As I've been doing a lot of research to create new OpenGLES3.x systems and at the same time prepping my students to do a Pi4 project this year, I have decided to roll the research and student project into making a full scale freeware game..

I'd like to update my webpage to show this but as I've just completed a transition to a new PC i dont' currently have the tools in place to do that, but will sort it soon..

Details of the project are on my Patreon page at www.patreon.com/BrianBeuken 

If you would like to support this, please sign up, even a few dollars can make a difference.


I won't post too much on here until its done but when it is complete I'll use make the key componants available and useable for readers to build their own content.

I've been looking for some nice models on line to do a tutorial on model rendering and shading, and found these lovely things
This is just diffuse and ambient, going to add normal mapping, emissions and specularity. Might even tinker with a bit of PBR since I got the contet
I had to buy these, I don't normalluy but my own attemps are not great.

I also got some smashing lower res models also with mapping textures that will look very good when I take the demo a bit further.

I have a very bad habit... when defining classes in C++ I often just put the label and type... This is usually ok, since I seldom write release builds.

The reason there's a difference is that in debug builds the compiler usually nulls all variables and clears memory to 0..release builds don't, memory is as it is when it fires up.

Usually.

I discovered the compiler on the Arm64 Jetson doesn't.......

And it took me 6 hours to work out why, in a demo I was workig on that worked perfectly on 8 other machines, only the Jetson redused to display the 1st of 4 test models........


I had not 0'd a rotation Vec3, and in the update of the model I was rotating assuming 0.....


Bad habits only get broken when you make bad mistakes.... 6 hours though...ooooff.. I should know better.

I have now put default values in all class varibles in the class define.

bugger... oh well I got it from a proper supplier, so sending a return request.

I realize this is a bit last minute, but there will be an INSERT COIN Pleasure Dome Watch Party via the Alamo Drafthouse On-Demand Virtual Theater experience. INSERT  COIN Pleasure Dome Watch Part
https://ondemand.drafthouse.com/film/ins...gon-qanda/

INSERT COIN is a documentary about the Chicago's Midway Games from the Arcade days where games such as Robotron,2084, Mortal Kombat, and NBA Jam.  The doc was create by filmmaker Joshua Tsui and the Watch party is hosted by Polyon.
https://www.polygon.com/2020/11/24/21611...atch-panel

More Info:
https://www.insertcoindoc.com/

I still like to use free and functional libs even if a little old so long as they still serve their funtion I'm happy. So while looking into doing a network project, I reviewed what some of my students did a while back producing Battlehips. Its a great game and cross platform. One of the most complete examples of cross platform work I've ever had from 1st years.

And they used RakNet for networking. A nice lib I have used many times in the past, which was originally free or low cost for indie developers when I was coding in anger. Its since been bought out by Oculus as they wanted to develop networking libs, which in turn meant it was bought out by Facebook.

And Facebook did something nice, they made it freely available to all via a git hub so we can all use it.
https://github.com/facebookarchive/RakNet

As its not been touched for a long time there are a couple of quite minor issues with it, mainly because modern compilers don't like a particular line in ReplayManager3.cpp which needs to be edited so that line 141 where it says  == false is changed to == nullptr

There's a few steps to this, in a console on your SBC enter

sudo apt-get install cmake -y
git clone https://github.com/facebookarchive/RakNet.git /home/pi/RakNet
cd
cmake .


now open up a text editor on your system and do theedit to ReplayManager3,  oh and this is important, if you are using a 64bit OS you do also need to comment out line 24 of FileList.cpp, or it won't build on Arch64

once you've made and saved the edits go back to your console and do this
make
make install

And its built, you'll get a few warnings but it wil be ok, if your system throws out an error though, we might be stuck, let me know. Next move the lib into a more useful space on your system using these console commands

sudo mv Lib/LibStatic/libRakNetLibStatic.a /usr/local/lib
sudo mv include/raknet /usr/local/include/

Done.. you can keep the source and build files if you want but they don't get used, you've sent the important files to your system, and can be incorporated into your project

You can remove with this command.

rm -rf /home/pi/RakNet

This will be covered in some demos I am doing but its useful for older code too. Full2D Text display can be a bit tricky on C++ GPU projects but there's a nice library that lets us do quite a lot, to install the libs you do need to build it so here are the steps

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tinker...-announced

hmmm I really like the Tinkerboard, its a very solid, well made and impressive bit of kit... and about 10 people own one.. user forums are empty and Asus don't even list it in their main website you have to search for it. Its a tumbleweed system if ever I saw one.

Its surprising that Asus even want to bring out a new one, but I guess they feel it will work and thats nice to see. Though you can't even find any content on this new board on their website.. The support just doesn't match the technical skill they have in making them.


But we'll see, all the RK3399 boards I use so far are excellent  graphic system and have great performance for most thigns. This may be too.. Not going to rush out to buy one but will have a tinker (geddit?) at some pont.

I like this idea very much

https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/ras...rType=home


Having it as a complete system makes it almost plug and play, that will certainly encourage a few technophobes. Its also overclocked to 1.8Ghz thats quite a boost, I hope the cooling is up to it.. I'll have to buy one to test... (for research purposes of course)

I do think they've missed a trick by keeping the micro HDMI ports, they should have gone full size, but at least a cable is supplied.

I'm rather hoping they do a pro version with 8GB and a mech keyboard with full sized HDMI for under 150, that will be something to see..taking us right back to the 80's home computer days.

Now this is interesting, I was asking about the >512MB bug on the Pi4, that causes it to be unstable, and it turns out it may well be becuase I've totallly misunderstood the purpose of the GPU allocation of GPU on Pi4 as indeed have many others

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewt...3#p1730493

Unlike the Pi3 and before, the Pi4 allocates its memory dynamcally as it needs it..which is wonderful.. the config allocation is really only to set up how much memory you give to the camera, codecs and other things... so that setting  can actually be quite low.. I thought that like the Pi3 it was giving the GPU a memory pool to work from, its not the case.

When running the GPU should grab what it needs from the overall memory shared with the CPU In theory up to 1GB which is as much as the GPU can actually address, though in practice it crashes over 800mb. Which kinda explains why >512 crashes, if you give the internal systems 512 as soon as you start to do anything yourself thats remotely graphical, you're pushing up near that 800mb total, where bad things happen....though why bad things should ever happen is a mystery to me.

so.. thats quite interesting but not at all a well explained process...
Set your GPU memory quite low on a Pi 4 and you actually are giving your GPU more of that 1GB address (800mb in reality) to play with....very counter intuative.