[SDL] CSDL with quad-buffering and a seperate flip-thread

[Jason Hoffoss]

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Olofson" <david.olofson at reologica.se>
To: <sdl at libsdl.org>
Sent: Friday, March 15, 2002 7:46 AM
Subject: Re: [SDL] CSDL with quad-buffering and a seperate flip-thread


> On Friday 15 March 2002 04:02, Jason Hoffoss wrote:
> [...]
> > Why bother having the game available for Linux if it may not play well?
> > First off, maybe it will as well.  But even if not, it still has the
> > potential to if things improve enough to make it playable.
>
> I don't know about games in general, but Kobo Deluxe as well as Quake 3
> work great on Linux - although at least Kobo Deluxe is significantly
> smoother on Windows.

Games using 3D hardware aren't much of a problem I don't think.  But 2D
games are a little different story

> > Maybe just
> > the faster CPUs everyone will have will overcome the problems.
>
> No, CPU power is not an issue for most games - especially not 2D games.
> (And no, faster CPUs do not help much with the VRAM access bottleneck.)

Well, whatever.  Hardware blitting is faster than just copying memory to the
graphics screen.  If that just speeds up enough naturally to make a game
playable, improvement of Linux to use hardware features won't matter then
(for that game).  It always depends on the game in question.  A game written
3 years ago might be playable in Linux today that wasn't back then.  Etc.

I guess what I was thinking was if you are handling all your blits yourself
in code, to do special effects and whatnot perhaps, then CPU speed increase
is going to help in that case.  So again, all depends on the game in
question.  More than one way to skin a cat.

> >  Linux is a system where the people need to
> > get involved and take on some of the responsibility, rather than
> > expecting someone else (the companies owning the various softwares,
> > etc) to take care of things for you.  Anyway, these are just my
> > opinions and philosophies, and not an attack on anyone, or an attempt
> > to start flame wars, or anything else like that, so please don't take
> > it that way.  It's just something to think about is all.
>
> I would consider it a fact of the Free/Open Source model. Either way,
> nothing to start a counterproductive flame war about, indeed.

Right, but I get the feeling 99% of people are still just sitting back
expecting "someone else" is going to get involved and improve things, and
they themselves don't really need to bother.  So we are only really seeing
1% of the potential we could be seeing with it all.  Even that 1% is pretty
damn impressive, though. :)  90% would just blow us all away I think.

   -Jason