LuaGL Release Thread

[Retriever2]

This refers to the LuaGL module built for XLua, which is a major extension of the official LuaGL distribution (almost to the point that they shouldn't share a name). I'll keep any news of bugs, releases, etc to this thread.

Current release: http://hocuspocus.taloncrossing.com/rii/xluagl.zip

This release has some major differences from the version of LuaGL currently circulating with the XLua object. Instead of passing strings as enumeration arguments (e.g. gl.Begin("QUADS"), you pass numbers as enumeration arguments. Most of the OpenGL enumerations are predefined as variables in the gl table, so you'd rewrite the above as gl.Begin(gl.QUADS). LuaGL had a poor implementation for its enumerations that caused enum lookups to increase linearly with the size of the enum table. Using variables in a Lua table is not only faster, but it allows you to define your own enumerations if any are missing (which has been a common problem for the LuaGL module).

Transforming your existing code is fairly straightforward. Everywhere you use a string enumeration, replaces remove the "" marks, and add gl. at the beginning of the argument. There is a minor exception for arguments that start with numbers, because those are illegal identifier names in Lua. Those names need to have an underscore prepended to them, e.g. gl._2D.

This release also adds the glu table, which currently contains the functions LookAt, Ortho2D, Perspective, Project, and UnProject. LookAt, Ortho2D, and Perspective take the same parameters as their OpenGL counterparts. Project and UnProject take 3 numbers as parameters and return 3 numbers.

[zellix]

Yes! You are awesome. The glu table will help tons.

[SEELE]

That you so much Retriever2!, xlua is amazing!... and i'm sure this will make a great extension even better

[Atom]

Thanks this sounds nice, im guessing this replaces the dll found -

\Examples\XLua\ext

etc, but doing this makes the old example no longer show for me. Would it be possible to have a updated example maybe showing the new table functions also if thats ok?

Edit -

Wait you mean the actual strings, i was getting confused because the codes had gl. before, doing stuff like

gl.Begin(gl.QUADS)

seems to get it running ok again. A updated example would still be cool though and good for new users also but im guessing you will release a updated Xlua with this sometime.

[Retriever2]

I was mostly rushing to get this out for zellix's request but I will follow up with an updated example and documentation.

[uprize]

Awesome! I would like to see some cool 3D examples that I can check out?

[Retriever2]

The download has been updated with the original examples and documentation from XLua, updated for the API changes and GLU functions.

Sorry, nothing new added to the examples, but if anyone would like to make some cool OpenGL examples and share them, that would be cool.

[Atom]

Thanks, i saved myself the default example yesterday but the documents is great to have.

By the way every time i open your example rather than a saved one it asks me to locate the opengl.dll so maybe you should do something like -

Apppath$+"opengl.dll"

using a expression as this should fix that for people rather than needing to search for it.

[zellix]

Can you specify GLUint and GLint in Lua? Or does it not require specification along with the other variable types such as float and int?

[Retriever2]

It uses the floating point version of all functions when it has to make a choice. The only exception is some of the shader functions where you can explicitly send ints or floats.