I have a seemingly endless list of libraries and tools I want, and a few I need to finish up my current project. So I\u2019ll be starting with something I need. If all goes according to plan, I\u2019ll get to start another one tomorrow.<\/p>\n
So I need a Texture Pool. In other words, I want a nice way to say \u201chey, load blah.png\u201d, and it\u2019ll use it\u2019s brains to know that I already loaded \u201cblah.png\u201d, and return me the same copy. Pretty straight forward stuff.<\/p>\n
This Texture Pool is a piece I\u2019m adding to my graphics library. Said library is designed to wrap multiple graphics API\u2019s. Currently it wraps OpenGL (1.5) and OpenGL ES (1.1), but it also has a slightly out of date software renderer too (lacking texture support, but does geometry and transformations).<\/p>\n
The Texture Pool itself I\u2019d like to eventually support several formats. Currently it supports a hybrid format of mine, LZMA\u2019d Power VR (PVR) files. The way it\u2019s structured, it\u2019s easy enough for me to support ZLIB, BZIP, or RAW PVR files as well, I just don\u2019t currently. And while I don\u2019t yet support them, I have stubs in place for PNG and DDS files.<\/p>\n
I have some other wild goals for the Texture Pool down the line. Right now, one of my main target platforms requires square power-of-two textures. So I\u2019d like to build a tool for combining multiple smaller images in to a single texture atlas. I\u2019d also like a way to automatically fatten up a PNG image file, yet still somehow remember the original dimensions. This slicing information I\u2019d like to be known by the Texture Pool, so I can draw centered or aligned texture elements with just a call, instead of having to build geometry or remember dimensions.<\/p>\n
My solution to both is a custom file format, vaguely like an archive format. As an added bonus, I want it to be able to support storing multiple images in the same file. But the important point is to create this \u201cmany to one\u201d relationship, where I have a single texture and some way to say it contains many elements. I\u2019m leaning towards throwing together a text based format and tool to generate a sliced file, so I can start using this right away.<\/p>\n
Alas, that\u2019s a tomorrow issue.<\/p>\n
Today, we\u2019re building a Texture Pool. After some breakfast, we\u2019ll do it.<\/p>\n
Tags: Pool<\/a>, Texture<\/a><\/p>","time":"September 6th, 2008 5:35 am","title":"Swimming in a texture pool"}