Messages

31

Feature requests / Mechanism to detect Intel cards

« on: October 12, 2011, 06:26:34 pm »

I think we should rather attempt to fix the issues with Intel cards...

That would be the best way. I just want this feature as a workaround until that happens.

32

Feature requests / Mechanism to detect Intel cards

« on: October 12, 2011, 05:45:58 pm »

I've been having trouble with intel cards so my game currently has two modes - with rendertextures and without rendertextures.
I can easily toggle on and off the RenderTextures, so I'd like to deactivate them only on Intel cards, since those seem to be the cards with problems.
I'd like SFML(and SFML.Net) to provide a call like "IsIntelGPU" or something like that, so that I could selectively enable some features.

33

DotNet / Suggestion: Show warning when resource is not disposed

« on: October 12, 2011, 03:24:44 pm »

It's possible I'm overstating problems with SFML because I'm currently having severe problems(segfaults) in SFML.NET in a tester's computer(which I have no direct access to) and no way to replicate the results on my own machine.

Since the code seems correct, the only source of errors I could possibly think of would be some problem is memory release(the bugs themselves appear at completely weird locations, such as target.Draw(someRectangle), where both target and someRectangle definitively should be valid instances). If you are saying disposal couldn't ever cause corrupt memory, then I'm back at the speculation board.

34

DotNet / Suggestion: Show warning when resource is not disposed

« on: October 12, 2011, 02:14:52 pm »

The GC is non-deterministic. It does dispose, but possibly not at the right time.
SFML is sensitive about this(for instance, if the user has multiple OpenGL contexts), so a GC triggered at the wrong time can easily crash an application.
Also, in the sample code I provided, the user would be explicitly saying that non-disposed objects were logic errors, so if an user doesn't consider non-disposed resources to be bad, then that user wouldn't receive any warnings about that.

35

DotNet / Suggestion: Show warning when resource is not disposed

« on: October 11, 2011, 10:55:07 pm »

Then what about

Code: [Select]


SFMLConfig.EnableDisposingWarnings = true; //false by default


36

DotNet / Suggestion: Show warning when resource is not disposed

« on: October 11, 2011, 07:57:22 pm »

In SFML.Net, not disposing resources can have horrible effects on both performance AND stability of the program.

What I'm suggesting is this, using the dispose finalizers(see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/b1yfkh5e.aspx for examples), add a check that, if a resource is being garbage collected without having been previously disposed, then add a Console.WriteLine warning about it(possibly with a stack trace?)
In my opinion, this would be helpful and assist in the development of more stable SFML.Net code.

37

SFML projects / My SFML game - Terrena (alpha 10)

« on: October 11, 2011, 05:14:40 pm »

I'm going to simplify some things but, right now, to move a unit, double click the tile with it, select the unit card, and press the arrow button.

38

SFML projects / My SFML game - Terrena (alpha 10)

« on: October 10, 2011, 11:04:31 pm »

I think it's fixed it now. Please try again

39

SFML projects / My SFML game - Terrena (alpha 10)

« on: October 10, 2011, 08:23:59 pm »

I've decided to publish an alpha version of my own (SFML 2.0/.NET-based) game.
It's called Terrena.

It is a strategy game that mixes TCG(trading card games) with board games.
Each player has a deck and a hand, and places them on the board, expanding his/her territory, with the goal of conquering the capitals of enemy players, while preventing the enemies from doing the same.

In Terrena, the board starts mostly empty so each player has a very customizable landscape. Different types of terrain have different costs to place on the board, and also give different type of resources. Additionally, unit cards are used to conquer and defend terrain tiles.
Finally, events/magics allow players to do special actions such as destroying enemy terrain.

Requires .NET 4.0(tested on Linux/Mono 2.10). SFML libraries come included in the ZIP. Not tested on Windows but it should work. Not tested on Mac OS X at all. Might work with the proper libraries.
Also, despite being 2D, it seems to be rather slow. On my PC, it sometimes gets only 10FPS. I'm hoping the new drawing API will improve things.
It also fails miserably on Intel GPUs with no FBO support.

