[feedback] fake 3d engine, or how to trick flash to do things faster

hi folks,

i've written the engine some time ago for an action game, but dropped it as soon as i discovered that it would be *way* to slow to handle the number of objects i had in mind.

... but last week i started a major rewriting (and optimizing) session.

and this is the result:

sorry modem users, i had no time to optimize the texture files ... so its 2mb in size)
Engine v.98

the engine itself is currently 14k in size [:|]

move robby with cursor keys
rotate view with shift/click/drag (left / right)
move view with click/drag
scale view with control/click/drag

i just found a minor bug in the depth-sorting routine ... so ignore that.

oh yes, please post some specs (machine, browser, fps and maybe the rendertime in ms (lower left corner))

cheers and thanks, nGFX

Well thats pritty awsome :) by depth problems do you mean when you scale? caz all the depths mess up when you do.

I get 26-27 fps on

1.5 GHz Pentium M

512 ram

Get collision working and that could be very very sweet.

Ali

Gosh darn it, I hate you... Its fantastic

Highest FPS: 25, Lowest: 23, Average: 24
Highest MS: 9, Lowest: 4, Average: 5-6

Running Firefox, so it is much slower than IE.

3Ghz P4, 1Gb 3200 Rammage

Wow, that engine is pretty impresive :)

Got an fps of 24 when I was rotating at highspeed...
2.8ghz, 1Gig DDR

:yikes:

Highest FPS: 29, Lowest: 18 but it was usually around 25 or so.

Found the same as Iopred, Firefox is slower.

Cowcomputer..er..Gateway with Pentium 4, 2.99 GHz, 512 MB of RAM

So damn nice! Good job :)

Runs around 16-20 fps and 12 MS

800 Mhz, 384 SDR, Mozilla 1.7.1 (yes my computer is crap :P, but your game runs pretty smooth on it)

Good luck, I would like to see the engine when collisions are working. So show us again when its done!

sweet stuff mate,
it already was nice when you showd me recently,but well,with the bigger map and the houses its just so much better (and did you tweak on performance some more? running even faster now :D )
25-27 fps all the time, biggest drop to 22 fps one or two times but only for a split sec.
1.67 gHz 768 mb (ddr) ram,
officepc,5 other apps running (one of them is eclipse,which is normally a performance bogger ;) )
keep it up =)

Wow - runs smoohly on my antique computer (when i say antique, i mean: takes 12 minutes to load it up...not joking!) - havent tested it on my new computer, but i can only assume it would be amazingly smooth. Very well done!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by alillm

by depth problems do you mean when you scale? caz all the depths mess up when you do.

---

not exactly, theres just a minor problem when sorting the depth of the displayed faces - what should be behind another face is infront of it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by iopred

Gosh darn it, I hate you... Its fantastic

---

:hug: i'm unworthy.
thanks.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by thehumanchimp

i mean: takes 12 minutes to load it up...not joking!)

---

eek. i told you the texturefile is huge ...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by superjoep

Good luck, I would like to see the engine when collisions are working. So show us again when its done!

---

basically collisions are already handled, but for this demo i just threw together what i could find and added an onEnterframe for the movement.

the engine itself will be featured in some of my next/previous games (on that is secret atm, crystalis (the new engine has so many more possibilities than the plain iso view))

oh, and did i mention that it handles slopes, too? :)

thanks again for the feedback,
nGFX

ps: more regular updates/infos will be posted on the sN blog (like the editor for "scenes")

"eek. i told you the texturefile is huge ..."

No, it didnt take that long to load the file as i have broadband - what i meant was it takes 12 minutes from the time i switch on my computer, to the time it is ready to be used.

:o

2ghz PC, 25 fps

Wow, loving that blue!

Squize.

PS. Footy game has gone gold, 2nd day in a row ;) , so proper email coming up mate.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by thehumanchimp

"eek. i told you the texturefile is huge ..."

