[tsc-devel] OpenGL vs. library

Marvin Gülker | Sat, 14 Oct 2017 19:40:45 UTC

Hi everyone,

with the programming language topic sorted out, on to the next thing,
the base dependencies. I have originally thought about using raw OpenGL
(v3+), but have -- correctly -- been met with opposition from
kirbyfan. I would really like to have some OpenGL experience, but I have
meanwhile come to the conclusion that TSC is not the correct place for
that if it ought to go anywhere anytime soon. Given my limited amount of
time available, doing everything from that far down is
problematic. Thanks to kirbyfan for putting me back on track. I will
practise elsewhere.

So, we'll use one of the game development libraries. I want to underline
however that we'll not repeat the current situation of TSC with a custom
OpenGL (2) renderer and then use a game library on top of it.

SFML is the obvious choice here as that's what currently is in use. The
relevant dependencies I can see from the Gentoo repository are:
freetype2, libpng, flac, libogg, libvorbis, openal, jpeg, virtual/opengl
(placeholder for your local OpenGL library, usually mesa on Linux). The
list looks sane to me and should be easily compilable on Windows. I can
especially assure you that freetype2 isn't difficult to compile on
Windows, as long as you disable it's optional dependency on harfbuzz. I
have had nice success on MSYS2.

Unless there are compelling reasons against using SFML, I think just
using it (correctly) is easiest and most productive.

What I would like to avoid is using CEGUI again. The library does very
well what it does, but people keep on complaining that it is difficult
to get onto the system[1]. Its dependency management is difficult indeed
-- it is *too much* modular and easy to get wrong. I personally think
that we should just code our own in-game GUI system. This keeps the
dependency list low and we actually don't use CEGUI's complex features
anyway.

Marvin

[1]: Most recent example: https://github.com/Secretchronicles/TSC/issues/617

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