Re: OpenGL vs. SDL for 2D

["Vesselin Peev" <vesselinpeev@hotmail.com>]

> What are you going to be making?

Very special thing, using hand-drawn and mouse-drawn 2D graphics which I've
produced (and will continue to produce).

I've been experimenting with game design/engines for quite some time, but am
making my first steps into 3D. But I still want to make an outstanding 2D
game with good art and plenty of sprites/effects/textures since the 3D
modeling is an order of magnitude more difficult, and in many cases, it does
not make your idea better.
I have a good amount of code written for Windows, but since I consider it
_immoral_ to release a Windows-only version, what comes out of this effort
will be released initially for Linux only.

I'll be sure to set up a site after something great hopefully comes out of
my hands and is ready for play.

>  At the moment, I'd say you're
> optimizing too early.  By that I mean you don't know if you need
> whatever performance improvement you might get from OpenGL.  Wrap> the SDL
in a thin layer and then convert to OpenGL if more speed
> is needed (I'm suggesting starting with SDL simply because the
> API is simplier).  If you want high resolution and/or lots of alpha
> bending, it might be benificial to start with OpenGL since I don't
> think SDL handles those well but I could be wrong.  Another possibility
> is to modify SDL to use OpenGL so that everyone can benefit (if this
> hasn't been done).

I'm comfortable with complexity, since, as you say, I can wrap it somehow
and forget about it (to a certain extent). I'm always considering using my
own code first - if not for something else, at least for instructive
reasons, and then look for alternatives.

I'll do with 800x600 since that is the most feasible, and yes, I'll need
alpha-blending as a minimum. I think I'll put to good use what performance I
am able to drain from 3D hardware.

I am using an MMX alpha blending routine with DirectX/SDL, but I can only
imagine the speed of massively parallel 3D hardware.

Thanks for your comments and suggestions.