Hi,
On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 11:55 PM, René Dudfield <renesd@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
There are few people on this mailing list which have a lot of knowledge about GPU rendering, and Ian is definitely one of them. I think he was genuinely trying to be helpful. His claim isn't even controversial - GPU, ASIC, and CPU rendering all have different trade offs. As do game libraries like pygame.
On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 5:18 PM, Leif Theden <leif.theden@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Ian, you are really trying to make the case that a software renderer making simple shapes around the on the screen is better than a GPU? Why then are basically all games these days using a GPU? Please, don't answer it, because I'm not sure if you are trolling or not, and don't want to risk derailing the tread with this...honestly quite ludicrous assertion you've made. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak, and the pudding is certainly not software rendering anything.
Thanks René! And to clarify: (1) Leif, the answers to your objections are in that wall of text, which is of course why I wrote it. (2) I do not troll. (3) You're right that if hardware acceleration is off the table, then this conversation is orthogonal here. But, it's unclear to me if it
is off the table.
At the risk of over-simplification, but in the interest of moving the conversation forward, let's try to put the current issues in context. As I understand it, the proposals vis-à-vis SDL2 are:
1: Do nothing
2: (Progressively) integrate SDL2 patch into existing pygame with goal of eventual SDL1/SDL2 compile option (René and Lenard OP, many detailed variations)
3: Transition (as above or rewrite) to use SDL2 only (various)
. . . any of which implemented with the following options, which are not necessarily mutually incompatible:
A: Share/relicense pygame_sdl2
B: Expose a different API designed for performance (for graphics especially)
C: Base largely on hardware acceleration for performance
D: Expose new SDL2 features in the pygame API
. . . and under the following serious constraint, which I think is accurate:
I'll keep my opinion short: personally, I'm okay with any proposal, 1, 2, or 3, though I'd pick 3 over 2, despite being a bit dangerous. At the same time, I think option B implies we want to leave our niche (which I'm vaguely against) and option C is implausible (again, for our niche). Saving work is preferable, but otherwise I don't know enough to say anything about A. I support D.
Ian