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  • Resurrecting Godot 1.0 with gles1.0 driver for old computers

Hi,I've just got this crazy idea and started wondering if it could become something serious.As you know, current version of Godot requires OpenGL 2.1 as minimum.On the other hand, we still have plenty people using desktop and laptop computers with integrated Intel GPU that don't support this minimum requirement and on which Godot just crashes.For many humble projects, shaders and most modern features are not mandatory.Just with FixedMaterial, it is still possible to make beautiful and interesting games.Also, many people willing to develop Godot games or playing games on computers with old incompatible GPU just can't afford buying new modern hardware.For all these peoples and humble projects Godot 1.0 could be enough.So what do you think about resurrecting and maintaining Godot 1.0 with its gles1 driver ??

I don't know how far that it's going to get you (at least for developers) since such hardware would not be able to run much in the way of any 2D or 3D software anymore (which you need for asset creation).If you're talking about just making games compatible with legacy hardware, I don't see why someone can't make a build option that creates an .exe compatible with GLES 1 (though you should only expect to use a small subset of graphics feature).

It would likely be "less" (still a lot!) work to readd the gles1 renderer and adapt it to 2.1 than to try to maintain a two year old release.Still, I don't think it worth it for the 1 or 2% of users who don't have OpenGL 2.1 support; half of them could actually get OpenGL 2.1 by switching to Linux to use MesaGL, as old Windows drivers are notorious for having no clue about what OpenGL is (concurrent to DirectX, huh, not so willing to get it implemented even on capable hardware...).A better alternative is Ariel's current WIP ANGLE interface: https://github.com/punto-/godot/tree/angle-2.0

[quote author=Akien link=topic=15680.msg17015#msg17015 date=1467783456]A better alternative is Ariel's current WIP ANGLE interface: https://github.com/punto-/godot/tree/angle-2.0[/quote]I agree; improving the Angle backend would be much a much better way to support old iGPs with awful drivers.  There's been a huge amount of improvements to both the engine and the editor since 1.0; plus improving Angle might help porting the engine to other Windows platforms, while any mobile hardware that doesn't support GLES2 probably isn't fast enough to run the engine at all, even without fancy graphics.If you want to resurrect Godot 1.0, on top of maintaining the engine (and possibly backporting features from 2.x), you'd also have to get the old GLES1 backend working properly.  As I recall, it was barely functional and missing a lot of important features (I don't think is supported textures properly, for example, and trying to use it in the editor was a mess).

a year later

Sorry for resurrect the topic of the resurrection. Resurrection2...

I´m trying to compile godot 1.0 from source and scons throw = "building terminated because of errors". In the last paragraphs there is an rasterizer_gles2.h(52) fatal error C1083..... I compiling in WIN7 64 bit and try all the visual studio prompts. I compiled for testing godot 2.1.2 and godot 2.1.3 and it´s ok. I try to compile 1.0 stable branch and 1.0 release candidate 2 tagged branch. There is no more 1.0 branches. I put this topic because last binary compiled from godot in the web repository is godot 1.1 and I would like to do some test with godot 1.0 with gles1 (godot 1.1 only let you select gles1 for IOS, not for other platforms or the "display editor").

2 questions:

·Is posible that godot 1.0 branch repository in github be "not compilable"?

·There is some place where i can find a 32/64 bit release_debug optimiced binary (windows) from this branch?

Thanks.

5 days later

Can't you just compile Godot with Gles1 instead of rebuilding an ancient version of Godot?

Sorry for the delay... Rebuild Godot with different renderer that ones that is integrated in the code seems huge task for an novice programmer like me. I only want to do some test, if is imposible to build godot 1.0 with gles1 nothing is going to happend, no test and continue working with 2.1.3 . My main goal was compare CPU rendering with GPU rendering in a 2d game in differents computers, but it isn't a preferential work... There is to much work to do in other tasks :)