Messages

1

SFML projects / sfFlash - Flash UI for SFML

« on: October 05, 2011, 06:34:05 am »

It would play, but the performance will not be great. Rendering is quite unoptimized now. If you want video, I recommend sfml theora. IIRC there is also a tutorial in the wiki on ffmpeg

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SFML projects / sfFlash - Flash UI for SFML

« on: April 04, 2011, 03:40:57 pm »

Last time I tried, everything display correctly.
Can you send me your flash movie?

Anyway, you won't be able to play a complex movie with decent framerate with the current implementation. May be PBO can speed it up.

This is just a hobby project of mine and I don't think I will update it any time soon. If you have any questions regarding the implementation, just ask me.

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General discussions / How low-level can SFML be?

« on: June 16, 2010, 08:23:27 pm »

If you are trying to do effects like HDR or motion blur and image data does not need to be persisted on hard-drive, I suggest using shader and Render-To-Texture. All manipulations will be done on the GPU so it is faster because you don't have to do the RAM <-> VRAM transfer.

You have to learn GLSL though. It is pretty similar to C and you can really manipulate individual pixels.

4

General discussions / Game Maker flooding the market with crap?

« on: June 16, 2010, 08:15:06 pm »

SFML makes it too easy to make games with C++, remember kids: use OpenGL directly, don't use craps like SFML. What kind of crap is that? You load sprite with one statement?

Unreal Engine is another piece of crap, you can create such a big world which run smoothly with just some drag and drop? Blasphemy!!! UnrealScript? What kind of scripting crap is that?

OK, enough joke.

Although GameMaker has a weak rendering and audio engine and a super slow script engine, it's a newbie friendly package.

GameMaker actually have a script language. The script language resembles C++. And script languages only differs from C++ because they are interpreted by a VM. Languages are just a way of expressing algorithm, no matter what language you use, you must still learn the algorithm, understand it and write it in your language. I don't see how this encourage half-assed development. (GameMaker does have built-in A* path-finding and quick-sort, but they're the only algorithm that is built-in)

The engine itself does not come with any template (although now you can find many on their forum)

But it doesn't help that Game Maker runs like shit on my PC.

The guy who created that particular game sucks, that's all. Give him C++ he will still create a game that run like shit or may even format your hard drive or crash you OS.

I mean whats the point in learning C++ if I can just drag and drop crap like PhotoShop and make a game.

You cannot achieve anything decent if you rely on drag&drop. You have to use its script language, which is not that much different from C++. Chances are the creator of such game himself can not even tolerate his own creation and will not publish it.

If you are talking about the level editor, how else can you create a level but drag and drop? Do you actually want to code a level  :wink:  (just kidding)

Ah, the level editor. GM is like a Visual Studio for games. It comes with a decent level editor, a sprite/animation editor, a script editor with code completion and highlighting; and of course, a basic debugger with watch and log. You don't have to go and download tools separately, they all come in one package. Newcomers don't have to worry about "exporting" to "compatible formats".

Kids, stop using Visual Studio, go download the GCC toolchain, debug with Insight now!!! (OK, i'll stop the lame jokes). And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying GCC is bad, I just prefer the Visual Studio debugger, hover your mouse over a variable and it shows the value

GameMaker actually introduce newbies with a lot of programming concept. There is OOP with single inheritance, virtual method, reflection. There is hard-code vs data-driven and a lot more.

Try Spelunky http://www.spelunkyworld.com/ , a platform game with roguelike elements made with GameMaker. Run decently on my computer.

It is a pity that GameMaker has such a horrible back-end.

5

General discussions / Project CAMP - open-source reflection library for C++

« on: June 16, 2010, 07:39:23 pm »

This looks great.

Thanks for another great library. At first, I thought "No, not another code parser" but I was wrong.

This is nothing new, other scripting engines have done it before but CAMP does it nicely and in a more generic way.

I am still somewhat confused on how you would use CAMP with a scripting language such as lua.

CAMP acts as a bridge between C++ and lua. Of course, you still have to write some glue code.

It can be used like this:

For example if your lua scripts call a function like "shootMonster()".
You bind a generic C++ function to that.
The generic function looks up all registered C++ functions in CAMP and finds whether there is a function named "shootMonster". If there is, it is called, if not, an error is returned.

