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stbenge wrote:
>> That's very Zen. With the fading trails, that's sort of like one of
>> those rice-paper pads you write on with water.
>
> I have no idea what you're talking about :)
http://www.amazon.com/Buddha-Board/dp/B0010TEFFQ/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1
It's a dark board with rice paper over it. When you paint with water, it
leaves marks, but only till the water dries.
One I did as a java VADz a long time ago:
http://home.san.rr.com/dnew/ZenMaster.html
> Thank you for trying it! You're input is valuable, considering my
> girlfriend could not get it working on her Vista x64 laptop. It may be a
> screen/video driver problem though.
Possibly. This has one of those high-end 5.0 Vista cards, a Radeon HD 4850.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.
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stbenge <THI### [at] hotmail com> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> Months ago I updated my NearInfinity demo, but never got around to
> posting it. It can be found here:
> http://www.caltel.com/~abenge/NearInfinity.zip
>
> It should look like this:
> http://www.caltel.com/~abenge/NIscreen.jpg
>
> There is no goal to the game. You just fly around in a near-infinite
> landscape. I would call it infinite, but even the best random number
> generators don't go on forever. The landscape is not different every
> time you start the program up. You can change the landscape's seed
> within an .ini file. To make it a little more interesting, there are six
> Easter eggs to find. They occur very rarely, and you get no reward for
> finding them; they are simply there. Look at ee.png for spoilers :) Keys
> are left, right, up and/or z. It has bouncy and smooth, but solid
> collision-detection.
>
> If you are running Windows, have DirextX 8.0 or above, and have some
> free time, could you download it and tell me what you think? With the
> default settings it should run at 60 FPS regardless on your monitor's
> refresh rate. I kept the logic separate from the frame rate, so it
> should work on your computer exactly as it does mine, as long as your
> computer isn't really old. It will skip frames to compensate if your
> computer is slow.
>
> I would like some feedback on a few things. What is your operating
> system? Does it work on Vista? What FPS are you getting? Do the default
> settings of 1280x960 fullscreen mode give you ultra-smooth scrolling?
> What about lower resolutions? You can change these and other settings
> within the NI.ini text file. If you decide to run in windowed mode,
> change dynamicFrameRate to method 2. You won't get the benefits of
> VSYNC, and it really shows.
>
> If for some reason I didn't upload the program with the default 1280x960
> resolution and VSYNC settings, change the values found in NI.ini to these:
> windowed=0
> screenMode=2
> dynamicFrameRate=3
>
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
> Sam
It works on Vista x64 on quad core, very smooth scrolling.
It fails on XP home x32 dual core amd. Here is th elog file:
HGE Started..
HGE version: 1.70
Date: 14.12.2008, 16:32:00
Application: NearInfinity 2008 Sam Benge
OS: Windows 5.1.2600
Memory: 981480K total, 214936K free
D3D Driver: ati2dvag.dll
Description: ATI RADEON XPRESS 200 Series
Version: 6.14.10.6571
Can't find appropriate full screen video mode
Finishing..
The End.
Finishing..
The End.
It will work in 640x480 mode.
Interesting game, very good.
Isaac.
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Darren New wrote:
> stbenge wrote:
>>> That's very Zen. With the fading trails, that's sort of like one of
>>> those rice-paper pads you write on with water.
>>
>> I have no idea what you're talking about :)
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Buddha-Board/dp/B0010TEFFQ/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1
>
> It's a dark board with rice paper over it. When you paint with water, it
> leaves marks, but only till the water dries.
Sounds like a neat idea. I'm guessing this works because water tension
causes the rice paper to stick to a black backing? Simple, effective,
but possibly fragile for young ones :(
> One I did as a java VADz a long time ago:
> http://home.san.rr.com/dnew/ZenMaster.html
Pretty cool. There's a gap at the end of a drawing run if the mouse is
moving too fast. I assume you used an array to hold the positions/states
of each circle? It must be a big array because I never found the end.
>> Thank you for trying it! You're input is valuable, considering my
>> girlfriend could not get it working on her Vista x64 laptop. It may be
>> a screen/video driver problem though.
>
> Possibly. This has one of those high-end 5.0 Vista cards, a Radeon HD 4850.
Ack, HGE's hit-and-miss functionality is somewhat discouraging :(
Sam
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Clarence1898 wrote:
> stbenge <THI### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>> I would like some feedback on a few things.
