Game menu style front end

neon_eddy · 06-05-2005, 10:38 PM

you know how sweet Game menus are.. well msot times.

like the PDA screen on doom 3 .. or any of the menu's . they are fast and cool, and seem like the can hold video textures.

My idea is a front end that uses, OpenGL or DirectX as the front end. I Know 3d programming is no walk in the park, but wouldn't it be sweet to have a front end when you hit "music" it slides your old stuff away and slides in the music controls.. and then it's all offloaded onto the GPU, much like OSX's gui. Now if your graphics card stinks, you're sorta out of luck, but think of the game style effects you could do.

anyway, it's an idea.. take it/leave it.. burnanate it.

xBrady · 06-05-2005, 10:54 PM

Sounds like something I've been wanting for a long time.

foltster · 06-06-2005, 12:01 AM

This has been my dream since I started my CarPC. I've had thoughts of trying to put a 3d display system into Road Runner, but my programing skills aren't currently up to that. =/ A 3d accelerated navigation software would rock too ;]

Anybody have good DX programming skills?

This might have some potential, as flash is also able to do some pretty nice looking stuff (like game menus even, basic 3d stuff)
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/software-software-development/51753-any-flash-gurus-free-time.html

0l33l · 06-06-2005, 12:03 AM

Better start throwing those VIAs away

That would be too intensive for the run of the mill VIA setup found here

IntellaWorks · 06-06-2005, 10:42 AM

A GUI programmed correctly with DX9 or OpenGL would be fine on the VIA system, in fact Centrafuse, that I know of uses DX9 for its GUI.

neon_eddy · 06-06-2005, 11:08 AM

well event he game menus on odl games that ran on the 300MHZ machines could do nicley.. like the original UT .. and since the 3d world would be very small Iwoudl think you copuld get the textures down to 4mb or so for the full GUI ...

the one thing I'm not sure on is, could you still embed applications?.. I know sphereXP does something like that http://www.hamar.sk/sphere/

All I'm saying is, lets off load the GUI onto the GPU, free up more CPU time for other goodies, and the sweet 3d style effects.. done tastefully of course. Now I'll talk to ID games and see if they'll GPL the source for doom 3. :-)

aoLhaTer · 06-06-2005, 02:34 PM

Flash sounds like a better alternative to doing this than D3d (much simpler) and apparently thats already been worked on for RR

neon_eddy · 06-06-2005, 03:04 PM

no.. flash is CPU based.. the CPU ahs to calculate everything.. I've found doing any form of complex animation requires some good CPU horsepower..

consider the starwars gangsta rap video (flash) on a celeron 1ghz .. witht he flash covering 800x600.. you've be lucky to see 5FPS sustained..

the reason for a 3d engine is the offload to the GPU .. otherwise sure lets do a FLASH gui ..

who knows maybe I'll take up 3d game programming..

ldvtw_nos · 06-06-2005, 03:32 PM

Could you use something like 3DNA? http://www.3dna.net/

xBrady · 06-06-2005, 03:37 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by aoLhaTer

Flash sounds like a better alternative to doing this than D3d (much simpler) and apparently thats already been worked on for RR

Flash may be simpler but it isn't near as powerful.

god_of_cpu · 06-06-2005, 03:56 PM

A VIA will run a 3D front end, however, you'll max out around 24 fps on its 3D hardware and theres almost no optimization that will make it faster. Suprisingly, a fully textured 800x600 enviornment renders almost as fast as a completely blank one on a VIA GPU. This is good enough for most things like 3D NAV, mp3s etc, however, video will look very sub par when rendering directly to a DirectX texture. With a relativly cheap PCI video card like a GeForce 4 FX5200, you can easily get 60+ fps which makes the VIA fly as you offload all display processing to the GPU.

kirbycope · 06-06-2005, 06:58 PM

Try Stardock's Desktop X.

guino · 06-07-2005, 02:09 AM

Yes, it's nice to use the Graphics Card to render graphics, and I actually thought of using OpenGL/D3D, but I don't like the fact it adds up a lot to the requirements to run the software. I want to be able to run RR in my Pentium-I 200Mhz with an old Trident-VGA with no 3D whatsoever (and it does). There's nothing wrong with using the machine to it's full potential, hopefully keeping compatibility for those without the $$$ to get newer equipment -- so it just comes down to a matter of choice.

0l33l · 06-07-2005, 02:11 AM

Well, the 3d menu could be an addon, and not just the entire app build around it.

For some reason I really hate those 3d menus. They take up more time. I don't want to see a damn 2 second loading clip before I get to my music.

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