TileMax Particle System
Community Forums/Showcase/TileMax Particle System
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| TileMax Particle System is reaching Beta.... exciting! Testers have been hammering away at this... ZIP Contains... DirectX Version (testSamah2DX.exe), OpenGL Version (testSamah2.exe), and source bmx file. left click to launch at mouse...  |
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More fun then... micro game form... |
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| You might want to upload the DX version - getting those white square P's again ;) |
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| Oops... there .. done DX version enclosed Still haven't figured out that strange GL font issue |
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| "getting those white square P's again.." Beta test man, beta test! |
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| So, now that I have some time to explain why I posted this... Fwew.. what a busy month r 2. Sick kids, birthdays, other crazy family stuff ;) anyway, in all that I managed to debug the particle system and get it out there. A BIG THANK YOU to my alpha testers! Here it is... Its a simple demo created by an alpha tester (samah), and expanded by me into a micro-game. It's just demonstrating the particle system... you shoot the mines, hitting one is big points, but so is pushing them off the top of the screen. Don't let them past the bottom or you loose big! Point and click! P = screenshot.png The system you see at work is a combination of particles that can behave like sprites, an Animation control system, a Timing System which includes sequencers, a graphics control system, a math module and I think thats it. The documentation is coming along nicely.. I usually hit that for a while each time I get coders brain cramp and need something less challenging to do. I'm debating what to hit next... The Tile Engine has to be revisted because I'm converting the "actors" to extend particles with parenting. It shouldn't take long.. all the other code for collisions etc is already there... just needs converting to the particle system methodology. There were some timing system changes to account for as well which means some balancing... and the anim type changed to TMAnim which means a mass search-replace is in order. Lastly, I will want to add the ability to organize particles using the tiles as cells.. that provides the ability to add very efficient constraints between particle ID's... like verlets for example. Anyway.. that jobs starting to sound big ;) The HUD/GUI needs serious work... the base gadget and button is there and its cool, but I need to expand that now with all the other necessary gadgets for a typical game... sliders, proportionals, blah, blah.. The only reason I am writing my own is that I want one that can move around, rotate and stuff and not just sit in a box. The Mysterious Past of Gregory Phoenix was my inspiration for that. If you know of a capable GUI I could legally wrap into TileMax with those capabilities let me know. So..right now I'm debating whether to get the Tile System out or the GUI... decisions decisions! |
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| no one? just trying to check for any incompatibilities beyond just the machines my alpha testers have... |
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| I've kind of Cocooned myself between the BlitzBasic board and BlitzMonkeys... everyone here seems to be busy with their own projects these days. Anyone have recommendations of sites I can go to get some feedback? |
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| What about tigsource.com? Although their forums are pretty crowded and your topic might get lost in the crowd... Maybe gamedev.net - but those people always show allergic reactions if something is not done with C++... What about socoder.net? Cheers, Thomas |
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| O god, tell me about it! It's really strange these days. Can't remember if it has always been that way, but well... Seems like there are only 5 of us on BlitzMonkeys, though, and- although I could swear some are in Europe- it feels like I was in a different timezone than the others. For a few days we had something great going here, though, until a reminder of greed was introduced with one single line and it fell apart. Anyway, back to TileMAX and Samah's great little demo! What bothered me about it was the studdery feel it has, when the cloud particles expand. It's as if it was quantized to integers and too slow to feel smooth. Therefore it's much rather a user choice than a problem with the engine, but at least I had to mention it. I think I'd have to play with it myself to really judge it properly. But then I'm a big fan of small filesizes and this tiny little demo already has nearly 2mb, but the content doesn't suggest to me it was justified. I guess one of the perks of what you've done, however, is that it seems to be rather solid and fast for all the havok on the screen, haha. Nice! There you go...at least some feedback already! ;) (now check out my latest SirPenta build! LOL) |
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| TommyH, I'll check those out thanks! Taron, I'm definately in a different time zone than most Blitzers... being on the West Coast of Canada! I did run up your SirPenta... it was cool. If I forgot to post comments I'll do that for ya. I had a couple comments for sure but I'll put those in your thread I'll double check that jitter feel your talking about.. that shouldn't be since everything is floating... but I did find one instance (SetAlpha) where I had accidentally put an int in the floats place. I'll search just to make sure... but there shouldn't be any left. Several people have commented about the file size, but you have to remember that this is not just a particle system.. there are a bunch of things at work in there that are used in other areas of TileMax as well. The animation control system, the timing module, graphics module, media module, etc.. all the media for the samples is incbin'd as well... which is why you don't see any media files in the distribution.. so thats soundFX and png images. Maybe I'll compile without the media and see what the file size is.. but considering that you can get a terabyte of storage for peanuts these days I'm not sure what the concern is. I code for speed not file size.. to be honest, file size is "bottom of shoe" in terms of priority ;) |
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| I've heard that before, in regards to filesize. Nowadays it really ain't much trouble, even if downloading can at some point become a bitch. I personally just love the challenge of making small things appear large. If I was brave enough I probably would switch to a lower language to start doing 40k games or less, haha. So, yeah, I'm almost surprised it's not just me, but you are right. Maybe, however, you should do a choice based media implementation, so only the required stuff goes into the file. I definitely hate extra assets outside of the main file, therefore I like incbin very much! Thanks again for checking back into my SirPenta! :} |
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| Well, I just isolated TMParticleFX and compiled that alone.. its showing as 1.354kb non-debug compiled. Thats of course, with no media. The TMparticleFX module can be used on its own of course, but seeing that I am testing the system as a whole I just import the whole mod. I figured out what your talking about with the jitter.. thats actually the animation of the explosion.. i'll speed it up so its not so obvious.. I can see it now that you've mentioned it... damn rose coloured glasses ;) |
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| Is there any way to remove the VSync? I even tried to force vsync off in my driver but I still see 59-60 fps. Not really a benchmark that way :) It looks good though. Keep up the good work ;) |
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| Hi _Jim, This wasn't really about benchmarking.. its more about compatibility. I did a benchmarking one earlier and the particle counts were around 2200 on my laptop before it drops below 60fps, but others with more powerful machines were getting anywhere from 3800-5400 particles. However, that was using particles with all sorts of sequencing going on behind the scenes which does add overhead. I could create a raw benchmark for simple particles (onces that just use the core updates for deltaX,deltaY, basically without sequencers (which I see others calling animators) If you are wanting to benchmark the speed of this I could recompile it with the timing code removed.. I am currently clamping the particle updates to 60fps in the code itself.. not just by flip.. OO... so even if vwait is disabled it will still only update at the specified frequency. I'm also getting close to Beta with this, at that point I will open it up to anyone that wants to try the mod. I'm going to have a freeware/shareware/PD version that just has the quick splash screen you see in this demo (modified for the version of course) |
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| Anyway.. I'm getting ready to release this to Beta which means I'll be posting the mod for download soon |
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| OK... here we go... TileMax Beta 1.0 Opened for further testing and experimentation... Cheers, |
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