Development Update 00 - 2fast Edition

[lulzaraptor]

Good evening,

Today marks the first update on "ch.3" provided by Runouw and I.

The main topic of tonight's update: performance improvement. As you may have heard, "Chapter 3" (name TBD later) will no longer be in Flash. As Runouw mentioned over here, Flashplayer suffered from some performance issues, etc. Since we're building the engine from the ground up, we are able to optimize for the needed effects.

And with that said, lets continue to the screenshots. (warning: images are BIG)

filtering comparison
Here we show the comparison of min/mag filters applied to image resources. Notice the tricoin/square/whatever you want to call them.

"Linear" means that a linear algorithm (averaging) is used to determine pixel color This causes more smooth objects.
"Nearest" means that it just uses the nearest pixel. This causes a more pixelated effect.
Flash player used something kind of like "Nearest" if I remember correctly.

full screen anti-aliasing + high resolution
"Anti-Aliasing" refers to a method used to remove aliasing (blocky edges of objects). Its not 100% visible in this example since the "blocks" are at 1-pixel size. However, please note the resolutions shown. Notably 1080p and 8K (15360x8640). Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 were rendered at 640x480.

And finally we have support for...
Over 6000 items!
Actually, in the current build of the "Legacy Engine", 16384 items are supported. In case you haven't noticed, in the top left is the current displayed frames per second. Yup, that's right. 458fps with all 6000 items visible in glorious 1080p, 8xFFAA, and bilinear filtering.
The engine used in ch1 and ch2 got maybe 5fps rendering the same amount of items. That's nearly a full 100x in performance gain, not to mention the part where its displaying 675% more pixels.

Stay tuned for more updates.

[AwesomeJRFD]

Neato. Those are some great frame rates. What are the specs of the machine this is running on?


Does it support higher monitor refresh rates than 60Hz (75Hz? 90Hz? 120Hz? 144Hz? 240Hz)? How is VSync handled in terms of latency?


I don't see much of a difference in the FSAA images in that specific scene. It would definitely have a more obvious effect higher res sprites, or with tiny resized moving blocks, or on lower res monitors.


Also, I noticed that the window is called "ClassicLevelViewer". Does that mean Chapter 3 levels are in a different format than previous versions? Looks like I'm going to have to redo my Level Generator eventually then lol.


Flash Player definitely used something similar to "Nearest", and it caused slight jitteryness and some texture stretching/inconsistencies when scrolling in chapters 1 and 2.

[lulzaraptor]

1) AMD Phenom ii with an off-brand HD7770. So a 5 year old CPU and a budget gaming GPU from 2 years ago. We have a few really low end machines we are also testing the engine on as we develop the game.

2) Please note: this is a "dev" launcher. The full game will use a more intuitive display resolution selection menu.

Spoiler: show

3) FSAA doesn't really do much for 2D unless the resources are all being scaled down. (known as SSAA) The filters are currently being used to give the computer more work to do.

4) The name displayed in the title bar is the name of a benchmarking test made for the engine.

[hhhggg]

I'm so excited for this episode of the Last Legacy. I'm sure it will be as good as the previous ones.

[Worldsixthocean]

In my computer, when there is more than 1000 item in the level designer, the game is lag a lot already......

[lulzaraptor]

If rendering is too hard for your computer, you can disable all color transforms for a near 10x performance boost. It will however cause all things to look the default color. This may make some situations difficult.

[Worldsixthocean]

If rendering is too hard for your computer, you can disable all color transforms for a near 10x performance boost. It will however cause all things to look the default color. This may make some situations difficult.

Alright, Thank You

[lulzaraptor]

mini-update:
limitation is now about 50,000 visible items. You can have more items off-screen or behind a level spliter. The number may be different for other people, but I can draw 50,000 animated items at about 40-50fps.