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Thread: TANX (Iron Strike)

  1. #201

    TANX (Iron Strike)

    Im back! Well, I guess everyone said it already, so now's my turn:
    Your game is the man!!! :clap: lol

    I absolutely love the graphics, as well as the ''tank bits'' flying up to the camera and down when you blow them up! lol
    Its a shame it slows down so much, sometimes, though. I have a gig of ram, and it's a pain to shoot helicopters bcos when they're on screen, it kinda lags...
    But congratulations, nontheless!

    How long did it take you? Have you done programming courses and stuff? Do you write in other languages as well?

  2. #202

    TANX (Iron Strike)

    Hey ILovePascal,

    sorry for the delay, but I came back from holidays last night at 3o'clock, so I was not able to take a look at the forums for 2 weeks.

    I know that the PGD entry had some lag issues, and the IGF version has some too (when much enemys are on the map), but there are already some thoughts on solving the problem. The lags in the PGD version came from the trees and ground tiles. This problem is already fixed in the IGF version, so don't worry about it, all the lags will be gone some day (I will work further on the game).

    The game took most of my spare time in the beginning of 2006. I started with 0 lines of code in february and ended up with the entry in may.

    I am using Delphi since version 2, never did any course or something though. But I am glad I use Delphi at work, too. I am working as software developer. But in fact, I don't think this helped me a lot when working on TANX, because at work I develop everything else but games

    I am glad you liked the entry.

    I use a little C/C++ at work only (Linux).

    Greetings,
    Dirk
    <a href="http://www.greatgamesexperiment.com/game/Valgard/?utm_source=gge&amp;utm_medium=badge_game"><img border="0" alt="GGE" title="GGE" src="http://static.greatgamesexperiment.com/badge/game/valgard/gge400x56.png"></a>

  3. #203

    TANX (Iron Strike)

    Ok, that's cool.

    I was wondering how you reduce the lag? Is it just by going around your program and deleting the parts you don't absolutely need (tht's the only way I've ever managed to reduce lag) or do you do it another way? I would love to learn more cos lag is a real pain!

    cheers and c ya!

  4. #204
    Co-Founder / PGD Elder WILL's Avatar
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    TANX (Iron Strike)

    I may be going off topic here, but; Most lag can be reduced by optimizing the way you do things rather than not doing them at all.

    Some examples;

    :arrow: Pre-calculate common math functions rather than doing them each time in your main game loop.
    :arrow: Simplify your algorithms. Sometimes you have done more work than you need to the first few times around.
    :arrow: Limit the amount of memory and elements you access to only that which you need. ie. Checking 10 items every 100 loops per frame is far faster than checking 1000 elements every 100 loops per frame.

    Just a few things you can consider when you go back over you code to optimize things to run nicer.


    Iron Strike runs much nicer now, for sure. However I think Dirk can make it run nicer with enough time to optimze things. Now that the IGF is over with, I'm quite certan that he will soon.
    Jason McMillen
    Pascal Game Development
    Co-Founder





  5. #205

    TANX (Iron Strike)

    A simple example of the optimization is the trees. I calculated their movement (many sin and cos functions) in the render routine, which, of course, was a bad idea. When I moved the calculations to the TimerProcess routine, the lags with many trees on screen were gone.

    Processing and rendering should always be seperated, because the video card can render WHILE the CPU calculates things...

    The above mentioned bad code was made in the hurry during the compo where I was happy that things work, not how good they are implemented.

    The things WILL mentioned are always the first things which can be optimized....

    Another big thing in my case was:

    Redesign of game classes...

    During the compo, all my enemys had its own class from scratch...

    While changing the engine for IGF, I built base classes which now every enemy class is derived from (the way it was meant to be from the beginning).
    The base class can move, collide and all other basic behaviours... this allows me to store all enemys (no matter what kind) in a single list, which is much more comfortable (and faster) to process...

    My current attemps to use Newton Game Physics for the game will speed up things, too... My own collision procedures are crap and buggy. Newton does a good job and if I manage to include it in the engine, even the collision response and special effect will look much more cooler.

    Greetings,
    Dirk
    <a href="http://www.greatgamesexperiment.com/game/Valgard/?utm_source=gge&amp;utm_medium=badge_game"><img border="0" alt="GGE" title="GGE" src="http://static.greatgamesexperiment.com/badge/game/valgard/gge400x56.png"></a>

  6. #206

    TANX (Iron Strike)

    Cool! Thank you both for the ideas! They were indeed very helpful! At the moment Im a bit busy with exams and stuff, but soon I'll get back to my game and maybe by next year (i know it's a lot of time, but im REAL busy!!!) I'll get some screenshots! (It's quite an ambitious game!)

    have a good one

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