aevaFeb 20
opengl is for people who want to finish projects and vulkan is for people who are just looking for something to help their ecs framework stand out a little more
Show threadLRFeb 20

@aeva i just use SDL_gpu and Slang now. couldn't be happier.

well i could but not in a control flow based environment

Show threadaevaFeb 20
@lritter SLD3 GPU fills an important niche and i respect it. the main reasons i am not myself using it for either of my current projects is because it's not backwards compatible with enough hardware, and i can't make browser games with it. ES2 provides a very simple API and also me to support the widest variety of hardware. being a dead API like win32 also means if i write code against it, it'll work forever.
Show threadLRFeb 20

@aeva good points. maybe we'll get that ES2 support into SDL3 eventually.

what is the reason for this conservative approach? the widest support?

Show threadaevaFeb 20
@lritter you know that thing where you can't really buy a new gpu, ram, or ssd these days without paying out the nose
Show threadLRFeb 20
@aeva i see. i'm very long term oriented and i try to code for the world i want. because if the present is any indicator for the foreseeable future, then my existence makes no sense - for this eventuality, i don't need to prepare much.
Show threadaevaFeb 20
@lritter vulkan is perfect for "long term oriented" people
Show threadaeva
@lritter the other reason ES2 appeals to me at this time is its simplicity keeps me focused on the goal. if i can't think of a way to do an effect with the simple capabilities it provides, that effect gets cut.
Feb 20 at 5:08pmWeb
Show threadLRFeb 20

@aeva it's why i fell in love with GL in the first place. but my pipelines got pretty complex since then (streaming a voxel world is chonk). and any lingering state or a lack of control over scheduling only drives me up the walls anymore.

this is definitely more work. which is why i write compilers. they allow me to amp up the complexity without going mad over writing pipeline boilerplate. eventually.

Show threadaevaFeb 20
@lritter i mean that's kind of my point right, these things take time, and that's a lot for one person to do. if you had taken the desire to abandon conventional tools due to the growing complexity of the project as a sign to dramatically cut scope it's possible that you would have shipped several games by now. of course, quantity is often not a virtue.
Show threadJosh SimmonsFeb 20
@aeva @lritter if i spend too much time on my vulkan wrapper i'll never finish my ecs! it's all a terrible balance. :'(
Show threadaevaFeb 20
@lritter also i don't really want to argue for a point of view that makes me sad, but the gpu price inflation thing has been going strong for at least 10 years now, and only seems to be getting worse.
Show threadLRFeb 20
@aeva i remember the "make many claypots" speech well. but gamedev projects, they are almost all artist driven projects. of course they think this way. but i see it as an engineering project. i make the thing that makes the game. hell i can't even say if the outcome will actually be fun. i just want to make a rite of passage game that allows players to get at least twice as much out of the rest of their life. no... that's not it. it allows young men to learn from mistakes.
Show threadLRFeb 20

@aeva to learn from a mistake they have to own all choices that led up to it. they must experience, delivered by an impartial system, the logical consequences of a harmful action and its greater implication for society, so they know any excuse is impossible, and then never do it in real life.

artists try to do this with storytelling. the fail state is: "what do artists know? it's just an opinion. it's just a story. i will stick to math. if it can be done it will be done."

Show threadaevaFeb 20
@lritter as it happens I have an art degree and am "bad at math"
Show threadLRFeb 20
@aeva then i am not afraid of you ;-)
Show threadaevaFeb 20
@lritter rawr XD
Show threadLRFeb 20
@aeva i was bad at math also until i dropped out and took acid and this made me so curious... i wanted to know *everything*. so when i continued school i decided i'd be into math now. chew through it. there's always more math. fuck is there a lot of math. stick to a use! WHY do you need this... to blow them all away of course. long live the demoscene, sole designer of my curriculum.
Show threadLRFeb 20
@aeva anyway this crap is really hard and had i known before i would have never done it. but making progress is my passion. 😭
Show threadLRFeb 20

@aeva and for some things, it is maybe ok to think so. when it is about our all survival, for example. but almost always it is important to consider the human in this.

we keep showing humans as they are in art, but then we activate sexual perception also. so we must disguise the human as alien to be able to see their inside.

but what have games done for modeling the psyche of humans? very little. creatures. milo. end of list.