Monday, May 30, 2011
In Profundis Progress (5/28)
Work on switching over to pyglet continues. Also redoing the graphics for performance improvements. Not particularly interesting I know. Right now most of the work has been infrastructure, gruntwork, and preparation for... the future....
Saturday, May 28, 2011
In Profundis Progress (5/28)
Work continues, although it hasn't been straight development work. I've been reading up on the Pyglet graphics framework and it looks like I should be adapt the code to it without a huge amount of trouble. This means better performance, meaning it'll work on more people's computers without stuttering, which has been a concern. My development machine is a very cheap laptop, but that's on purpose; if it works on this, I reason, it should work on most machines.
I've also gotten the hosting and domain registration for the game's website, which is where the alphas and betas will go up. It's just a placeholder page for now, but when it's ready you can point your browsers to http://inprofundis.com/.
I've also gotten the hosting and domain registration for the game's website, which is where the alphas and betas will go up. It's just a placeholder page for now, but when it's ready you can point your browsers to http://inprofundis.com/.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Website coming soon
I registered the domain name and hosting today. Worried about the cost, but I don't think free Google hosting will suffice for password-protected file distribution. Or will it? More to come.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
In Profundis Progress (5/22)
I'm back baby!
So, here is the thing that's been consuming my development time lately. Cellular automation for use in real-time games frequently has to be heavily optimized. When you're cycling though every cell of a hundreds by hundreds array every frame, then even the overhead from those cells in which you just check contents and decide nothing needs to happen is significant.
My current strategy for negating this is to not use a big loop that iterates through every cell. Instead, I keep a list of every cell that _might_ change this frame. I calculate those and, any that do change, I add adjacent cells to the list for the next frame.
It's much MUCH faster, but it's worth noting that this is entirely because, for most of the game world, large portions are static between each frame. Stone is largely inert, so we don't need to worry about it except how other things react to it -- they are the initiating factors in that, so their routines handle the work. Empty spaces (that don't contain weird gases) are similar. These two cell types are 90% of the world. By removing them from consideration, it's worth a huge performance gain.
A huge gain, but it turns out, not huge enough. I remind you that, before, we kept performance under control by only updating the screen and a short distance outside of it. Under this system we update the whole world, and factoring in all of the cells that CAN change, it's a bit too much to reliably handle.
There is a way around it. We sort the update list, using one of the handy-dandy, heavily-optimized Python sort functions, with the sort key being a simple Cartesian distance from the player or cursor. Then we can just pop off the first few hundred or so every frame, and leave the rest for the next frame. If the player never goes anywhere near them they won't get handled, but as soon as he does they'll enter consideration.
It's a cheat, but real-time game development is basically a convoluted series of cheats, a set of makeshift concessions to processor speed and memory limits. Now that we have multicore machines and multi-gigabyte memory spaces this fundamental fact is sometimes obscured, but it doesn't change it.
So, here is the thing that's been consuming my development time lately. Cellular automation for use in real-time games frequently has to be heavily optimized. When you're cycling though every cell of a hundreds by hundreds array every frame, then even the overhead from those cells in which you just check contents and decide nothing needs to happen is significant.
My current strategy for negating this is to not use a big loop that iterates through every cell. Instead, I keep a list of every cell that _might_ change this frame. I calculate those and, any that do change, I add adjacent cells to the list for the next frame.
It's much MUCH faster, but it's worth noting that this is entirely because, for most of the game world, large portions are static between each frame. Stone is largely inert, so we don't need to worry about it except how other things react to it -- they are the initiating factors in that, so their routines handle the work. Empty spaces (that don't contain weird gases) are similar. These two cell types are 90% of the world. By removing them from consideration, it's worth a huge performance gain.
A huge gain, but it turns out, not huge enough. I remind you that, before, we kept performance under control by only updating the screen and a short distance outside of it. Under this system we update the whole world, and factoring in all of the cells that CAN change, it's a bit too much to reliably handle.
There is a way around it. We sort the update list, using one of the handy-dandy, heavily-optimized Python sort functions, with the sort key being a simple Cartesian distance from the player or cursor. Then we can just pop off the first few hundred or so every frame, and leave the rest for the next frame. If the player never goes anywhere near them they won't get handled, but as soon as he does they'll enter consideration.
