The Dot Docs

The Delphi OpenGL Toolkit

Introduction

Dot, short for "Delphi OpenGL Toolkit", is a utility library designed to speed up OpenGL development. The Dot can help you manage rendering contexts for your application windows and for offscreen rendering buffers. It also contains a large library of vector and matrix math functions, an assortment of image and 3D model loaders, and more.

Use the index on the left to navigate the Dot documentation. To get started quickly, open the included application framework in Delphi and just start coding! For more details on how Dot manages your rendering context, read the documentation for DotWindow.pas.

Updates

Download the latest version of the Dot here:

www.delphi3d.net/download/dot.zip

The documentation you are reading now is both included with the Dot and mirrored online at:

www.delphi3d.net/dot

Please do not link to the ZIP file above directly -- link to the documentation page or to Delphi3D's main page instead.

Revision history

22 June 2005:

  • Small cosmetic changes to the application framework.

22 February 2005:

  • Added dotGLAssert() function to DotUtils.pas. Like regular assertions, but checks for OpenGL errors instead of a user-specified condition.
  • Updated GLext.pas: added the long overdue GL 1.4, 1.5 and now also 2.0 entry points, and caught up with all the latest extensions.

17 July 2004:

  • Added DotShaders.pas, with utility functions for loading ARB_vertex_program / ARB_fragment_program style shaders and for working with GLSL.
  • Updated GLext.pas

29 March 2004:

  • Small bug fix in DotRTTBuffer.pas
  • Updated GLext.pas

25 September 2003:

  • Small bug fixes in DotMath.pas, Glut.pas (thanks to Igor Karpov) and GLext.pas (thanks to Michal Krcmar).

18 August 2003:

  • Replaced OBJ.pas with a much improved OBJ2.pas, which offers much faster load times and .MTL material file support.
  • Added DotVideo.pas, which allows you to record AVI videos of your running Dot applications.
  • Updated GLext.pas.

20 May 2003:

  • Added a .MD3 file loader (Q3A character models)
  • Updated GLext.pas
  • Added dotFindFiles() function to DotUtils.pas (wildcard search for filenames)
  • Included an older version of the framework, without the display mode dialog at startup. Although the dialog can be very useful for small games, I found it tends to get in the way for simple demos.

10 Mar 2003: Added a configuration dialog to the application framework, which allows the user to switch to fullscreen mode, change the display mode and pixel format, and enable FSAA.

7 Mar 2003:

  • Fixed minor typo in the declaration of TDotVector3 and TDotVector4 (thanks to Sebastian Schuberth).
  • Added dotMatInverse3() and dotMatInverse4() functions to DotMath.pas.
  • Added display mode switching functionality to DotWindow.pas.

27 Feb 2003: First release. Not all included features have been properly tested yet. If you find any bugs, please report them.

Disclaimer

The Dot is completely free for both non-commercial and commercial use. If you distribute an application based on the Dot, please give credit by putting a link to www.delphi3d.net in an end user-visible place.

The Dot is provided without warranty of any kind, so use it at your own risk.

Please do not redistribute the Dot source code. If you want to share the Dot with others, please provide a link to www.delphi3d.net/dot instead, so people can download the latest version of the Dot from there.

The Delphi OpenGL Toolkit was written by Tom Nuydens.
See main page for disclaimer. For updates, visit Delphi3D.