Scott McGlasson here, founder of Codex Interactive and project lead for C3. My team and I are currently developing the game using the Torque Gaming Engine, same as Tribes 2.
Lately, my programming staff has been making more and more references to “That’s done in OpenGL” or “We need an OpenGL guy for that”.
Here is my question, as a first time developer. What exactly does the OpenGL programmer do for a game? In other words, what aspects is he responsible for? Are we talking particle effects? Decals? What?
OpenGL is an API that allows you to render 3D scenes, therefore, an OpenGL programmer will write the code that renders the scene.
I have no idea what the game engine provides. My assumption is that the game engine provides a documented scene graph that describes the 3D scene that needs to be rendered. The scene graph probably contains vertex locations, polygons, textures, etc. The OpenGL programmer must extract the data from the scene graph and call the appropriate OpenGL functions to render the scene.
I am pretty sure that the V12 engine does use openGL for rendering. So I guess the real question is what problems are you having? Also, I am sure the V12 guys will help you out on your questions, since they know better than anyone what exactly the engine is capable of and what it isn’t.
Torque is using OpenGL.
The OpenGL programmer is responsible for all visual aspects of the engine. In that he has to know and manipulate alot of internal structures of the engine. He also takes care of the MAX and worldcraft exporter (at least in small teams, bigger teams can have a dedicated tools programmer)