Re: Obsolete libraries

["Stephen J Baker" <sjbaker@link.com>]

On Wed, 12 Mar 2003, [ISO-8859-1] Frédéric Lopez wrote:

> Le Wed, 12 Mar 2003 17:55:33 +0100
> Francesco Orsenigo <xarvh@lombardiacom.it> a écrit :
>
> > Worried about console obsolescence, i decided to switch to GLUT.
> > While crawling around the net for troubleshooting, i discovered that glut is
> > no more developed since about 2000, while the freeglut project stopped in
> > 2001.

That's not true.  freeglut had a 'lull' in development - but it's very
active right now.

However, you could consider both GLUT and freeglut "finished".  Once
a piece of software is finished, you don't expect a whole lot of traffic
on it's mailing list!

> > The question is: does it make sense to begin a project based on GLUT, or the
> > best solutions are still ALLEGRO and SDL?
> >
> > I suppose many people here are creating linux games.
> > Then i'd like to know what are they using for the basic IO.
>
> I would say Glut is best suited for demos and little proofs of concept
> than games, but I really don't know it that much.

I disagree.  I've used GLUT (and freeglut) for lots of games and game-like
things (including a multi-million dollar F16 simulator!)

GLUT is VERY simple.  That cuts both ways.

If you don't need anything fancy, it's great - there is a low learning
curve - and because GLUT is used in all the standard OpenGL books, there
are examples EVERYWHERE.  It's pretty much bug-free because it's been
around for so long...and if you have a problem, the source code is SO
simple, you can easily dive in to debug your problem with GDB or by
stuffing printf's into the source.

OTOH, if you NEED something much fancier, GLUT can be a real pain.
SDL may well be a better choice - but there is more to learn, more
to go wrong, etc, etc.

In a few places, you read that GLUT is slow.  That's an urban legend
and I can assure you it's bullshit.  If someone tells you that, hit
them with a clue-stick.  All you are likely to use GLUT for is opening
the OpenGL window, reading the keyboard and mouse.  Those are extremely
infrequent events and it matters not one jot how fast the code is because
you run it *so* rarely.

> If you want to create
> 3D games, there are some librairies availables : SDL and Allegro (with
> AllegroGL) as you said or ClanLib. There are several game engines too
> like PLIB, Crystal Space, OGRE, NeoEngine, NeL, etc. It all depends
> on what you want to do, what languages you are familiar with and which
> level of control you need on the library.

Yes - exactly.

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