Unleashed progress thread. (Previously Line Rider C progress thread.)

[mhenr18]

I figured I'd do my own thread and just post updates and info about my C build. Try to keep things civil in here - nothing is ever final (even if it's coded in) so don't act as if it's the end of the world because I'm thinking of adding/removing something.


It seems like a weird order to do things, but I've implemented panning and zoom before I've implemented the pencil and line tools, or any form of simulation. It's because I want to figure out basic performance things and also make sure that I support zooming at all times because it's quite tedious to add if I do it later.

I had posted some performance things in the other thread, but I'll restate them here because I'm going to add to them. All of these things are for my Mac, which has the following hardware:


With any number of lines in the frame, at 350k total lines I start to slow down from 60fps while panning/zooming/doing anything (these figures will translate directly into simulation framerates - simulation is dirt easy and not coupled to to renderer in this build - at framerates lower than 40fps you'll drop frames to keep up with the simulation). At 1 million lines I get 23fps, and at 2 million lines I get 12fps.

However, with any linecount, I start experiencing slowdown from 60fps when 50k+ lines are visible (FYI slowdown here just means it starts getting less smooth, not ACTUALLY slower). I added lines 10k at a time and kept the frame zoomed out so I could see all of them to test this. There's not much I can do to improve this except really aggressive texture compositing, which I think I'll do eventually. For now I think 50k lines is a nice improvement over the old limit of ~2.5k before I start going down from 40fps on this machine (note that Flash is a performance glut on Mac OS X - I'd get better figures if I ran the flash version under Windows). This makes the performance gains 20x so far.

[Derpinator]

O_________________________________________________________O

[mhenr18]

I think I want to give the C version a title. Line Rider: Unleashed. Why? Because I've finally unleashed your machine and let it ride the lines like never before. Also it sounds cool

Thoughts?

[hypothet]

if your looking at those specs rapto imagine the ram doubled. that's mine :p.

You can buy 32 something gigs of ram, and I think there's some unofficial 100 something gigs not on the market yet.

Anyway, sounds great. Flash takes up memory space anywhere on any OS, so don't feel alone with Flash being stupid on the Mac.

EDIT: About what you just put in as a thought, I think that Unleashed is a bit cheesy. Try something with a C to back up the programming.

Or just take the route of doing Line Rider C v. 1.1.0 or something.

That is a bit safer, if less original.

[TheRevTastic]

Line Rider: Anniversary - Where the fight begins..... oh wait thats halo

[hypothet]

Line Rider: Anniversary - Where the fight begins..... oh wait thats halo

Lulz. Nice remake, though.

[Helios Pavonine]

However, with any linecount, I start experiencing slowdown from 60fps when 50k+ lines are visible (FYI slowdown here just means it starts getting less smooth, not ACTUALLY slower). I added lines 10k at a time and kept the frame zoomed out so I could see all of them to test this. There's not much I can do to improve this except really aggressive texture compositing, which I think I'll do eventually. For now I think 50k lines is a nice improvement over the old limit of ~2.5k before I start going down from 40fps on this machine (note that Flash is a performance glut on Mac OS X - I'd get better figures if I ran the flash version under Windows). This makes the performance gains 20x so far.

Oh god yes. I've always wanted to experience my tracks as they should be while making them. Good luck on finishing. Based on your words of wisdom, it's quite epic already!

[Derpinator]

I also haz 8 gigs of ram

[rabid squirrel]

I think I want to give the C version a title. Line Rider: Unleashed. Why? Because I've finally unleashed your machine and let it ride the lines like never before. Also it sounds cool

Thoughts?

sounds too much like Unbound which everyone hates.

Beta 4?

[mhenr18]

It's not a beta. I hate people using the term beta for things that aren't betas lol.

[Wizzy]

I'm for the Unleashed title. Sounds awesome.

[Sheldon]

I have 16 TB of RAM.

[Cereal]

It's not a beta. I hate people using the term beta for things that aren't betas lol.

Gamma?

[TheRevTastic]

Line Rider: Re-Born

[efrazable]

I have 16 TB of RAM.

IBM's Blue Gene super computer has 16 terrabytes of ram.

[Opal Rider]

Line Rider: Re-Born

I like this. Sorta catchy.

[mhenr18]

I think I want to give the C version a title. Line Rider: Unleashed. Why? Because I've finally unleashed your machine and let it ride the lines like never before. Also it sounds cool

Thoughts?

sounds too much like Unbound which everyone hates.

Beta 4?

Rap is similar to rape. We're pretty good at differentiating between the two.
Edit: Also, I'm getting what I've got working on Windows right now - I figure that it might be a better idea to make sure builds are compatible as I go instead of doing one giant port at the end. [censored] YOU WIN32 PROGRAMMING.

[TheRevTastic]

Yay! So that means I can test it out without a hacintosh .

[mhenr18]

Got it building on win32

edit: I'm a bit unsure whether I'm getting a lower framerate on this laptop because it's a [censored] laptop, or because I need to fix a bug that's popped up while getting it to work on Windows. The CPU and RAM use aren't actually the real thing - I've just faked them for the time being to get it to build, but could people just have a try with this? I've been getting a solid 60fps @ 50k lines at any zoom on my Mac, but I'm getting a really, really variable performance on this laptop at 50k.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/49905412/Line%20Rider%20Unleashed_win32.zip

I've built it on Vista, I've got no idea whether it'll work with anything older.

Mac users, if you want to check performance, http://dl.dropbox.com/u/49905412/Line%20Rider%20Unleashed_Mac.zip
I've built it on Lion, and it's Intel only.

[[senpai] kevans]

Works like a dream in xp. aprox 600,000 lines. But this was done at a school computer, I'll test this at home.

https://2img.net/h/i757.photobucket.com/albums/xx213/kevansevans/untitled-12.png

Though.... I think the name could be better... IMO.

[TheRevTastic]

Laptop
Windows 7
4 GB Ram
AMD Athlon 64 L310 x2 1.20 GHZ

[Conundrumer]

Up for a linux port? :|

[[senpai] kevans]

Up for a linux port? :|

I think that isn't necessary because Linux is designed to run win32 programs.

[mhenr18]

No it's not, wine's a dirty hack most of the time - especially with OpenGL.
Conun, because Linux people can't get their [censored] together and have one nice GUI framework, how do you want it? I was going to do it as a GTK thing on Ubuntu, is there something else you'd rather?

Also, I've done a bit of tweaking to improve performance - I'm getting 60fps with 50k lines on my Windows machine now . CPU/RAM on Windows still isn't real

Windows: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/49905412/Line%20Rider%20Unleashed_win32_0.03.zip
Mac: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/49905412/Line%20Rider%20Unleashed_Mac_0.03.zip

[mhenr18]

ok its a double post but meh. I've finally got the grid working in this version, totally bug free. So, that means that LR's RAM use is now final - what I'm getting now will be exactly what it'll be in fully fledged builds.

On my Mac, a 1 million line track clocks in at 456MB. If you fire up task manager/activity monitor and check the ram use of the flash player, with 3000 lines its always above 1000MB.

Or, in per line values flash uses 0.33MB per line. In my build, it's 0.000456MB per line.

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