>
> It works on Vista x64 on quad core, very smooth scrolling.
> It fails on XP home x32 dual core amd. Here is th elog file:
> ...
> Can't find appropriate full screen video mode
>
> It will work in 640x480 mode.
Sounds like a simple video card shortcoming to me. I'll keep this in
mind if I make another game. Low-resolution video modes should always
work, so I'll have to keep new games at 640x480 or 320x240. A lot of
people hate these lower resolutions, but for 2D games they seem to work
well. Cave story, for instance, has a large fan base. It used a low
resolution and the scrolling wasn't smooth at all. People still loved it
because the game play more than made up for the lack of graphics quality.
> Interesting game, very good.
Thank you, Isaac. I would like to make enemies that you could kill, but
using this method to do it is looking impossible. The stars and motes
will always be the same if you go back to them, just like the landscape.
It would be hard to do this with enemies, because the method I used
doesn't allow me to change elements. They are all always static, though
in the case of the motes it doesn't seem that way.
Sam
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stbenge wrote:
> Sounds like a neat idea. I'm guessing this works because water tension
> causes the rice paper to stick to a black backing?
Plus, the paper is thin enough that wetting it makes it more transparent.
> Simple, effective, but possibly fragile for young ones :(
Depends how young, I guess.
> Pretty cool. There's a gap at the end of a drawing run if the mouse is
> moving too fast. I assume you used an array to hold the positions/states
> of each circle? It must be a big array because I never found the end.
It is, of course, dynamically allocated. The fun thing is to compare the
size of the .class file with what you could build by hand. VADz is an old
technology to compress all kinds of interactive graphics down to a
relatively tiny size - we could put online order forms in a banner ad
smaller than most people could fit an advertisement in an animated GIF.
> Ack, HGE's hit-and-miss functionality is somewhat discouraging :(
It is strange. You'd think it would work or not. Maybe you're using some
feature which has to be supported by the card to work?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.
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Warp wrote:
> std::vector<hgeSprite> tile;
>
> tile.reserve(8*8);
> for(...)
> for(...)
> tile.push_back(hgeSprite(...));
Not that I'd recommend micro-optimization over readability, but isn't this
going to be more inefficient than the other way? Doesn't this allocate a
sprite on the stack, pass it to tile.push_back(), which then has to copy it
to dynamically allocated memory anyway?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.
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stbenge <THI### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Who's going to trust my programs, now that my ignorance is known? I
> could always provide the source...
It's good to know you suck at least on something, Master. Makes you... more
human. ;)
OTOH, it's a pretty good-looking "game" for someone still learning its C++
way...
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > std::vector<hgeSprite> tile;
> >
> > tile.reserve(8*8);
> > for(...)
> > for(...)
> > tile.push_back(hgeSprite(...));
> Not that I'd recommend micro-optimization over readability, but isn't this
> going to be more inefficient than the other way? Doesn't this allocate a
> sprite on the stack, pass it to tile.push_back(), which then has to copy it
> to dynamically allocated memory anyway?
The std::vector reserves an entire array of objects, rather than
reserving them one-by-one. (What the reserve() function does is that it
allocates space for that many objects, without actually instantiating them.)
So rather than having 64 allocations with 'new', there's only one.
The temporary given as parameter is created only once, not 64 times.
What is done 64 times is calling the copy constructor of hgeSprite
(for each element added to the vector). It of course depends on how
the copy constructor in question is implemented, but usually calling
a copy constructor should not be significantly slower than calling the
regular constructor.
If we compare the amount of operations in both situations, they would be:
- 1 'new' call, vs. 64 'new' calls.
- 1 temporary instantiated, vs. none.
- 64 copy constructor calls, vs. 64 regular constructor calls.
- 1 temporary destruction, vs. none.
Doing only 1 'new' rather than 64 might in itself make the whole thing
faster, even though there's an additional temporary creation/destruction.
Anyways, even if there is some speed penalty, it's probably negligible.
As a reward your objects will be managed by std::vector, rather than you
having to manage them manually.
(As an additional reward, the std::vector will require less memory than
the 64 individually allocated objects. Of course with 64 objects this is
nothing, but it might become significant with a larger number.)
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> The std::vector reserves an entire array of objects, rather than
> reserving them one-by-one.
Ok, cool. I would have guessed std::vector would allocate an array of pointers.
> The temporary given as parameter is created only once, not 64 times.
So the declaration is essentially hoisted from out of the loop? Makes sense.
