On Sunday, 21 January 2024 at 01:24:22 UTC, solidstate1991 wrote:
https://github.com/ZILtoid1991/pixelperfectengine/releases/tag/v0.11.0-alpha
Two major changes are:
1) Implementation of the M2 format. Due to the lack of any
proper MIDI2.0 formats, I decided to implement my own, and also
added some additional function which allows it to be used for
adaptive soundtracks via scripting. Sometimes I call it a
"Turing-complete MIDI file" as a joke. Some functions are
missing, such as most of the macros that would allow it to
function as a de-facto high-level scripting language, with a
syntax similar to Lua, alongside with a lot of assembly-like
instructions.
2) Removal of the Lua scripting engine. It had hard-to-debug
errors, issues I resolved previously reappearing even though
the fix were still in place, etc. It'll be replaced with
something better, likely a VM that will allow it to execute
scripts written in various languages. I'd prefer to use a
preexiting VM, with QScript's VM being a potential candidate,
especially since I have other things to work on. M2 technically
has a VM, and reusing the experiences with it would be useful
for implementing my own, but I have limited time and other more
important features to implement.
The final 0.11.0 version will have:
* A better file dialog (a major headache inducing bug were
already fixed).
* Resizable windows.
* Resampling to higher sample rates.
* Better path handling (currently it's very fragile, and tries
to look for assets in whatever folder the user runs the engine
from).
* Logging.
* I'll try to replace SDL with my own solution, iota. It
already has some preliminary x11 support, legacy Windows IO
works, but it's really hard to look up stuff, and many instead
suggest people to use either some bloated libraries that
feature stuff even the C standard library has, and/or has a
very legacy-style input/output handling (DirectInput and not
rarely DirectAudio use instead of their more modern
counterparts, etc). SDL has a lot of issues with documentation,
bloat, etc.
* I'll also try to finally get the file compression for assets
working. I created the format DataPak, with has some tricks to
both speed up and lower the size compared to other solutions,
by using the dictionary compression mode of ZStandard (requires
the use of uncompressed bitmaps: compressing PNGs would be
really slow and ineffective, since they're already compressed
with the older ZLib algorithm).
Congratulations for the alpha release!
It is quite funny to understand that most game programmers starts
using D because of SDL compatibility ,which is very common and
they want to learn a language while still feeling security (no
one uses D on jobs, but people uses SDL, so I can reuse
experience in SDL for jobs), but, past some point, people just
starts dropping SDL since its difficulty to build on all
platforms, its bugs, inconsistencies, bloat and that it is in C
while you're developing in D, thus requiring a C compiler, which
will get pretty annoying (hello C for windows).
That apart, it would be really cool if we had a lightweight
solution, completely in D with only bindings to what make sense
(win32, x11, UWP, Android) and other things, like I've been doing
in my engine
