Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
video card. Your customer service people will thank you if you decide to leave the
word
“
loser
”
out of the error message.
m not going to preach to you about why DirectX is unusable and why OpenGL is
God
'
s gift. Instead, I hope to give you enough knowledge about how and why you
would judge one against the other with the goal of making the best choice for your
game, your team, and the good people who will throw money at you to play your
latest game. I
'
m going
to take a weirder tack on this argument anyway. Both APIs will get you a nice-
looking game. There are plenty of middleware rendering engines that support both.
What does that tell you? It tells me that while there may be interesting bits and
pieces here and there that are unique, the basic job of pushing triangles to the video
card is essentially equivalent.
There was a time when there were marked differences in quality between OpenGL
and DirectX drivers, but those days are thankfully gone. Given that, perhaps the
best choice you can make is to go with the API that you and your fellow coders are
most comfortable with. Learning a new graphics system can be a special kind of
“
'
m sure to get lovely emails about this section. Bring it on. I
'
for some, but it is probably best to spend the time making your game fun
rather than sweating over learning DirectX if you happen to be an OpenGL guru.
fun
”
For years, I never looked farther than RAD Game Tools, Inc., for sound and video
technology. The Miles Sound System includes full source code, has a flat license fee,
and works on every platform in existence today. The Bink Video tools are cross plat-
form and support all the latest consoles, Win32, and Macintosh. Check out the latest
at
www.radgametools.com.
It doesn
t hurt that RAD has been in business since 1988
and has licensed their technology for thousands of games. They are probably the
most used middleware company in the industry.
Miles can use DirectSound as a lower layer. This is quite convenient if you want to
do some odd thing that Miles can
'
t. One nail in the coffin for DirectSound is that it
doesn
'
t include the ability to decode MP3 files. Part of your license fee for Miles pays
for a license to decode MP3s, which are a fantastic alternative to storing bloated
WAV files or weird-sounding MIDIs. You could use OGG files, which are completely
open source and unencumbered by an expensive license
'
in fact, the audio chapter
shows you how to do this. There is one great thing Miles gets you
—
—
and that
'
s
streaming. You don
'
t have to load the entire sound file in memory at once if you
