IMPACT! MINIATURES

Cephalopod · Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 9:00 am Post subject:

Update for this evening:

Implemented support for a settings file. This will allow the user to specify what keyboard shortcuts they want for the game as well as other settings that they might want to update.

A brief diversion from the game , but I've been meaning to finish off this piece of functionality and given that I had somewhat limited time tonight it seemed like a good time to get to work on it.

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GrumpyGrizzly · Joined: 11 Sep 2007 Posts: 340 Location: Bergen, Norway

bouncergriim · Joined: 29 Sep 2007 Posts: 298 Location: Fort Worth, TEXAS

keep up the good work. It is great to hear how this is progressing.

Cephalopod · Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 5:32 pm Post subject:

Alpha will be along in a bit. I anticipate that I should be able to spend more time programming shortly.

That being said, once I get this all together I'll probably look at redoing a lot of the textures and images. While I'm posting I'll go ahead and pose a question:

The reason you're seeing rendering lag is that the field image is very large, and it gets repainted along with everything else. On low end machines, like Netbooks such as the MSI Wind and Asus EEE PC this effect is even more pronounced.

So, that being said I am once again debating about the image used for the playing field. I'm leaning towards getting a bunch of different textures (one for each race which will be displayed as the default "homefield" image. I figure that will add a little variation and visual interest for each game) instead of one very large image again. I just don't like the performance hit in a program that I'm hoping can be run almost anywhere, including a port to Android OS cell phones one of these days.

Thoughts?
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Dark Lord · Joined: 23 May 2006 Posts: 2682

If they are going to be back ground textures I could make grass, stone, dirt etc images that seamlessly tile. Is it faster to tile an image 20 times or load one big one?
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Cephalopod · Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 6:05 pm Post subject:

Way, way, way faster to tile than to load one big image. The reason is one of resource allocation. If you load a small image you just store it in memory once, and then you tell the computer to draw it a bunch of times.

The large image is something that takes up a lot of space, and drawing it takes a long time since it is so big. Even with all of the clipping and what not that I'm doing to cut down on draw times.

On my Nvidia 8800 card it draws fast. On my Intel 945 card it draws very, very slowly.
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Dark Lord · Joined: 23 May 2006 Posts: 2682

Well the image spec you said before are 1900 x 1200 pixels. That pretty much only leaves 100 x 100 pixel tiles as an option. However if you did 2000 x 1200 I could do 400 x 400 or 200 x 200.

100 pixel tiles

400 pixel tiles

IMO if the image size can change then go for it, if that's a hassle I don't think the 100 pixel tiles look that bad.
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Cephalopod · Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 9:10 pm Post subject:

Thanks for those. I suppose one thing that might help is a bunch of sprites that never move and get drawn just for visual interest. Small rocks, skeletal hands, etc.

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Dark Lord · Joined: 23 May 2006 Posts: 2682

I can probably do that. It'll take longer.

Gimmee a minute.
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Bill Cosby

Cephalopod · Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 9:54 pm Post subject:

Take your time. It was more in the neighborhood of a musing as opposed to a demand.

Thank you for the textures. I'll try to put something together so that people can customize the appearance of the field to their liking in some small way.
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Dark Lord · Joined: 23 May 2006 Posts: 2682

I can do some other textures too. Rocks, sand, dead weeds, etc.
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"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody."
Bill Cosby

Cephalopod · Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 11:59 pm Post subject:

Dark Lord · Joined: 23 May 2006 Posts: 2682

Cephalopod · Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 4:02 am Post subject:

You know, that wouldn't be hard and would be a really good idea. I could do that without much difficulty.
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mattwakeman · Joined: 20 May 2006 Posts: 231