GAPI

[James S]

but that still uses GAPI. I mean something to take the place of GAPI that works on all devices under one build.

Meh, it's just a pipe dream. These are all proprietary PDA's after all. And why do we even play games on them anyway!?

[Johan]

It would do little good to create a 1:1 DirectDraw port without the proper hardware to support it...

What's really needed now is a device with a large enough frame buffer that supports hardware masked blits. Since each screen is 240x320x16bit = 150kb, both display and back buffer requires at least 300kb of space.

The latest ATI chip only has 384 kb or so available, which is too little to be of any real use. This is one reason why Microsoft simply cannot transfer DirectDraw to the PocketPC. No hardware support exists, and it's unlikely it will arrive within the next 6 months as well.

Going 100% Direct3D (which may be supported on some CE.net platforms - my guess is that some of the tablets will have it) is also not the way to go for 2D. Several graphics cards (such as the GeForce2MX) have issues with large texture transfers (something which is necessary if a full screen 2D image needs to be updated >30 fps). So even if it's perfectly possible to create 2D with Direct3D, it is not designed for it and will probably have issues.

Right now the best advice is to use a third party library such as PocketFrog or GapiDraw. GapiDraw will have hardware accelerated masked blits in the next version, PocketFrog will have some kind of hardware support in 1.0 or later.

/Johan

[sponge]

Well, games ARE what drive most markets forward, so it's a good thing for PPC too.

[Digby]