diff README.md @ 655:53e08e6c5ae6

did: a bit of cleanup with the config, also add some documentation
author Sam <sam@basx.dev>
date Sun, 07 May 2023 00:23:46 +0700
parents 4374c13b9b95
children e4ba91da416b
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line diff
--- a/README.md	Sun May 07 00:22:58 2023 +0700
+++ b/README.md	Sun May 07 00:23:46 2023 +0700
@@ -19,9 +19,8 @@
 Roadmap
 -------
 
-Still tons to do. Making render pipeline and scenegraph somewhat compatible
-seems like it will require quite a bit more of work. Also, audio might require
-quite a bit of work, no experience there (note: audio was super easy to implement)
+Here a bit to see what has been planed and what is done already. Is being
+updated frequently (marking those checkboxes just feels to good to stop working).
 
 Rendering:
 
@@ -31,11 +30,14 @@
 - [x] Per-instance vertex attributes (required to be able to draw scene graph)
 - [x] Fixed framerate
 - [x] Instanced drawing (currently can use instance attributes, but we only support a single instance per draw call)
-- [ ] Textures
+- [x] Textures
+- [ ] Multisampling
+- [ ] Allow different shaders (ie pipelines) for different meshes
+
+Required for 3D rendering:
+
 - [ ] Depth buffering
 - [ ] Mipmaps 
-- [ ] Multisampling 
-- [ ] Allow different shaders (ie pipelines) for different meshes
 
 Asset handling:
 - [ ] Resource concept: load from directory, zip or in-memory-zip, select "mod" as root
@@ -58,7 +60,7 @@
 - [ ] Generic configuration concept (engine defaults, per-user, etc)
 - [ ] Input-mapping configuration
 - [ ] Telemetry
-    - [ ] Add simple event logging service
+    - [x] Add simple event logging service
     - [ ] Add exception reporting
 - [ ] Documentation?
 
@@ -78,3 +80,94 @@
 
 Build-system:
 - [x] move all of Makefile to config.nims
+
+
+Documentation
+=============
+
+Okay, here is first quick-n-dirty documentation, the only purpose to organize my thoughts a bit.
+
+Engine parts
+------------
+
+Currently we have at least the following:
+
+- Rendering: rendering.nim vulkan/*
+- Scene graph: entity.nim
+- Audio: audio.nim audiotypes.nim
+- Input: events.nim
+- Settings: settings.nim
+- Meshes: mesh.nim
+- Math: math/*
+- Telemetry: telemetry.nim (wip)
+- Resources/mods: resources.nim (wip)
+
+Got you: Everything is wip, but (wip) here means work has not started yet.
+
+Configuration
+-------------
+
+Or: How to organize s**t that is not code
+
+Not sure why, but this feels super important to get done right. The engine is
+being designed with a library-mindset, not a framework mindset. And with that,
+ensuring the configuration of the build, runtime and settings in general
+becomes a bit less straight-forward.
+
+So here is the idea: There are three to four different kinds of configurations
+that the engine should be able to handle:
+
+1. Build configuration: Engine version, project name, log level, etc.
+2. Runtime engine/project settings: Video/audio settings, telemetry, log-output, etc.
+3. Mods: Different sets of assets and configuration to allow easy testing of different scenarios
+4. Save data: Saving world state of the game
+
+Okay, let's look at each of those and how I plan to implement them:
+
+**1. Build configuration**
+
+
+**2. Runtime settings**
+
+This is mostly implemented already. I am using the Nim module std/parsecfg.
+There is also the option to watch the filesystem and update values at runtime,
+mostly usefull for development.
+
+The engine scans all files in the settings-root directory and builds a
+settings tree that can be access via a setting-hierarchy like this:
+
+    setting("a.b.c.d.e")
+
+```a.b``` refers to the settings directory ```./a/b/``` (from the settings-root)
+```c``` refers to the file ```c.ini``` inside ```./a/b/```
+```d``` refers to the ini-section inside the file ```./a/b/c.ini```
+```e``` refers to the key inside section ```d``` inside the file ```./a/b/c.ini```
+
+```a.b``` are optional, they just allow larger configuration trees.
+```d``` is optional, if it is not give, ```e``` refers to the top-level section
+of the ini-file.
+
+**3. Mods**
+
+A mod is just a collection of resources for a game. Can maybe switched from
+inside a game. Current mod can be defined via "2. Runtime settings"
+
+I want to support mods from:
+
+a) a directory on the filesystem
+b) a zip-file on the filesystem
+c) a zip-file that is embeded in the executable
+
+The reasoning is simple: a) is helpfull for development, testing of
+new/replaced assets, b) is the default deployment with mod-support and c) is
+deployment without mod-support, demo-versions and similar.
+
+Should not be that difficult but give us everything we ever need in terms of
+resource packaging.
+
+**4. Save data**
+
+Not too much thought here yet. Maybe we can use Nim's std/marshal module. It
+produces JSON from nim objects. Pretty dope, but maybe pretty slow. However, we
+are indie-JSON here, not 10M of GTA Online JSON:
+https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-cut-GTA-Online-loading-times-by-70/