it just for keeping the site running? Is it used for new hardware?

Mainly curious because I want make sure that if I donate to the project, that my donation is actually helpful.

12

Feature requests / Re: Window preventing from screensaver or monitor powersave

« on: May 07, 2014, 03:45:32 am »

Might require a bit of work on Linux. I know there is xscreensaver but I'm not sure about the API for any others. I remember when Dungeon Defenders was ported and they made use of the gnome-screensaver API. It caused a lot of problems for people not running gnome.

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General discussions / Re: SFML 3 - What is your vision?

« on: May 06, 2014, 11:36:15 pm »

Well slotdev you pointed out the flaw in my assumptions. I don't think about all the industries that some of these libraries are used in. I tend to stay in my confined game programming bubble.

When you step outside the boundaries of game development then the range of hardware you have to support varies greatly.

But I think binary1248 put the argument to rest by saying that the man power and work required to abstract out the graphics section isn't a concern. I just want to make sure that we can continue to advance without stretching the resources too thin.

If I can have the option to use the core profile for the graphics module I'll be happy (not just creating the context but the built in hardware acceleration as well). For me legacy support isn't a concern like it would be for developers like slotdev.

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General discussions / Re: SFML 3 - What is your vision?

« on: May 06, 2014, 09:09:21 pm »

I disagree - there are still a huge number of PCs out there with "legacy" OGL. Implement the new features of 3.3+ by all means, and allow people to use them, but don't break it for people who don't have modern systems.

If you watch Valve during the Steam Dev Days their hardware survey shows very little legacy hardware out there. Unless you are dealing with Intel cards that are pre 2012 then you'll have core profile support.

If SFML does hardware acceleration off the bat then I'm guessing they have OGL code in use. If you allow the foundation to switch between core profile and legacy then they need to maintain multiple back-ends. Why wouldn't it work to just use SFML < 3.0 for legacy stuff?

It's also been stated that SFML 3.0 is a ways out. Are you saying that by the time 3.0 comes out you are still going to be dealing with a "huge" number of people who can only run OGL 2.1?

To me it doesn't make sense to push for newer technology but leave some parts old because some people might need it. I would think it would be easier to back port some bug fixes to the 2.x branch and make 3.x completely modern.

I realize right now there is probably a lot of people with pre 2012 Intel GPUs, but we are talking the future. It would be naive to think people won't ever upgrade their hardware, let alone people who play games.

If SFML doesn't have any OGL code in use then specifying the context is good enough. It only matters if they use OGL code for the graphics module. If they don't then this whole post is moot.

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General discussions / Re: SFML 3 - What is your vision?

« on: May 06, 2014, 06:46:22 pm »

I'm just getting started with SFML but I'll put in my 2 cents so far.

C++11 required
OpenGL 3.2+ Core Profile (for desktop OGL).

Both of those offer performance improvements right off the bat. Mesa already has OGL 3.3 support so I think it's getting to that time when we drop legacy OGL and compatibility profiles.