My First 3D Game

[LP]

I decided to write a short information sheet on the implementation of TFastObject over at Cerebral-Bicycle, you can read the article here

I've read the article and an alternative has occured to me. Why not using "object" declaration instead of "class"? This way you can create a large block which will contain 10000 of such objects at once and then assign correct pointers to each of them. In addition you may use a replacement memory manager like FastMM to improve the performance.

[cairnswm]

A new update has now been loaded. (Same location as above) Alien Invasion is now starting to look like a game

Aliens now fly toward you and shoot.
You take damage from their lasers - but can still crash into them.
You get score if you shoot an alien.
You lose score if an alien gets past you.
You can move left and right a little faster.
F4 to turn AutoFire on - you cant turn it off yet.
f6 to make the game faster.
F5 to make the game slower.

No effect yet when you die. Aliens just contiue but you cant do anything.
ESC to quit.

[savage]

[quote="technomage"]I decided to write a short information sheet on the implementation of TFastObject over at Cerebral-Bicycle, you can read the article here

Hope you find it usefull, if there is enough interest I'll post the stuff on a Frame Memory manager at some point and how it ]

Great stuff Dean! It wouldbe great to get this into the Articles section on PGD as well.

[technomage]

I've read the article and an alternative has occured to me. Why not using "object" declaration instead of "class"? This way you can create a large block which will contain 10000 of such objects at once and then assign correct pointers to each of them. In addition you may use a replacement memory manager like FastMM to improve the performance.

"object" is an alternative, but I'm not sure how much faster it would be, besides the benifited of deriving from a "class" I think would outweigh the benifits of using "object". I found an article on this at http://www.engineeringobjects.com/Bo.../BadDelphi.htm. At the end of the day it's down to personal preference. I know Delphi recommend NOT using "object" but I don't know if Free Pascal recommend then same thing :?:

Replacement memory managers are also a good move, I've used QMemory in my application, in conjuction with the changes I made in TFastObject.

[cht666cht]

I decided to write a short information sheet on the implementation of TFastObject

Thanks again, I'll read it when I've a little time, it looks interesting.

[cht666cht]

I've dowloaded Alien Invasion, it seems a good starting for a space shooter
I'm making something similar, but using GLScene. I'll post it when it is a little more advanced

[alexione]

Quotation from Delphi's help for TObject.NewInstance:

Override NewInstance only for special memory allocation requirements. For example, when allocating a large number of identical objects that all need to be in memory at the same time, you could allocate a single block of memory for the entire group, then override NewInstance to use part of that larger block for each instance.

One more way to get faster allocation is to use good-old free-lists. Example: let's say we have object for each dynamic effect. Instead of creating new effect each there happens, you just don't deallocate old one, but mark it as "free-for-use", put it in "list-of-free" objects, or whatever, and your allocation gets even faster!

[technomage]

I agree "Free Lists" are the way to go with things like Particle engines, where you could be creating and freeing 1000's of objects at the from one frame to the next.