SFML 3 - What is your vision?

[select_this]

Having done a quick search through Allegro's docs, I think he means alpha blending as opposed to integration with Blender 3D (which is what I thought he meant first time around).

[binary1248]

And... that is exactly what was implemented in the BlendModes branch... So he is asking for something that is already in SFML. I think he gave a lot of effort posting those 2 words.

[paupav]

Sorry Guys, At first I thought something like create stuff in Blender (open source modeling software) and to import it somehow to the SFML project (and that you could set up from which position object could be shown at particular time (of course you would set it up with sf::time and clock)). I thought that maybe idea is stupid but that was what I meant with first post. I've lowered my expectations with my second post and tried not to look so ungrateful (to expect so much) from developers.

[Jesper Juhl]

As I see it, SFML is a little too low-level to cater to that.
What you want can be done by higher level libraries that use SFML underneath.
SFML is a multimedia library, that means; get pixels on the screen, get samples onto sound cards, read events from the OS. Higher level stuff like, process this 3D model or handle this collision detection or similar is not SFML's job.
Just how I see it.

[paupav]

By my opinion it is easier to create blender object that to draw image. Also it would help a lot people that are trying to create 2.5 Dimension games (bird eye perspective games) and it would make unbelievably easier for game devs to create 2.5 D games that could rotate camera. Also maybe it would be possible to create somehow SFML editor like Unity or like some other low level game engine/ editor for non programmers to create games.

[Jesper Juhl]

SFML is not a game engine/library.

[Ricky]

(I think he wants something like Assimp or something)

Dude, SFML is not a game engine. You write the engine. Unity is not the same as SFML. SFML is a library you use to prorgam tools like Unity or whatever you desire. You can use OpenGL with SFML to get that 2.5D effect you want or hey, better yet those people that want to make games with something like Unity can go ahead and use Unity!

Anyway enough of that. Moving on?

[paupav]

As I see it, SFML is a little too low-level to cater to that.
What you want can be done by higher level libraries that use SFML underneath.
SFML is a multimedia library, that means; get pixels on the screen, get samples onto sound cards, read events from the OS. Higher level stuff like, process this 3D model or handle this collision detection or similar is not SFML's job.
Just how I see it.

Ik that, but is it possible to create object import it to the blender and render and show part of that image with pos of camera and rotation. Slow sampling could be solved by showing preview of the object that could be shown, something like preview in the blender and that developers could use  something like window.preview(blenderObjChar); and when they are happy you could use .draw() and it could sample it.

[paupav]

OK. Let's then just forget about it.
Also I've never said that SFML is engine, I've only said that it should be easier to create one.

[select_this]

Oh, so you WERE talking about Blender 3D.

That begs the question as to why Allegro named some of its alpha blending functions 'blender', but that's by the by.

Back on topic, I don't think SFML will be, or should be, providing any form of 3D format functionality unless it is to become a library for 3D applications as well. It just doesn't make sense until such a time.

I've only said that it should be easier to create one.

If it were that easy, then no one would be creating engines any more because we'd already have a perfect one.

[paupav]

Well, OP/ Admin said that we shouldn't post simple feature requests.

[Nexus]

Since several points seem to be still not clear:

• SFML is not a game engine.
• The proposals in this thread should focus on functionality that cannot easily be implemented on top of SFML, because of a limitation within SFML itself. That is, not features that can as well be part of external libraries.
• Please explain in a detailed and unambiguous way what you want to achieve, so that we don't have to ask three times.
• "Not simple" as stated by eXpl0it3r means we're not interested whether a specific function gets a new overload in a future version. This thread is about features with wider scope, possibly ones that inherently affect SFML's design.
• It would be good if you had an actual use case for your feature in mind, and not just propose something because SDL/Allegro/whatever has it.

Now there's another 15 posts bringing nothing new to the discussion. In the end it would be nice if we could go through this thread and pick the useful suggestions, but if nobody cares about how to post here, then this is going to be very tedious...

[FRex]

There is a small issue (might be a false alarm) with how SFML uses OpenAL/decoded samples, it might be of interest for 3.0 since it might require (big/breaking) API changes of sf::SoundBuffer class if it's confirmed: http://en.sfml-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=15963.0

[dk123]

Manual Context Management:

- It would be great if something along the lines of allowing the user to create an external sf::Context, and passing in a pointer to SFML for it to use for all its context related operations could be added as a new feature.

I feel that allowing the user to manage their own contexts is a much more safer and reassuring method (to the user) of going about context management than SFML internally creating and holding sole access to its context(s).

[danharibo]

Platform Library

An additional module in SFML to handle interacting with the current platform and determining the correct location for certain files.

Suggested functionality

• System CPU and Thread count
• System clipboard interaction
• Useful-but-trivial platform detection
  
  • SFML_PLATFORM_{LINUX,ANDROID,MAC,IOS,WIN32}
  • SFML_ARCH_{32,64,ARM}
• Find system paths for better platform support, see XDG basedir spec.
  
  • getUserDirectory() - "/home/user", "C:\Users\user"
  • getConfigDirectory() - "$XDG_CONFIG_HOME", "%APPDATA%"
  • getDataDirectory() - "$XDG_DATA_HOME", "%APPDATA%"