Retro FPS

I really don’t care much for Windows 8, call me old fashioned, I don’t.

“Call Me Old-Fashioned…”

BUT…but… my preliminary testing on Windows 8.1 (code name “Blue”… ooohhh secret) has proved to me that its a major step forward!

giLE2D loads a “tad” slower on my test 8.1 system (which is the lowest end spec laptop I have, see below), but its much more sturdy!

The AGK frameworks for giLE2D run brilliantly, and the editor itself feels slick and natural!

Hopefully I will have some real performance metrics to show you this coming weekend. I am glad we decided to hold back release in order to test on a low spec, 8.1 machine.

System requirements will be updated at the end of the test run.

Braw!

TEST SYSTEM SPECS:
Gateway NV52L15u Laptop
AMD Quad Core A8-4500M @ 1.9 GHz
4 Gb DDR3 RAM
500 Gb HDD (SATA 2)
AMD Radeon HD 7640G Mobile (shared memory with system RAM, yeuch!)

Puny test system is a puny! Runs giLE2D nicely, though!

Well, in accordance with the requests I have received, we will be holding back on the giLE2D release until we fully test with Windows 8.1.

I also think that this is a good idea, just so that we are sure that giLE2D will run on Microsoft’s latest offering.

I had originally planned to just support up to Windows 8.0, then release a version that we know runs on 8.1, but with the imminent release of “Blue” on Friday, we will test giLE2D with the public release of the new OS.

I expect things to go well having looked at the core API changes and so the release of giLE2D should not be delayed more than a week or so.

We are now shooting for a release date of Friday, November 15th… stay tuned!

“Well, my friends, so far its gone very well! “

(Andre Linoge, Storm Of The Century, 1999)

I made a map in giLE2d with some 200 64×64 sprites in it.

I just basically dumped them all over the place and monitored the application. Here is what we got, with giLE2D being triple-clicked on, moved around, stretched, bent and beaten up:

Here is the scrolling test framework running:

To summarize:

CPU: 0 – 4%
MEM WORKING SET: 67,528K
MEM PEAK WORKING SET: 70,476K
MEM WORKING SET DELTA: 0K
MEM PRIVATE: 42,296K
HANDLES (PEAK): 512
THREADS (PEAK): 21
USER OBJECTS: 200
GDI OBJECTS: 187

Note the GDI handles, which I was afraid was going to run into the thousands… no problem at all! (good TWinControl design choice up front!)

Test System Specs:

CPU: Intel Core i5 Sandybridge @ 3.3GHz
RAM: 8Gb DDR-3 1633MHz
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional
GPU: nVidia GeForce GTX 560Ti, 1Gb RAM
HDD: Seagate SATA3 1Tb (not an SSD!)

Other systems will be exploited!

Later, I intend to run automation testing on it and go through two thousand iterations of all functionality in one session. I’ll let you know how we did!

Well, after being away for a week or so (some vacation, some hard slog), its time to start to wrap up the help files for giLE2D. Once I get the final layout done, its just a case of filling in the blanks, kinda like writing a book.

Also slated for this weekend is the first MAJOR stress-test for giLE2D, including high-sprite volume performance, load speeds, GDI metrics, triple and quadruple clicking when threads are running and all that other nasty stuff that could potentially break under very high loads.

Dum Dum Dum Dididi-dum!

Memory consumption and release will also be tested under load. While I always program with this in mind to the nth degree, nothing beats thrashing the shi… (you know what) out of the software to build confidence that the code is consumer-ready and consumer-strong.

Over the weekend I will post a bunch of results as and when they are available.

Should be fun!

Well, I took the plunge tonight and decided to put a little info about giLE2D on the AGK forums at the excellent Game Creators website!

I took the precaution of asking their permission first, since nobody likes a spammer. Spamming lowers the tone and credibility of any project, don’t you find?

Anyway, you’ll find the forum entry at:

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=207885&b=48

Many, many thanks to all the forum members there for being the most friendly, non-pompous and genuinely helpful people in the global game dev community. They should all be proud of themselves for their overall conduct and graciousness.

…and I mean that most sincerely, folks!

Any road up, the help system writing and dev is going slower than the core API and UI layer coding did… (Ugh! Help Authoring…) but I really want to write something that is both helpful and entertaining. It’s absolutely worth going that extra mile from not only a professional standpoint, but for the personal “job well done” type feeling.

The official release date for giLE2D is October, the 19th of February (oops, sorry, a Stephen Fry-ism skipped in there). Actually, mid to late October is what I’m shooting at now. Hopefully sooner, but that all depends on the robustness of the core code.

So, to sum up, its on with more help-book writing and some more Guinness to help me through the process!

Cheers!

April, The 20th Of Septemberism, m’colleagues