[$300] #146 | Complete OpenGL 3 Support | Requires: #148

[Eric.B]

Price: $300

Description: When OSX support forced us to upgrade the game engine to 64-bit, I had intended to add an OpenGL3 Renderer option to the game.

I was able to implement most of the renderer, but shader generation for QuickGUI failed. I threw a day or two at it but gave up because I was rushing to get the 64-bit build released.

This bounty will give me a few days to write a test case and fix the shader generation issues with QuickGUI. Additionally, I'll have to see if there are any other issues with the game and this rendering system.

Requirements: #148

Required By: #147, #149, #150

Concerns: There is a small probability that this bounty will fail. Although, I am more likely to use the bounty funds to pay for Ogre3D support if I can not solve the issue. Shaders are not my thing.

This bounty will almost likely cost me more money than the amount of time and effort it will take to fix.

Eric's Opinion: This bounty would somewhat modernize our rendering systems. That means better driver support on many hardware, fewer crashes, etc. This opens the door for me to push users to the OpenGL system again. Some of the benefits for DX9 users would be no alt-tab crashes, the ability to run turns without window focus, and resizable report windows.

It also opens the possibility of a DX11 renderer, software renderer, and maybe even modernized shader systems for our new vehicle designer.

Because of all this, I have discounted the bounty in the hopes that it gets funded.

Links: It doesn't happen unless you contribute!

[Eric.B]

I cleared out the major blocker this evening. Neither shadows nor compositors work, but the game and GUI system now runs with OpenGL 3.3+ on Linux. I'll fix up the shadows and compositors and then port it to Windows, then Mac. Hopefully it's a no headaches job.

[Eric.B]

OpenGL3 port is completely functional in Linux.

I'm going to clean up the files a little and get rid of any extra stuff. Then begin the Windows porting process. Since I suspect the OpenGL3 port to run better, I will probably bump the Windows port back up to Ogre 14. But we'll see.

[Eric.B]

The good news, OpenGL3 renderer now works in Windows.

The bad news, it doesn't fix the video memory leak issues in Ogre3d.

So, I will spend a few more days debugging this issue.

[Eric.B]

Found the root cause of the leak in Ogre3D. Fixing that breaks font rendering in the GUI library.

So, I have spent the last few nights working on that. Tonight is the last night I am going to throw at fixing UI fonts. Succeed or fail, I will move on to getting OpenGL3 working on MacOS. If I get that done before Friday night, I'll spend any remaining time trying to repair Windows' issue.

[Eric.B]

I could not fix QuickGUI's font system to work with our fonts and modern Ogre's lack of font handling. However, I was able to track down the video memory leak in Windows and fix it.

So, OpenGL3 should now work in Windows, and there shouldn't be a video memory leak in OpenGL2 or OpenGL3.

Hopefully Mac won't be as much of a headache.

[Eric.B]

A friendly reminder of how much I loath working on modern Macs, but I got it done! RTSS GLSL is throwing odd errors here and there on Mac, but the program seems to work fine.

Right now Mac's minimum requirements is OpenGL 4.1. I believe all Macs able to run the minimum OS requirements already meet that minimum API requirement. But I will double check tomorrow. I might be able to lower it a little.

(Linux and Windows requires OpenGL 3.1)

I need to clean up the MacOS port code a little and merge all three ports together. But I am marking this bounty done. It took 13 days and approximately 62 hours. Roughly $4.83/hr, roughly $3 less than federal minimum wage. And I still have 13 bounties to do... and some folks wonder why I'm not too happy about our art situation.