[Mesa-dev] Gallium3D and Glide

[Blaž Tomažič]

Hi Mesa developers,

I am really interested in Gallium3D and I'm thinking about a project for
my diploma (I think this is the same as bachelor's degree) on a computer
university. I'm thinking about writing a Glide state tracker for
Gallium3D. I know that Glide hasn't been used for a decade, but I think
it would be relatively "easy" to implement an old 3D API and a great way
to learn a part of Gallium3D on the way.

Some old games (only Glide: Need for Speed 2; Glide and OpenGL: Unreal,
Quake 2) used Glide API for rendering and Gallium3D could therefore
accelerate them on newer hardware and more importantly, render them with
nicer graphics instead of software rendering as is with some glide only
games. I don't know if there were any Linux games, but Gallium3D works
on Windows too if I'm not mistaken.

So I have a few question for you:
 - How hard and how much work would be involved in implementing such an
API? (Any help on implementing it would be welcomed and appreciated of
course)
 - Are Glide to OpenGL wrappers a better solution because of changing
nature of Gallium3D interface? (Personally I think they are, but I would
like to work directly on Gallium)
 - Do you think this project would fit well in Gallium3D or do you have
any other/better proposals for a project including Gallium3D?


Thank you for your answers,
Blaž Tomažič