We are about to go ahead and write a new win32 3D racing game and the current plan is to use Open Inventor with OpenGL for the graphics and use the rest of the DX8 sdk for the other parts of the game. Is this a good idea? We have a little console app demo at the moment and I want to convert it to a win32 app, but have been getting some weird error messages. Am I right in thinking that it is not possible to use WinMain with glut? Has anyone else programmed a win32 Open Inventor program and if so can you give me some tips please?

In Order to use glut you have to usw main();...

Also, why do you want to use OpenGL and then destroy it''s neat portability feature by using DirectX? There are many very nice APIs out there that enable you to use Sound & Input cross-platform..

just my opinion...

cya,
Phil


Visit Rarebyte!
and no!, there are NO kangaroos in Austria (I got this questions a few times over in the states

I don''t see much point in making my game cross-platform. Probably 95% of gamers use windows and I''d rather write optimized code for them than write bog standard code for everyone.

Ahhhh...
Well the Linux gaming community is growing rapidly... By the time you finish your game the ratio is going to be much less.

Of course that doesn''t necessarily mean you can''t use DirectSound and DirectInput. But you should encapsulate them in a Sound and Input class of your own. There will not be very much loss of performance by wrapping the API in your own class, and then if you do decide to switch platforms later you can just rewrite those classes which normally would not add up to alot of code anyways. Sound and Input are generally cheap to implement.

Just try to stay away from using DX specific stuff in the rest of your code.

And the fact is, 95% of gamers do NOT use Windows. The majority of hardcore gamers play on consoles still and probably will for several more years atleast. If you are serious about game development you must keep those platforms in mind because they are where the money is. And they don''t use DirectX.

Seeya
Krippy

You''re right in saying consoles are where the money is but I can''t afford to buy any console development kits, and even if I could I would not write this game for them because this type of game is already too prevalent on the consoles.