How minimal should a games engine be? How much of the content pipeline should be embedded in the engine?
Some use cases where the super engine might be useful:
When loading user content, the user isn't required to package up his textures, the engine will do it at load time.
A script requests a font at a much larger size than was pre-generated, the engine could parse the ttf file ad build a new texture atlas.
When loading user content, the user isn't required to package up his textures, the engine will do it at load time.
A script requests a font at a much larger size than was pre-generated, the engine could parse the ttf file ad build a new texture atlas.
None of this is free of course. This requires your content pipeline tools to written in C++. Support libraries you use in the pipeline need to be compiled for use on the device. It requires the content generation to be not buggy. And it generally makes your engine larger and unwieldy.
What are some other pros and cons?
Do the pros outweigh the cons?
Some specific questions:
Should engine be capable of loading various image formats? A TGA only loader is pretty easy to hand code.
What about audio formats? Is it feasible to only support loading wav files? What about ambient music files which are often huge.
Should the engine be capable of dynamic TTF parsing and atlas generation?
Texture packing.