No, it didnt take that long to load the file as i have broadband - what i meant was it takes 12 minutes from the time i switch on my computer, to the time it is ready to be used.

---

ouch. win 98 then?

nGFX

ps: squize, babe. is *that* propper feedback? no fps, no machine or browser ...
i forgive you this time ...

1.8 Ghz, explorer, average fps 26

looks pretty good so far, you going to build a mini tank race game with this engine? could be fun, especially with guns :)

win ME infact ... I think the processor got a bit screwed up when i tried replacing the battery thingy with another one from another computer ... :(

Ignore this post....

Cool engine!

I'm really impressed by the frame rate, especially considering the game screen size. My fps was ~18 (AMD 1400, IE6)

Amazing!

I got an average of about 3 fps, a minimum of 2 fps, and a maximum of 5 fps. The render time was about 18 to 20 ms on average,

Very impressive stuff. Fast enough for me (I have low standards). It barely lagged, even when rotating and scaling. Any idea what you might use it for? And what are you going to do about collision?

My computer is a 450 Mhz (ouch) iMac (double ouch) G3 (triple ouch).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by VENGEANCE MX

Amazing!

I got an average of about 3 fps, a minimum of 2 fps, and a maximum of 5 fps. The render time was about 18 to 20 ms on average,

Very impressive stuff. Fast enough for me (I have low standards). It barely lagged, even when rotating and scaling. Any idea what you might use it for? And what are you going to do about collision?

My computer is a 450 Mhz (ouch) iMac (double ouch) G3 (triple ouch).

---

Huh... how can you have an fps of 3 and not find it laggy? :yikes:

IMPRESSIVE
great job... olli...

25fps 2gig laptop
19-20fps during the rotation of the whole scene

WOW - putting this stuff into a game would be
a killer...

"win ME infact"
:) not that far away ...

"you going to build a mini tank race game with this engine"
not in the first place. although i had a short look at an abandoned 4 player tank game i wrote 2 years ago ...

"Cool engine!
I'm really impressed by the frame rate, especially considering the game screen size."
thanks. as for the screensize: i tried 800x600, too. i didn't notice a slowdown (on my box, 2ghz) , but i thought i might better try not to stress my luck.

"I got an average of about 3 fps, a minimum of 2 fps, and a maximum of 5 fps. The render time was about 18 to 20 ms on average"
wow. and i was cursing when i hit 20 fps after i've added some more faces ...

"WOW - putting this stuff into a game would be a killer..."
:cool: guess what it's for?

nGFX

1.8Hz 256MBRam High:28 Low:18 Average:21-24.... Went and did some space exploring... and got lost.... LOL....

but my only comments is... the foward and back act like booster on a space guy... if u hold em down, the robot will cont. to move in that direction until a countermovement is inputed... but on the turn it's not like that... i would just change that... cuz if u hold down the up key, it will cont. to move and not even slow down, until u hit the down key and slow it down to a stop.... other then that... great art....cant wait to see the finish work...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Freakwncy02

but my only comments is... the foward and back act like booster on a space guy... if u hold em down, the robot will cont. to move in that direction until a countermovement is inputed... but on the turn it's not like that... i would just change that... cuz if u hold down the up key, it will cont. to move and not even slow down, until u hit the down key and slow it down to a stop.... other then that... great art....cant wait to see the finish work...

---

thanks for the art comment and the note about the movement, but i must admit that nothing of that will be in the final game the engine was made for.
the house textures are someting i pushed togther for some 3d work and the robot is from crystalis (which will feature the same engine)

as i said i just threw in some very basic movement just to make the demo a bit more interresting :)

nGFX

36fps max on 2gb DDR2, 4Ghz laptop, EI

36fps?

wow that beats my deepest hopes ... mhm, although i've published it with 30fps !?

do you have the v8 plugin installed?

nGFX

no, not sure why it came up so high? might have been a glitch?

awesome ng. just fantastic
22 fps
2.8 Ghz 2Gb FF
:)

How exactly did you make it this fast, anyway? What did you do differently, and what are the limitations of what you can do with the engine?

nGFX, I got around 26 fps constant on P4 2.8 gHz computer.

