[Scummvm-devel] D2D backend

[Johannes Schickel]

On 05/02/2010 05:50 PM, David Kaplan wrote:
>
> OpenGL(ES) backend is a great idea, however D2D can do some AMAZING 
> things - especially with the DirectWrite APIs (really smooth and FAST 
> text rendering for e.g.).

Well platform specific text rendering is no advantage at all for us 
(currently) though. Our APIs do not provide any way to take advantage of 
such platform specific features. If at all that would probably be only 
an advantage for our GUI, all of the games feature custom fonts (as in 
formats, i.e. no TTF or the like), thus one would need to draw them in a 
custom manner anyway. So I do not see this as any real reason to prefer 
D2D over OpenGL.

> Also, Win7 sometimes is very quirky with other graphics APIs (such as 
> fullscreen mode issues, palette issues, and most commonly - Aero 
> issues. D2D is brand new and is likely to be a main component of all 
> future Microsoft OSes for the next few years so IMHO it's worth it.

Well I doubt Win7 is that quirky about OpenGL though. Especially since 
we would only use true/hi color OpenGL modes anyway (we actually do not 
even use palette modes in the SDL backend).

D2D being brand new makes it sound to me as if one would rather like to 
wait till things settled a bit about it, you never know when the API is 
really stable ;-).

Anyway as I said if you think it is cool, well give it a try. Whether we 
can integrate it into ScummVM later on can only be really judged after 
we see some source code etc. Personally I have no real objections 
against it, others in our team could have different opinions though.

// Johannes