The Many Problems With OpenGL

[GreatEmerald]

If you only need textured squares, why are you using OpenGL at all? Couldn't this easily be achieved without a GL API on any even slightly modern hardware? My programming experience is limited, but I've at least made basic colored and textures shapes in my limited experience with C/C++. Wouldn't that leave OpenGL for more high performance 3D applications, then?

Well, they are rather special textured squares: they are scaled textured squares, so that the game would not be stuck at a set resolution. The game was written with SDL functions before, but they are so rudimentary they don't support scaling. I also use a procedural gradient texture (well, it's the two top square vertices given a different colour than the bottom two) for the background, which is another thing SDL can't do.

Ideally it would be in a userspace library, yes, but at the moment they aren't...

[BlackStar]

Well, they are rather special textured squares: they are scaled textured squares, so that the game would not be stuck at a set resolution. The game was written with SDL functions before, but they are so rudimentary they don't support scaling. I also use a procedural gradient texture (well, it's the two top square vertices given a different colour than the bottom two) for the background, which is another thing SDL can't do.

Ideally it would be in a userspace library, yes, but at the moment they aren't...

SDL2 supports scaling and hardware acceleration.

That said, yes, the approach you are using is reasonable. Your OpenGL 1.x commands are translated to shaders by the driver automatically (so the emulation layer you were talking about already exists, it's hidden inside your OpenGL drivers.)

Modern hardware simply doesn't support fixed-function functionality, so emulating that with shaders is the only way you can implement OpenGL 1.x on new GPUs (were "new" is >2004 or so.) The problem with that is that a complete OpenGL implementation requires you to emulate hundreds of OpenGL 1.x functions that are simply not that useful anymore. Not an exaggeration: the complete OpenGL spec has (IIRC) 2659 different functions as of May 2014. This makes drivers extremely difficult to implement, as well as buggy and unstable.

A clean start is looking mighty attractive once you spend some time working with OpenGL... I, for one, would fully support an initiative starting from the open-source developers of intel, nouveau and radeon.

[a user]

microsoft advantage at least on XP, is that microsoft engineering makes simple and flexible what linux makes complex and rigid.

you either never worked with window (xp) apis or you are a masochist. you basically saay the absolut opposite of the truth.

regarding directX... considering that only directx got feedback and help from game developers there is no wonder that opengl is somewhat behind. this is not a merit of the ms devs but rather of the fact that it has been used for that and thus in a process of feedback and contribution enhanced for this specific purpose. nothing special here.

[Azrael5]

you either never worked with window (xp) apis or you are a masochist. you basically saay the absolut opposite of the truth.

regarding directX... considering that only directx got feedback and help from game developers there is no wonder that opengl is somewhat behind. this is not a merit of the ms devs but rather of the fact that it has been used for that and thus in a process of feedback and contribution enhanced for this specific purpose. nothing special here.

if opengl is so adaptive why so much difference between owner and open drivers on the same devices? I don't say opengl is waste but I say opengl currently is a rigid unreliable and less versatile than drectX. Linux is improving now in ACPI features for example... making better hardware responsiveness... that's a fact. That's means also that linux has potential which microsoft has not. And that's good... because otherwise many users will abandon linux for microsoft proposals. Here we have to use reason much more than emotion. Problems occurred make better the final result.

[johnc]

Devs had been nut-hugging MS for so long that OGL and other tech withered on the vine. Now with the breakout of mobile devices and SteamOS, etc., devs are scrambling to target alternative platforms, and finding that the years of neglect need to be undone. Hopefully a lesson was learned here.

Frankly, these two screeds didn't come off on me too well. I develop software for a living myself. The fact is, everything sucks. It's just part of the job. I understand his frustration boiling over but to the unwashed masses it does not present Valve in a good way. After the big Steam Dev Days and talk about how open platforms are the wave of the future and everyone follow us along this wonderful journey -- and here you have one of the top guys who ported Source ripping OGL pretty hard. A bystander reading this thing would definitely not have warm feelings about any potential Steam Machines coming down the pipe.

Nor does Valve give the impression that they write impeccable software either. (I'm being charitable here.) As I said, I know how the business goes and there's no such thing as bug-free software. But they took a guy who built his career at MS and asked him to port some 5-yo games and the Source engine using a to-GL translation layer. What could possibly go wrong?

And his fascination with Mantle / D3D12? Explain it to me. Mantle works on one piece of hardware and one OS only. And we don't know anything about D3D12 yet and he's already singing its praises. Look at any AAA PC game released on D3D... it's a trainwreck for at least a few months (e.g., BF4) until all the bugs get worked out.

I'm sure he has a lot of valid points but some of it reminds me of those old "anti-Java" rants you'd read about every now and then. "I'm used to C++ so Java sucks."

[Marc Driftmeyer]

Devs had been nut-hugging MS for so long that OGL and other tech withered on the vine. Now with the breakout of mobile devices and SteamOS, etc., devs are scrambling to target alternative platforms, and finding that the years of neglect need to be undone. Hopefully a lesson was learned here.

Frankly, these two screeds didn't come off on me too well. I develop software for a living myself. The fact is, everything sucks. It's just part of the job. I understand his frustration boiling over but to the unwashed masses it does not present Valve in a good way. After the big Steam Dev Days and talk about how open platforms are the wave of the future and everyone follow us along this wonderful journey -- and here you have one of the top guys who ported Source ripping OGL pretty hard. A bystander reading this thing would definitely not have warm feelings about any potential Steam Machines coming down the pipe.