Now, would you mind saying how many movieclips are actually in that? I cant imagine that it would be that many (Maybe 10 or so). For that to be a game you need to have close to twice as many as you would now to keep it from being such an open enviornment. If that is the case, would your engine be able to keep up with a good FPS?

-----Soccr743-----

dudeqwerty, :) i guess it may have been a problem with the framecounter (or the pentium division bug)

BlinkOk, hey mate, long time no see. sometimes flash behaves just weird (on my 2ghz box, ff, f7 plugin) i get a constant 26 fps ...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by VENGEANCE MX

How exactly did you make it this fast, anyway? What did you do differently, and what are the limitations of what you can do with the engine?

---

k, one major drawback is the limitation of one(!) tilt angle per scene, so if you decide to use a 45° down view (like in the demo) you have to live with it. this is because some of the time consuming sin/cos/tan calculations are stored in arrays. so it's basically this (and the secret highly optimized data-handling ;) )

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Soccr743

Now, would you mind saying how many movieclips are actually in that? I cant imagine that it would be that many (Maybe 10 or so). For that to be a game you need to have close to twice as many as you would now to keep it from being such an open enviornment. If that is the case, would your engine be able to keep up with a good FPS?

---

mhm, in this demo i used 5x5 tiles for the floor (256x256px png), 6 faces per building and two sprites, so there are currently +/-78 MCs (39 faces) on screen (usually MCs 2 per face, plus some container MCs).
the current WIP version of the game (or better the first map) uses 10 map elements (which consist of 5x5 tiles) wich results in an area of 3000x7500px.
there are currently around 110 objects on that map (walls, trees, hills (yes, slope support), but i limited the number of objects to +/- 20 per visibility group (why render things that are not visible), as flash *cannot* handle all objects at the same time -> mostly because gfx rendertime).
display size is 640x480px.
it still runs at 23fps on an 1.6ghz box ...

though the faces in the demo are quite large, which also isn't that good for speed ...

cheers, nGFX

WOW! Just tried it on my new computer (3.21 GHz, Win XP, 512 MB Ram) and I must say its so amazingly smooth. I thought running it on my old computer was smooth, but running it on this computer is just uber (i hate using that word :)) smooth. Well done!

Pretty constant 24-26 fps on both Firefox and IE

:) (schouldn't it be: über? - german keyboards are cool ;), sometimes )

nGFX

lol ok - next time i'll invest a little more time to go and find it in character map :)

i woz just havin a play with it again and found that if you slow the robot way down and move at angles then sometimes he looks like hes sliding rather than going in the direction he's pointing.

Macs don't have a character map. It's a lot easier for us to add accents to letters. We just have to use a hotkey on the keyboard to choose the accent we want, and then the next letter we type in will inherit that accent. For instance, if we typed in 'a' after the following keyboard shortcuts, it would turn into:

Alt + E = á
Alt + ` = Ã*
Alt + U = ä
Alt + I = â
Alt + N = ã

B-e-a-utiful.

blink, yep i know, this happens when you move at "fractions" of a "unit", like:

x += 0.75;
z += 0.3;

(although it looks more like: :) )
Sprite_obj.Pos_vec.add(new Vector_Object(0, 0, -Sprite_obj.Speed).RotateY(Sprite_obj.Dir_vec.y));

nGFX

when rotating and moving the faces this adds up and it looks like the rooby is sliding (i think i can find a way around it in the actual game.

Neat =)

23-25FPS (4-5ms/frame)
Pentium 4 2.53GHz (512MB RAM)
WinXP/IE 6

30fps 3.5ghz 1g ddr ram

the ground squares seemed a ltitle choppy tho

A mazing