Irrlicht for 2D software rendering fallback?

BlitzMax Forums/BlitzMax Programming/Irrlicht for 2D software rendering fallback?

Mr. Write Errors Man (Posted 2005) [#1]

Hi Indiepath, gman and others, I have pretty much given up on SDL and am looking for other options for software renderer fallback. I played with Irrlicht for the first time yesterday and I was quite impressed with the software renderer. However, I didn't have enough time to find out how hard it would be to add all the Max2D functionality to Irrlicht. Have any of you looked into using Irrlicht for 2D software renderer fallback? Any opinions or experiences? -AF

Robert Cummings (Posted 2005) [#2]

I think the best fallback will be coded within bmax for a BlitzClassic style render driver. I don't think this should be external like a dll or anything.

Mr. Write Errors Man (Posted 2005) [#3]

I just noticed that the Irrlicht page at SourceForge says that the Software 3D Video Device is buggy. I guess we can't use Irrlicht for software fallback. Perhaps we could get the DirectX7 software renderer work decently? Didn't Indiepath try to use it, but encountered some problems?

gman (Posted 2005) [#4]

there is a new software renderer in the v0.14 release that is a full-blown software renderer. the buggy one mentioned is the original one which is still there, but i doubt will ever be completed now. im not sure why he chose to leave it in. in any case, to try out the new renderer, use the device type EDT_SOFTWARE2. as for using it as a fallback, not sure if that is the way you want to go or not if you are using regular Max2D. the main reason being you would need a good wrapped framework that either calls the Max2D or the Irrlicht versions. probably the best thing to try would be to implement a new Max2D driver using Irrlicht at its core. you would still need to create the functions to match the Max2D interface, but theoretically you could then just SetGraphicsDriver() to the Irrlicht 2D driver and everything else would just work. one issue you would run against would be transferring images from BMAX to Irrlicht. anyways, if you attempt this i would be happy to help advise/troubleshoot as much as i can. one more thing... as of this version of Irrlicht, it is not yet Mac compatible. it was postponed for v0.14 and has been rescheduled into the next release.

Mr. Write Errors Man (Posted 2005) [#5]

Thanks for your ideas and suggestions gman. And thanks for the Irrlich module as well! :) I'll give the Max2D driver thing a look. If it doesn't look like a too much of an task, then perhaps I'll go ahead and do it. :)

TartanTangerine (was Indiepath) (Posted 2005) [#6]

The software stuff was way to slow to use unless you implemented a dirty rects system. It would actually be faster to use Pixmaps and calculate Blending on the fly.