How good and complete is pspgl or is there something better?

reefbarman · Post by **reefbarman** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 3:33 pm

Hi,

Im looking for the best way to program 3d apps on the psp, i have experience with opengl and thats why im interested in how complete and close pspgl is to that of opengl or is there something better and easier to do 3d on the psp??

cheers

Tristan

J.F. · Post by **J.F.** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 5:01 pm

Best is something almost impossible to say. You need to determine how closely a rendering engine's features match what you want to do.

Two other rendering engines are:
triEngine - clicky
LTE Game Engine - clicky

LTE is a port of an older version of Irrlicht (1.3 IIRC). Both of those are actually game engines - they have more than just 3D rendering, so in that respect they are better than PSPGL.

Raphael · Post by **Raphael** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 8:40 pm

pspGL isn't really complete, it provides most of the basic functionality, but if you need anything advanced you'll probably soon hit the roof and need to go the direct anyway (one thing I remember being QUAD rendering not supported - not sure if that has already been fixed or not).

If you have knowledge in OpenGL, you won't have any problems learning directly using the GU (see pspgu.h and you'll know what I mean - the interface is very close to that of OpenGL). The only thing it's really missing is texture management.

And yes, the two engines named by J.F. provide a layer on top of pspgu as well as other aspects of game programming (image loading/sound/net/input/etc). It depends on your needs if you want to use one of them or just use pspgu. LTE engine is probably one level higher in abstraction than triEngine, as it provides scene management and such, which triEngine currently doesn't. On the other hand, LTE engine wasn't specifically written for PSP like triEngine - it's a port of a game engine that was mainly aimed at PC hardware.

J.F. · Post by **J.F.** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 6:23 am

Last I checked the code, QUADs were in PSPGL. That was added because EVERYTHING these days uses them.

Anyway, in terms of complexity and abstraction, you could stack them like this: LTE > triEngine > PSPGL > GU.

reefbarman · Post by **reefbarman** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 5:38 pm

by the sounds of things i may give triengine a go first and see if it provides me with what i need cause im planing to make a multi platform game but coding each differently dosen't matter as long as i can get the same final result

J.F. · Post by **J.F.** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 9:14 pm

reefbarman wrote:by the sounds of things i may give triengine a go first and see if it provides me with what i need cause im planing to make a multi platform game but coding each differently dosen't matter as long as i can get the same final result

Well, since LTE is just irrlicht, and since irrlicht is cross-platform, that might be better for a cross-platform project. The changes needed for LTE vs irrlicht would probably be pretty simple to handle. All the LTE folks did was change the prefix on the irrlicht function names. You should be able to make defines that use one name for irrlicht on other platforms, and LTE on the PSP.