What's cool about this is that computers are so fast that you could probably make a decent 2D game using only this software-rendered OpenGL 1.1 library.
If you keep resolution low, manage your scene complexity carefully and commit to the art style, you can make reasonable 3D games that run even on 20 year old hardware. I did so as an experiment on my game [1] [2] and now that I can see that it works, I am working on a second, more "serious" and complete one. Computers are fast.
Edit: I missed this was software rendered. I’m one gen-iteration ahead. Prob would still be possible to render my game cpu side provided I use the most efficient sprite depth ordering algorithm possible (my game is isometric pixel art like rollercoaster tycoon)
Ha! That’s what I’m stuck with for Metropolis 1998. I have to use the ancient OpenGL fixed function pipeline (thankfully I discovered an AB extension function in the gl.h file that allows addition fields to be passed to the GPU).
I’m using SFML for the graphics framework which I think is OpenGL 1.x
Basically the idea is to throw away yet again the current set of execution pipelines, and have only two kinds of shaders, mesh shaders which are general purpose compute units that can be combined together, and task shaders which have the role to orchestrate the execution of mesh shaders.
So basically you can write graphics algorithms like in the software rendering days, with whatever approach one decides to do, without having to try to fit them into the traditional GPU pipeline, yet running on the graphics card instead of the GPU.
This is how approaches like Nanite came to be as well.
Straight facts, thank you:) but one small nitpick: mesh/task shading only replaces the vertex pipeline (VS/TS/GS), the pixel shader is still a thing afterwards...