Hm, well I know.. I think my problem is that I'm not used to deal with dynamic structure Wink, I'm not seeing where/what dynamic variety can I add to my code that I can't do statically with abstract classes

When you bind anything static to something dynamic like a string or number, you just did a bit of reflection. Just think about how a game editor is implemented:

When you select an object in an editor, the editor must call a method like "queryProperties" which returns a set of properties that object has so that it can populate the property panel.

The return value is something like a list of properties:

1) HP , set it with method setHP, at address ..., get it with method getHP at address ...
2) Mana = 20, set it with ... etc

The editor will store these properties name in a hash table and map it with its respective getter/setter... so that it knows what method to call
In the end, this is what CAMP does. Instead of doing it before hand, you do it "on-the-fly".

And how do you implement the "queryProperties()" method?

Mapping a list of getter/setter pointers to the string name of the properites??? Isn't it reflection? Isnt it what CAMP does?  :wink: [/quote]

6

SFML projects / Zion (tactical RPG)

« on: April 25, 2010, 03:31:30 pm »

Why C:\ ? Can you just use relative path?

Hmm, fallout-like combat and cyberpunk. This sounds promising.

7

SFML projects / sfFlash - Flash UI for SFML

« on: April 24, 2010, 06:20:09 pm »

Update:

-SFML 2.0 support
-A Simple GUIManager class

8

Graphics / PBO Drawbacks and Implementation ?

« on: April 16, 2010, 01:34:00 pm »

I think he means things like playing video onto a sprite

9

General / Anyone need automatisation for putting sprites in 1 file?

« on: April 15, 2010, 12:11:59 pm »

I use graphic gale for sprites:
http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/

The free version of this tool is good enough.
It has onion skin support so you don't really have to worry much about wrong character placement between frames.

I also use this and paint.NET together to reformat ripped sprites from classic games as most ripped sprites are not properly aligned to be used in game.

10

SFML projects / Vector Math Library

« on: April 11, 2010, 04:05:41 pm »

Any chance for SSE support?  :wink:

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General discussions / SFML 2.0

« on: April 11, 2010, 01:18:40 pm »

I suggest adding some method to the Renderer to support vertex arrays too. That should further reduce driver calls.

The Renderer will soon become "fat".  But you can't really have both speed and simplicity at the same time.

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Graphics / [mostly solved]Clear() for sprites/images too?

« on: April 11, 2010, 08:52:24 am »

The question is what OpenGL/SFML does for drawing/clean up.

For cleaning up: You can have a look at RenderTarget.cpp. It calls glClear, which basically fill a color across the backbuffer.
For drawing: It uses the 3D hardware to draw a textured quad. The whole copying of pixels, rotating, scaling ... is left to the GPU.

When you are blitting the pixels are copied into an image to give the appearance of a stack. If you don't copy clear (or bg colored) pixels into the image than it remains 'dirty'.

You can choose not to call Clear. Instead, you can draw a blank image on top of the part you need to clear. However, I recommend using an sf::RenderImage

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SFML projects / sfFlash - Flash UI for SFML

« on: April 09, 2010, 06:56:03 pm »

SFML 2 doesn't allow custom OpenGL rendering in drawables anymore

All I did was calling an sf::Image::Bind() and update it with glTexSubImage2D.
The updated image is rendered through a sprite.
There's no custom OpenGL rendering. It should be OK right?

But why is custom OpenGL rendering disabled? How to create custom drawables then?

Try to go through SFML2.0, you can use RenderImages (using FBO or PBuffers) to draw SWFs!

PBuffer disallows GDI rendering on it.
FBO doesn't really help me much.
Currently, the performance is still acceptable if there's not too much animations that leads to big dirty areas. This should be the case for most GUI control.
Dont plan to embed a flash game though.

14

Graphics / Huge slowdown when drawing

« on: April 09, 2010, 04:24:40 pm »

Try sfml 2.0. 1.x does a lot of useless state change when drawing sprites.

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General discussions / sf::Rect modifications in SFML 2 (important!)

« on: April 09, 2010, 03:31:35 pm »

Why the sudden change from bottom, right to width height? I though it was OK.