Re: Screenshots
Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 5:36 pm
Ouch! Yes, I see what you mean!another_commander wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2017 5:13 pmIt's exactly the time needed for this generation during system entry that hurts...
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Re: Screenshots
Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 5:59 pm
Sure does look pretty though...
Re: Screenshots
Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 6:22 pm
I was certain that the texture generation stuff was using a separate thread. That annoyed me a lot because other parts of the game were running and emitting logs and it was hard to measure generation times, so I ended up forcing the F7 screen to make textures at full resolution.another_commander wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2017 5:13 pmIt's exactly the time needed for this generation during system entry that hurts (plus the fact that sound effects that might be playing at that time (or when going on F7) get borked a bit).
Re: Screenshots
Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 7:40 pm
I think you are right on that, actually. I will need to check in the source to confirm. There are some tasks that are done on separate threads and most likely this could be one of them. Just to clarify, when I said about moving texture tasks to other threads I was referring more to the Perlin calculations, which is where all the delay happens and for which I am not sure what the thread situation is.
Re: Screenshots
Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 8:25 pm
Is there an explicit model for the atmosphere drop off? You might be able to trim some computation effort by swapping a physics-based model (I think it'd be an exponential drop off, but I'd have to check that) for something simpler.another_commander wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2017 2:15 pmMoar experiments. Lots of potential, if only we could optimize the texture generation times a bit...
Re: Screenshots
Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 11:47 pm
So texture generation can neither be delayed (as I suggested) or prepared earlier (e.g. during or just prior to hyperspace sequence) for any significant gain?another_commander wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2017 5:13 pmIt's exactly the time needed for this generation during system entry that hurts (plus the fact that sound effects that might be playing at that time (or when going on F7) get borked a bit).
If there must be a pause in game then is there a better place to 'hide' it?... or even to 'stagger' it?
For the F7 screen I believe the source currently uses the main texture in miniature. Could it not instead use a simpler and seperate texture generation method? Just as the graphics options in the game allow for shaders and extra detail, perhaps the F7 screen could do without either (and without the new fancy textures ilustrated above).
Re: Screenshots
Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2017 6:40 am
I wouldn't mind a loading screen either if it's for really more awesome textures (there's still the problem of the F7 screen; might need some "please wait..." too).
One dirty optimisation trick: I believe that the textures are generated so that they can be tiled at least in one dimension (check if it's even two dimensions and if we can ditch it - might save a few CPU cycles per pixel). But the player only see half of it at any given time. So one could generate a half-size texture and tile it two times.
Or maybe use a totally different algorithm. For instance, a cellular automaton based one (basically a more elaborate version of Conway's game of life). That's more a research topic and I'm not even sure it can be made more efficient than Perlin. Or a hybrid technique using a set of predefined textures that could be altered in different ways by a PRNG-based algorithm ... That could give us map "features" (forests, deserts, glaciers, cities, ...).
One dirty optimisation trick: I believe that the textures are generated so that they can be tiled at least in one dimension (check if it's even two dimensions and if we can ditch it - might save a few CPU cycles per pixel). But the player only see half of it at any given time. So one could generate a half-size texture and tile it two times.
Or maybe use a totally different algorithm. For instance, a cellular automaton based one (basically a more elaborate version of Conway's game of life). That's more a research topic and I'm not even sure it can be made more efficient than Perlin. Or a hybrid technique using a set of predefined textures that could be altered in different ways by a PRNG-based algorithm ... That could give us map "features" (forests, deserts, glaciers, cities, ...).
Re: Screenshots
Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2017 7:08 am
Jens had written texture pre-loading routines years ago that attempted to do just that. They are still in the code but disabled due to crashes, according to the comments. Hmm...
Re: Screenshots
Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 12:30 am
I do a google search on "degrees symbol", then copy & paste one of them from the results page.RockDoctor wrote: ↑Thu Mar 09, 2017 11:50 amHTF do you get HTML entities (e.g., the degree symbol) into this posting engine.