It's a cheat, but real-time game development is basically a convoluted series of cheats, a set of makeshift concessions to processor speed and memory limits. Now that we have multicore machines and multi-gigabyte memory spaces this fundamental fact is sometimes obscured, but it doesn't change it.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
In Profundis (lack of) Progress (5/19)
Been working on rewards so far and trying to work with Kickstarter's survey system to get necessary information for fulfilling them. Will let you know when work on the game itself occurs.
Monday, May 16, 2011
The project make the goal
If I were the kind of person to say things like "woo-hoo," I'd be saying it now.
Maybe I should give it a try. Here goes:
"Woo-hoooo!"
Hm, unfulfilling. Especially since the hard part starts now.
But thanks everyone for believing in my idea, and the project.
Maybe I should give it a try. Here goes:
"Woo-hoooo!"
Hm, unfulfilling. Especially since the hard part starts now.
But thanks everyone for believing in my idea, and the project.
Friday, May 13, 2011
In Profundis progress (5/13)
The biggest change, which is so big that I've been taking a break from development for a few days to consider what it means, is to the way the sim looks at which cells to calculate.
Originally, it just iterated through a loop through the whole world, from bottom to top, examining each cell and deciding what should happen there. That took a long time.
More recently, it'd just been updating a frame around the currently visible portion of the world. That's much faster, but causes certain bits of weird behavior in some circumstances. For example, if enough water pouring off screen in a place eventually it'll fill in the cells in the no-update region off the bottom of the screen, and then it'll pool on top of that. If the screen then scrolled down somewhat, it'd suddenly all start falling as the "plug" dissipates. Similarly, water flowing off-screen will eventually act as if it's reached a wall and begin pooling, but if you move forward it'll start flowing out again.
The new system is a rather more radical change. Now the game has a list of cells to update, compiled originally by scanning through the world. Cells that are mostly inert, like walls and empty spaces, don't make it into the list, and thus no cycles are spent on them. When an operation is performed on a cell, the game adds nearly adjacent cells to the (initially empty) list of cells for the next frame. Those calls are "activated." Since the most distance away a cell can affect the world on a single turn is one space, we never have to add too many cells to the list.
If a space containing some possibly-active element, such as a liquid or boulder, does nothing this turn, it is left off the list for the next frame. The simulation doesn't even consider it until something happens close enough to it that it might be upset. Minecraft does something similar with its sand; sometimes you'll find a place where the world generates sand blocks that are unsupported, or even hanging in air
When the player does something that affects the game world under this system, the nearby cells have to be added to the update list in case there's any simulating to do. That's what causes Minecraft's sand to suddenly realize that gravity exists and begin falling.
Originally, it just iterated through a loop through the whole world, from bottom to top, examining each cell and deciding what should happen there. That took a long time.
More recently, it'd just been updating a frame around the currently visible portion of the world. That's much faster, but causes certain bits of weird behavior in some circumstances. For example, if enough water pouring off screen in a place eventually it'll fill in the cells in the no-update region off the bottom of the screen, and then it'll pool on top of that. If the screen then scrolled down somewhat, it'd suddenly all start falling as the "plug" dissipates. Similarly, water flowing off-screen will eventually act as if it's reached a wall and begin pooling, but if you move forward it'll start flowing out again.
The new system is a rather more radical change. Now the game has a list of cells to update, compiled originally by scanning through the world. Cells that are mostly inert, like walls and empty spaces, don't make it into the list, and thus no cycles are spent on them. When an operation is performed on a cell, the game adds nearly adjacent cells to the (initially empty) list of cells for the next frame. Those calls are "activated." Since the most distance away a cell can affect the world on a single turn is one space, we never have to add too many cells to the list.
If a space containing some possibly-active element, such as a liquid or boulder, does nothing this turn, it is left off the list for the next frame. The simulation doesn't even consider it until something happens close enough to it that it might be upset. Minecraft does something similar with its sand; sometimes you'll find a place where the world generates sand blocks that are unsupported, or even hanging in air
When the player does something that affects the game world under this system, the nearby cells have to be added to the update list in case there's any simulating to do. That's what causes Minecraft's sand to suddenly realize that gravity exists and begin falling.
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