Hi,

Does anyone want to explain basically how you are using SVG files in your game development? I was wondering how practical of an option is SVG for cross-platform implementation for certain things like GUI creation.

SVG graphics are really slow to render in games. They do have uses occasionally.

I use them in maps when I need to zoom the image. You keep a crisp clean map at all levels of zoom. Doing the same with bitmap images gives you all sorts of scaling issues.

Converting filled SVG polygons to triangles is not a trivial task, but it's a task we have code libraries available for, so it's quick to implement.

Because I prefer to use Adobe Illustrator for vector art, and because the game I'm making is primarily vector-based, I export art as .svg instead of parsing .ai files. SVG files also contain lots of superfluous information in the form of XML, so I only use it as an in-between, translating it into my own data format better suited to my purposes.

Actually as long as the closed paths in your art don't have holes in the middle of them, triangulation is relatively straightforward. Ear clipping is the most common method, if you don't care about the slight performance hit.

My biggest qualm about SVG is animation support (for Illustrator at least, I can't speak for inkscape or the other vector art programs), and texturing support, primarily multitexturing. I would have liked the texturing problem to be nonexistent, but texturing everything makes the entire piece look a lot nicer :-)

So, long story short, it's a nice format for static, minimalist art, but it has serious drawbacks that should be looked at before you ditch rasterized graphics completely.

Keep in mind you can use vector just for the art side of things and export different resolutions as bitmaps if you want. You don't actually have to render as vector in game to gain benefits from it.