Gorgon
From TapeWiki
So this is the Gorgon wiki. In lieu of real documentation I'm hoping this site will suffice.
So, what is Gorgon? Well, Gorgon is a 2D graphics library, API, cure for herpes, and just a generally OK library *whew* for .NET enabled languages. It uses Direct 3D to take advantage of hardware accelerated effects like blending, smoothing, scaling, etc... and uses SlimDX as the glue between the unmanaged DirectX runtime and the managed world of .NET.
So what can it do?
- Draw sprites, obviously.
- Draw primitives like lines, circles, rectangles, etc...
- Utilize the hardware acceleration of 3D cards.
- Pixel/vertex shaders.
- Stencil buffer support.
- Multiple image formats: png, jpg, bmp, etc...
- Render targets.
- Virtual file systems for packed files and folder mounting.
- A plug-in architecture, so you can extend it.
- It supports dynamically generated bitmap fonts (no need for a disk based font).
- Has support for raw input from input devices. Even has rudimentary joystick support. (This is via a plug-in.)
- Can render into any type of windows control, e.g. a panel, form, textbox (yes, textbox. No, I don't know why you'd want that).
- Tools to edit virtual file systems and sprites.
- Probably other things that I forget right now...
So it's pretty much like many other solutions for 2D graphics out there, but unlike many hardware accelerated (via Direct3D or OpenGL) 2D alternatives Gorgon uses .NET languages which can help you hit the ground running instead of having to deal with the quagmire of setting up infrastructure in an unmanaged environment. In software or Direct Draw based solutions, the speed of Gorgon is easily an advantage.
This wiki has been set up to get some preliminary documentation/tutorials available to users because the included documentation is weak at best (it's actually just rotten in my opinion).
So while this thing is in its infancy, there are some pages that may be helpful in your usage of Gorgon:
- What files to distribute for your Gorgon application.
- Smoothing advantages and pitfalls.
- Why Gorgon uses floating point values for everything - information and issues regarding sub-pixel accuracy.
- And more...
