PAX Dev slides

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by varrak, September 2, 2014.

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  1. SXX

    SXX Post Master General

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    There is one more question I'm really wanted to ask for quite a long time, but forgot.
    Can you please say few words about how is rendering different between system editor and live game?

    Even in current version I notice that FPS in system editor is way lower than in live game so I wonder what options is missing here and if there any specific that might make it important to check certain bugs/crashes in live game instead of just system editor. Thanks.
    SXX, September 3, 2014
    #21
  2. SXX

    SXX Post Master General

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    OpenGL is open standard so it's a lot easier to make compatibility layer for it over any other API.

    Also if we'll see some extremely big progress in CPU performance then after 10 years you'll likely able to run PA without any graphics card at all just because even now there is software renderers for OpenGL that might run PA, but slowly.
    Last edited: September 3, 2014
    SXX, September 3, 2014
    #22
  3. Remy561

    Remy561 Post Master General

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    So my framerate dropped because my processor does more work now? Or does it do the work in a different order now? I ask this because few builds back the game hit 140fps when zoomed out and it became 70 when zooming in on empty planets. Now it doesn't get above 70 even when I zoom out on a gtx770 and i5 4690k. Not that this is bad, framerate late game is better than ever, just asking out of interest ;)

    Haven't tried the new PTE yet so this could already have changed.
    Remy561, September 3, 2014
    #23
  4. varrak

    varrak Official PA

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    We're actually doing less work on the CPU now, since I fixed a few bugs with culling (which is when we don't update or draw things you can't see); the downside is, we were incorrectly culling things that you could see when you zoom all the way out, so we *do* actually do more work in that case; the upside is, we now do everything correctly, and you get to see all the cool things, like the Annihilaser, nukes on other planets, and effects on exploding planets.

    Without profiling your specific situation, it's hard to tell exactly what's going on though. You could always dump an UberProbe capture (CTRL+F11, it's in the users\[yourname]\appdata\Uber Entertainment directory somewhere) up here and I can take a look. Always interested in seeing how the CPU code is doing on different systems.
    varrak, September 3, 2014
    #24
    tatsujb and ace63 like this.
  5. varrak

    varrak Official PA

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    The code in the live game is more aggressively multi-threaded than the code in the system editor. Since the system editor doesn't need to scale quite as much, I spent less time optimizing that path.
    That said, I would not expect a huge delta, so I'll take a look after we ship, see if there's something egregious going on there.
    varrak, September 3, 2014
    #25
    tatsujb likes this.
  6. someonewhoisnobody

    someonewhoisnobody Well-Known Member

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    Yo, SSX check your quotes <3
    *Didn't say that*
    someonewhoisnobody, September 3, 2014
    #26
  7. SXX

    SXX Post Master General

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    Sorry about that. I just hate over quoting because I usually get notifications on answers that wasn't addressed to me at all so I trying to not overquote ever. So make mistakes when edit message... :oops:
    SXX, September 3, 2014
    #27
  8. someonewhoisnobody

    someonewhoisnobody Well-Known Member

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    Its all good. Stay awesome man.
    someonewhoisnobody, September 3, 2014
    #28
  9. SXX

    SXX Post Master General

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    Just want to know one more detail if you excuse, but is there any difference in OpenGL capabilities used in system editor?

    I ask this because I'm doing several tests of "Persistent buffer mapping" (for this topic) on Linux so it's might be re-enabled for certain hardware so I just want to be sure that system editor actually use it. Also I just wonder if I'll actually see the difference of other rendering features using system editor or I have to test it in-game.

    Yes actually difference is hard to notice in current version. I just tested it on 1300 meters earth planet and performance is mostly the same. Though I had 3 server crashes row in process of planet generation on EUWest till I changed to USCentral.

    Too many typos... "Have == hate". Possible I should check what I post more carefully.
    SXX, September 3, 2014
    #29
  10. gremjs03

    gremjs03 New Member

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    As someone who used to program OpenGL back around early 2000 I have a feeling it was the dark ages of OpenGL? Especially when you said in the one slide version 2.1 uh. Don't.

    Back in college we mostly used c++ (borland yuk). What compilers/IDE do you guys use these days? I mostly do asp.net and SQL for work so its all Visual Studio 2012 & Microsoft SQL for me and my co-workers. Man I miss coding my own game engine lol. Those were the college days :p
    gremjs03, September 3, 2014
    #30
  11. Remy561

    Remy561 Post Master General

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    An UberProbe for you!
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35624709/quick_2014_9_3__21.25.42.upf

    Also, found 2 older ones. I don't know if that is interesting as well:
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35624709/quick_2014_7_30__16.47.26.upf
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35624709/quick_2014_8_12__21.40.26.upf

    PS: Why can't we upload UberProbes to the forum?
    Remy561, September 3, 2014
    #31
  12. SXX

    SXX Post Master General

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    Pack them in ZIP, this would work.

    PS: Though good idea to enable uploading of those files too.
    Last edited: September 3, 2014
    SXX, September 3, 2014
    #32
  13. SXX

    SXX Post Master General

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    I can partially answer on this because devs answered it before. For compilers Uber using VC++ for Windows, GCC for Linux and Clang for Mac OS X.

    Also I don't remember what other devs answered, but @neutrino said he using VS and @UberWilliam using Emacs.
    SXX, September 3, 2014
    #33
  14. Tormidal

    Tormidal Active Member

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    I'm going to have to put a Windows drive in there and test it out one day.

    The server portion is what I was mainly having in mind when thinking about it.
    Tormidal, September 4, 2014
    #34
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  15. mikeyh

    mikeyh Post Master General

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    @varrak are these posted anywhere online?
    mikeyh, January 10, 2017
    #35
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