So yeah, sorry if this seems sudden, but it seems like I won't be able to do any serious work on this for a much longer period than I anticipated. I guess I could wait, but I don't want to hold up the project, as there seem to be plenty of other programmers who want to work on this. I just won't be able to do it at this time.
That's why I'm hesitant to commit to the project. I don't know if I'd be able to carry it through by working in my free time. This is really a huge project. It can be pulled off, but requires a lot of up-front investment when designing the thing. Where as you can very quickly get some prototype quality code done in XNA or even something like MMF.
Good god, are you stupid? Direct 3d is windows-only, by what definition is that portable? I suppose it might be possible to port it to Dreamcast and pocket PC, but that's it.
I'll reiterate -- if we keep the graphics engine separate enough (from the main engine), we can implement several rendering methods, D3D, OpenGL, WinGDI, wxwidgets, whatever.
Why Direct3D anyway? There is no 3D involved with this (except for maybe the Special Stage)... Or did I miss the post where we switched from S2HD to S3DHD?
And on the same note: what is "? 360 degree rotation for slopes and loops (optionally enabled or disabled)" I never quite understood what this goal is?
In simple terms, rendering textures with Direct3D or OpenGL is really goddamn fast. You don't have to transform points into 3D space with either API, allowing you to reap the benefits of hardware accelerated rendering. You also get sub-pixel rendering, scaling, rotation, texture filtering, alpha-blending, screen-resolution independence all for free.
The various Sonic animations on the Genesis had only 8 possible angles (with a step of 45 degrees), chosen according to the steepness of the slope you are running on. Newer Sonic games have a real-time rotation system that allows for rotations of any amount of degrees. Here they are debating about the chance to keep the original behaviour or take the "enhanced" route. I am definitely for the "classic" feel.
You guys are making a big deal out of nothing... DX/GL are used for 3D - yes, but they can be used to draw 2D. Duh Effects like blending + sprite smoothing are done in no time compared to drawing things using a software blitter
Funroll Loops and SANiK: thanks. I didn't know that D3D could also render to 2D. Now I'm going to switch it back in all my emulators (mame and so on). Yes, I actually thought that D3D was a second choice after regular DirectX. You know I suck when it comes to newer technologies, I am oldschool...
You're not going to see a big change when using it in emulators. Emulators are going to do all composting in a texture buffer first before rendering the final image, because older games weren't written with a modern 3D API. You might get better scaling and maybe some novelty post-processing effects.
