It has come to my understanding many times that SFML is a OpenGL inspired multimedia library, and I accept this as I find OpenGL a much more solid structured library to work with when it comes to graphics not to mention that fact that is multiplatform compatible, I.E Windows, *Nix and Mac.
However I have hit a snag at porting my 3D engine to the Microsoft XBOX360 game console, see Microsoft is the proud producer of Direct3D and they decided to keep OpenGL based applications from running as official released games on their platform. So I have performed what any sane man could attempt, recreate a context using the WinAPI and Direct3D, however this is far from anything sane, considering I still have to process events, input, not to mention SFML only has a OpenGL shader system and texture loader / binder plus the sprite system and a umpteen of other things that are OpenGL only.
So I was considering the possibility of abstracting the OpenGL stuff into it's own class that can inherit a RendererOpenGL or RendererD3D class to perform it's hard work, I've looked at the code base a few times and 99% of the work is done, the window handle and context is all there and because of this a simple Direct3D option could be a toggleable option using a preprocessor directive such as #define SFML_OPENGL or #define SFML_DIRECT3D. In addition the Music / Network systems don't even have to be touched, since the music uses OpenAL which is perfectly fine as a stand alone things and the Network system again applies. As for texture loading and mapping you can just wrap those up and write alternatives, or even use some stuff found in DirectX, but I rather you stayed away from the entire library because it changes too often to keep up with.
I would be glad to help you do this, I have already done this a few times myself for game engine ports, I just wish you could use a more 'open' version control like git ( see
www.github.com ). So I'm just going to ask do you want another developer to help you with Direct3D support. Please note that it will not break any cross platform compatibility it's just an option for those on Windows or are developing for Microsoft's game console, in addition it would introduce a lot more Direct3D fan boys, and would probably help with game console support once others see such feature.
What do you think, the context is there, the process events are there the network, sound, music, and system core's don't need to be touched the only thing that needs to be changes is the graphics area by abstracting everything and using those and then everything itself can be changed in only 4 files, 2.hpp and 2.cpp a set for OpenGL and a set for Direct3D, I would be glad to help, I'm around all the time, let me know what you think.
Show Posts