Perils and pitfalls...

Well I have been reading LOADS about OpenGL lately what with creating Tombstone for us to use on all future projects. I have however come across quite a few 'omissions' from OpenGL ES (the system that mobile devices use) for one display lists are not in there you only get vertex arrays. Let me explain vertex arrays contain all the points on a 3d model so for a quad you would have all the points on the corners, this is all well and good until you see the delights of display lists.

Display lists enable the programmer to setup who macros of commands that do a simple purpose for example draw a quad with a specific texture at a certain location, this can all be 'listed' to just one list that you call with glCallList( yourListID ); unfortunately now with only vertex arrays I have to call the commands that make the object EVERY time I want to use the object so the image drawing system is about twenty lines where really one would have done it.

Rest assured tho when I port to other platforms I will be using ALL the delights of OpenGL full version not the OpenGL lite (erm ES ) version :).

Its these little things that have to be considered when writing ANYTHING for mobile platforms because it has things like 'OpenGL' in the name doesnt mean you can have Doom4 on it, maybe ten or so years time when they are really powerful and small we can but till then we have to use a system that looks in some ways Playstation 1/2 which isnt always a bad thing.

More soon...