> What is done 64 times is calling the copy constructor of hgeSprite
OK. I know the assignment operator, and the constructor, but I never heard
of a copy constructor. <google> Oh, I see. It's a constructor with a
particular type for the argument. OK.
> a copy constructor should not be significantly slower than calling the
> regular constructor.
It doesn't look like it, but doesn't it have to "construct" the temporary,
then invoke the copy constructor? It's not like the compiler can construct
directly into the array element that std::vector allocated, can it? And
wouldn't it have to call the destructor on the temporary 64 times after it
was copied (assuming it has a destructor)?
It looks like the code you wrote initializes a temporary, then passes it (by
address, presumedly) to std::vector.push_back(), which then has to copy it
into an internal array. Then the code reinitializes the same temporary for
the next iteration (assuming the code is even a little smartly compiled). If
the sprite has a destructor, doesn't it need to call that before freeing the
temporary? How can the compiler know the ... Oh, is std::vector inlined
enough that the compiler can see it's getting inserted directly into a
particular array element? If so, that would make sense, yes.
> If we compare the amount of operations in both situations, they would be:
>
> - 1 'new' call, vs. 64 'new' calls.
> - 1 temporary instantiated, vs. none.
> - 64 copy constructor calls, vs. 64 regular constructor calls.
> - 1 temporary destruction, vs. none.
Hmmm... How does the temporary get constructed? Wouldn't it be 64 calls to
the constructor (taking the various individual arguments for the sprite) and
then 64 calls to copy that data to the one that's in std::vector?
> Doing only 1 'new' rather than 64 might in itself make the whole thing
> faster, even though there's an additional temporary creation/destruction.
>
> Anyways, even if there is some speed penalty, it's probably negligible.
> As a reward your objects will be managed by std::vector, rather than you
> having to manage them manually.
As I said, I'm never (well, rarely) against clarity and idiom in favor of
micro-performance optimizations. Especially when you're talking about
initialization which you presumably do only once.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> > The temporary given as parameter is created only once, not 64 times.
> So the declaration is essentially hoisted from out of the loop? Makes sense.
Ok, it may be possible that it is created in each loop, depending on how
you are creating it, so I may have exaggerated that bit, and it may indeed
be created 64 times.
You could manually optimize it and create it only once outside the loops,
to make sure. (If, for example, each sprite is otherwise identical but with
different coordinates, you could simply change the coordinates and push it
into the vector.)
OTOH in this case it probably doesn't matter.
> > What is done 64 times is calling the copy constructor of hgeSprite
> OK. I know the assignment operator, and the constructor, but I never heard
> of a copy constructor. <google> Oh, I see. It's a constructor with a
> particular type for the argument. OK.
The difference between the copy constructor and an the assignment operator
is that in the latter case the object being assigned to has already been
constructed in the past, and now it's assigned a new value. With the copy
constructor the object in question is directly initialized with the given
object.
Copy constructors are called, for example, when you pass an object to
a function by value.
(In some situations the compiler may be able to optimize the copy
constructor call away.)
> > a copy constructor should not be significantly slower than calling the
> > regular constructor.
> It doesn't look like it, but doesn't it have to "construct" the temporary,
> then invoke the copy constructor? It's not like the compiler can construct
> directly into the array element that std::vector allocated, can it?
Actually it is perfectly possible to construct into an array element
directly. (A programmer can do that himself by using so-called placement
new.)
Whether or not the compiler is smart enough to optimize it like that
is another question.
> And
> wouldn't it have to call the destructor on the temporary 64 times after it
> was copied (assuming it has a destructor)?
If the temporary is created 64 times, then it will be destroyed 64 times
as well, of course.
> It looks like the code you wrote initializes a temporary, then passes it (by
> address, presumedly) to std::vector.push_back(), which then has to copy it
> into an internal array. Then the code reinitializes the same temporary for
> the next iteration (assuming the code is even a little smartly compiled). If
> the sprite has a destructor, doesn't it need to call that before freeing the
> temporary? How can the compiler know the ... Oh, is std::vector inlined
> enough that the compiler can see it's getting inserted directly into a
> particular array element? If so, that would make sense, yes.
Being a template class, all member functions of std::vector are inlined.
(This might change with export templates, but things like push_back() will
probably always be inline, for efficiency.)
As I said, you may be right in that the temporary is created 64 times,
though. You could hand-optimize it by creating it once outside the loops.
--
- Warp
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