5 ms·
SDL2 is the API
by voltagex_ 9y ago
SDL2 is the API
- foota 9y agoTrue, I guess I meant a rasterization library. It looked like they were mostly using SDL2 for interfacing with the OS and blitting to the screen. (and to be more specific I really meant without opengl|directx|vulcan etc)
- white-flame 9y agoGiven that the original game predated those sorts of systems hitting consumer desktops by years, it shouldn't be surprising at all. This is what early 3d games & software rendering did before accelerators came along, and as CPUs got faster in that interim there were plenty of fully polygonal software rendered engines as well.
- mhd 9y agoInteresting how meaning changes. Back when Wolfenstein was made, "without a graphics API" just meant mov ax, 13h int 10h
- Gnurou 9y ago... and even there you were using a graphics api, provided by your video card's bios and compatible across various manufacturers.
- Koshkin 9y agoNot really - you'd be mostly just writing into the video buffer.
- TickleSteve 9y agoint10h is the API (BIOS)... that just causes the mode switch. What he really meant (direct RAM access): void putpixel_13h(int x, int y, int color) { _farpokeb(_dos_ds, 0xA0000+y*320+x, color); }
- Koshkin 9y agoYeah, but nobody does that.
- pedrow 9y agoI wonder how many polygons make up a level of Wolfenstein in total - i.e. if you just asked a modern GPU to render every single wall in a level and relied on it to do the z-order sorting, culling, etc., what frame rate would you get?
- animal531 9y agoI'd guess that if you were to triangulate an average map it might have probably been only in the region of 1-10k triangles. Modern graphics cards on the other hand can easily push a few million triangles every frame with decent framerates. At 10k triangles * 10 or 20 maps you could load all maps from the game simultaneously and still easily get decent fps.