Nor does Valve give the impression that they write impeccable software either. (I'm being charitable here.) As I said, I know how the business goes and there's no such thing as bug-free software. But they took a guy who built his career at MS and asked him to port some 5-yo games and the Source engine using a to-GL translation layer. What could possibly go wrong?

And his fascination with Mantle / D3D12? Explain it to me. Mantle works on one piece of hardware and one OS only. And we don't know anything about D3D12 yet and he's already singing its praises. Look at any AAA PC game released on D3D... it's a trainwreck for at least a few months (e.g., BF4) until all the bugs get worked out.

I'm sure he has a lot of valid points but some of it reminds me of those old "anti-Java" rants you'd read about every now and then. "I'm used to C++ so Java sucks."

Bingo!

[dee.]

Rich wants to dump said cruft in favour of a modern, simpler API. Remove all the old, "legacy" stuff, the "compatibility" modes and so on to create a leaner, simpler API.

So... he wants to create another GL ES?

[b15hop]

Devs had been nut-hugging MS for so long that OGL and other tech withered on the vine. Now with the breakout of mobile devices and SteamOS, etc., devs are scrambling to target alternative platforms, and finding that the years of neglect need to be undone. Hopefully a lesson was learned here.

Frankly, these two screeds didn't come off on me too well. I develop software for a living myself. The fact is, everything sucks. It's just part of the job. I understand his frustration boiling over but to the unwashed masses it does not present Valve in a good way. After the big Steam Dev Days and talk about how open platforms are the wave of the future and everyone follow us along this wonderful journey -- and here you have one of the top guys who ported Source ripping OGL pretty hard. A bystander reading this thing would definitely not have warm feelings about any potential Steam Machines coming down the pipe.

Nor does Valve give the impression that they write impeccable software either. (I'm being charitable here.) As I said, I know how the business goes and there's no such thing as bug-free software. But they took a guy who built his career at MS and asked him to port some 5-yo games and the Source engine using a to-GL translation layer. What could possibly go wrong?

And his fascination with Mantle / D3D12? Explain it to me. Mantle works on one piece of hardware and one OS only. And we don't know anything about D3D12 yet and he's already singing its praises. Look at any AAA PC game released on D3D... it's a trainwreck for at least a few months (e.g., BF4) until all the bugs get worked out.

I'm sure he has a lot of valid points but some of it reminds me of those old "anti-Java" rants you'd read about every now and then. "I'm used to C++ so Java sucks."

I've heard of OpenGL developers complain a lot about D3D. So I kind of feel like he's just all cosy with what he knows and realises he had it easy for so long. DirectX has improved at a rate of light speed and OpenGL has definitely withered away. That is a big no no with technology. People move on very fast. Even the so called god of OpenGL, John Carmack is starting to sway towards DirectX.

I also believe that maybe he should have stuck to OpenGL ES. Maybe he's got no choice? If OpenGL removed a pile of cruft with ES then why did he bother with OGL 4.x ?

The driver complaints are also a problem on Windows let alone any other platform. Drivers have had issue for the last 20 years... Not just recently. Maybe he's just getting sick of coding and needs a break.

[peterp77]

Devs had been nut-hugging MS for so long that OGL and other tech withered on the vine. Now with the breakout of mobile devices and SteamOS, etc., devs are scrambling to target alternative platforms, and finding that the years of neglect need to be undone. Hopefully a lesson was learned here.

Frankly, these two screeds didn't come off on me too well. I develop software for a living myself. The fact is, everything sucks. It's just part of the job. I understand his frustration boiling over but to the unwashed masses it does not present Valve in a good way. After the big Steam Dev Days and talk about how open platforms are the wave of the future and everyone follow us along this wonderful journey -- and here you have one of the top guys who ported Source ripping OGL pretty hard. A bystander reading this thing would definitely not have warm feelings about any potential Steam Machines coming down the pipe.

Nor does Valve give the impression that they write impeccable software either. (I'm being charitable here.) As I said, I know how the business goes and there's no such thing as bug-free software. But they took a guy who built his career at MS and asked him to port some 5-yo games and the Source engine using a to-GL translation layer. What could possibly go wrong?

And his fascination with Mantle / D3D12? Explain it to me. Mantle works on one piece of hardware and one OS only. And we don't know anything about D3D12 yet and he's already singing its praises. Look at any AAA PC game released on D3D... it's a trainwreck for at least a few months (e.g., BF4) until all the bugs get worked out.

I'm sure he has a lot of valid points but some of it reminds me of those old "anti-Java" rants you'd read about every now and then. "I'm used to C++ so Java sucks."

It didn't come off on me to well either. Lots of work is being done to improve OGL and there's massive potential in using OGL as explained at the Steam Dev Days and now this guy comes along and publicly trashes it. No doubt this would have been music to Microsoft's ears and I doubt that his bosses at Valve would have been impressed.

If he has frustrations in using OGL perhaps he should have conveyed his thoughts privately to the Khronos group instead.

[Azrael5]

Kronos developers should be involved on porting and games because they know better opengl platform and can fix problems with more competence, probably it's also true that an engineer experienced in directx is not able to manage opengl as well because of its forma mentis (mindset).