It's an early version so expect the game to be unbalanced and some of the textures not to be perfect. The final version will hopefully offer more variety.
Feedback is welcome.



Download:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6459451/Terrena-a10.zip

EDIT:
Alpha 10 version is available(link above)
Game should now work on .NET 3.5, there are some image improvements, the game now works better on Intel GPUs, a few settings were added and the game is now (I hope) a bit easier to understand for beginners.

40

Feature requests / Simple way to merge textures

« on: October 06, 2011, 06:51:29 pm »

luiscubal's idea is (if I understand correctly) to define an API that would help gathering several separate textures into one, for performances reasons.

Yes, that's it.

How would the texture-pack handle a modification in one of its textures? How would it even know about it?

Whichever way is easiest for the person who'd end up implementing that class.
One could say that the textures are copied(and so changes would be ignored), or maybe "lock" all base textures, or even say that it is undefined behavior.
Or maybe even the data would have to be all passed to the constructor directly, so there could be no way to even change the base textures.

41

Feature requests / Simple way to merge textures

« on: October 06, 2011, 06:25:34 pm »

Apparently, the new SFML 2 Graphics API will allow things to "batch" multiple drawing calls, provided they use the same texture.

The trick I'm proposing is to have a new class, such as TexturePack, to "pack" many textures in a single one. These textures would have a bunch of shared properties(for instance, either they are all smooth or none of them are smooth).

The idea is that, internally, SFML would merge all textures into a single bigger one(with perhaps each texture having a border to ensure that smoothing wouldn't pick parts of the other textures). Internally, it would be a single texture so many calls using it could be batched. The public API would be like handling multiple textures.

Of course, using TexturePacks incorrectly would cause *worse* performance, so it really needs to be a separate class and not a built-in Texture feature. This could perhaps come in a later SFML version(such as 2.x), since it seems like the kind of thing that shouldn't be too hard to add once the basic graphics API is done.

What do you think?

42

General discussions / The new graphics API in SFML 2

« on: October 01, 2011, 01:21:57 am »

I believe some graphics cards support using multiple textures at once. It would be neat to have a SFML method like "GetMaximumNumberOfSimultaneousTextures"(with a better name). Then one would use this number to use multiple textures at once and improve batching. Wouldn't this improve the performance?

Perhaps preferably, SFML could automatically batch things internally, so all this would merely be an implementation detail and the programmer would be blissfully unaware of any batching at all.

So, if a GPU only supports one texture at a time.

1. UseTexture1
2. UseTexture1
3. UseText1
4. UseTexture2

In the above case, SFML would automatically batch 1 and 2 together, but not 3 and 4.

P.S: I know that I've suggested multiple textures support on Mesh before, but here what I have in mind is slightly different. Instead of using multiple textures for improved visuals, it'd be for improved speed. I'm not even considering how to implement this stuff in terms of Meshes.

43

Graphics / [SFML2] Bounding boxes around sf::Text characters

« on: September 27, 2011, 03:15:56 pm »

This issue doesn't seem to be exclusive of Mac OS X.
I've had a very similar problem - text with bounding boxes appearing on some characters -  on Linux(I don't remember if it also happened on Windows).
Sadly, I don't know any workarounds.

44

General discussions / The new graphics API in SFML 2

« on: September 18, 2011, 05:09:56 pm »

There's a forth option:
To have a SetTransformCombinationMode(pick better name), to choose which(or what combination) of transforms should be used. But this might even add further to the confusion.
Another variant of this is EnableHighLevelTransforms(again, pick better name).

45

General discussions / The new graphics API in SFML 2

« on: September 17, 2011, 01:34:58 pm »

Add further functions, instead of having to GetTransform and SetTransform on the render target you have a MultiplyTransform, like how OpenGL have. Or you have PopTransform and PushTransform.

Assuming both would have their own transforms(which I'm not 100% sure is the best approach), maybe SetTransformMode(enum TransformMode), where TransformMode can be Inherit, Override or Multiply?

I also feel tempted to suggest not having a global transform at all, and instead let only meshes, sprites, etc. have transforms, though I admit it might not be the simplest-to-use approach.