360°
Re: Screenshots
Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 12:37 am
Why not simply hit Alt+248 - 360°
Re: Screenshots
Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 2:05 am
Re: Screenshots
Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 8:08 am
Here's a full list of HTML entities:
http://www.ascii.cl/htmlcodes.htm
Re: Screenshots
Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 8:31 am
Hey look! Screenshots!
Re: Screenshots
Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 9:28 am
I use the BBCodeXtra plug in on FireFox (seemingly unsupported, but it still works), and my "Maths" character collection uses the following entries (format : entity ; entity decomposed with spaces ; description including UNICODE codepoint) :
Code: Select all
<BR>× & times ; U+00D7 Multiplication symbol.
<BR>÷ & divide ; U+00F7 Divide symbol.
<BR>≤ & le ; U+2264 Less-than-equal symbol.
<BR>≥ & ge ; U+2265 Greater-than-equal symbol.
<BR>° & deg ; U+00B0 ; degree symbol
<BR>± & plusmn ; U+00B1 (177) ; plus-minus sign (plus-or-minus sign)
<BR>² & sup2 ; U+00B2 (178) superscript two (superscript digit two, squared)
<BR>³ & sup3 ; U+00B3 (179) superscript three (superscript digit three, cubed)
<BR>− & minus ; U+2212 (8722) ; minus operator
<BR>∗ & lowast ; U+2217 (8727) ; asterisk operator
<BR>√ & radic ; U+221A (8730) ; square root (radical sign)
<BR>∝ & prop ; U+221D (8733) ; proportional to
<BR>∞ & infin ; U+221E (8734) ; infinity
<BR>∠ & ang ; U+2220 (8736) ; angle
<BR>∧ & and ; U+2227 (8743) ; logical and (wedge)
<BR>∨ & or ; U+2228 (8744) ; logical or (vee)
<BR>∩ & cap ; U+2229 (8745) ; intersection (cap)
<BR>∪ & cup ; U+222A (8746) ; union (cup)
<BR>∫ & int ; U+222B (8747) ; integral
<BR>∴ & there4 ; U+2234 (8756) ; therefore sign
<BR>∼ & sim ; U+223C (8764) ; tilde operator (varies with, similar to)
<BR>≅ & cong ; U+2245 (8773) ; congruent to
<BR>≈ & asymp ; U+2248 (8776) ; almost equal to (asymptotic to)
<BR>≠ & ne ; U+2260 (8800) ; not equal to
<BR>≡ & equiv ; U+2261 (8801) ; identical to; sometimes used for 'equivalent to'
<BR>⊂ & sub ; U+2282 (8834) ; subset of
<BR>⊃ & sup ; U+2283 (8835) ; superset of
<BR>⊄ & nsub ; U+2284 (8836) ; not a subset of
<BR>⊆ & sube; U+2286 (8838) ; subset of or equal to
<BR>⊇ & supe ; U+2287 (8839) ; superset of or equal to
<BR>⊕ & oplus ; U+2295 (8853) ; circled plus (direct sum) EARTH
<BR>⊗ & otimes ; U+2297 (8855) ; circled times (vector product)
<BR>⊥ & perp ; U+22A5 (8869) ; up tack (orthogonal to, perpendicular)
<BR>⋅ & sdot ; U+22C5 (8901) ; dot operator
<BR>⌈ & lceil ; U+2308 (8968) ; left ceiling (APL upstile)
<BR>⌉ & rceil ; U+2309 (8969) ; right ceiling
<BR>⌊ & lfloor ; U+230A (8970) ; left floor (APL downstile)
<BR>⌋ & rfloor ; U+230B (8971) ; right floor
<BR>⟨ & lang ; U+2329 (9001) ; left-pointing angle bracket (bra)
<BR>⟩ & rang ; U+232A (9002) ; right-pointing angle bracket (ket)<P>I'd better Preview. Burned fingertips!
Well, bowdlerise me - even the entities were de-fanged.
Re: Screenshots
Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 11:29 am
<raises eyebrow>