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that is quite a proposal 馃
thing is you definetly don't need $2000 to run the game
you can get a $300 used laptop and even that might be an overshoot
if you are interested in how the engine works I'm happy to answer any questions
I'm really not doing anything you couldn't do better in unity or godot or whatever
don't forget that software rendering needs more cpu resources
the Quake2 software rendering is still one of the most optimised ones ever made
so I highly doubt I can make anything that comes close
it's probably easier to get some mesa software rendered opengl and use it with some linux win comptability layer or whatever
the thing is it's really really hard to get a machine nowadays that doesn't have a gpu or opengl support
what sort of embedded devices you are thinking of anyway? I mean afaik even a raspberry pi has a gpu
it looks cool indeed and I appreciate your passion
but tbh this sounds more like a software rendering fetish and trying to find excuses for it
and I understand it completely - many people prefer the look of these games 馃
they just look more like real games - it's hard to explain (kind of how movies at 50fps feel wrong)
maybe for LAB 2 I could use one I guess - but then I would want to go all the way like
something that uses only affine texture mapping and 16bit dithering like the PS1 etc.
this is one dangerous rabbit hole 馃様
OpenGL a bloat??? It's around since Windows 3.1 in the mid 90s and runs on every CPU integrated graphics of the last 15 years. It is multiplatform compatible and much faster than software renderer. The problem is more that it's outdated and may be dropped first by Apple, I guess.
Isn't it a bit to early to ask for the engine to get open source? Maybe it has no negative effect to the sales but it's very unusual for a new game with no team and intention like a system port.
Did you ever code a game with OpenGL or software renderer? Did you read the small3d lib docs? It's is never tested on Windows
It is interesting and nice, too if you have your game structured for multiple renderer but I would always prefer OpenGL. Since 1998 with the Voodoo Banshee this is how you do it. If you manage to find that Windows industry device which has no OpenGL support then there are drivers like MESA which can software render OpenGL on every GPU, I read even Windows has software drivers for at least OpenGL 1.1.