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Plan for Kyle Goodwin

Name:	Kyle Goodwin
Date Posted:	Sep 01, 2004
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Ever wondered why TGE was sluggish on mac? I've just completed a rewrite of the texture blender for mac to use altivec extensions on the g4 and g5 processors with quite astonishing results. Profiling before and after indicates the percentage of execution time spent in the texture blender went from nearly 80% before to around 5% after and framerates show similar improvements: on my 1.6GHz G5 with Radeon 9600 pro the framerate on the demo map went from ~15-25fps to ~45-115fps. I'll be submitting my code for incorporation into HEAD once I'm satisfied that no more improvement is likely. If you have a burning need for it before then feel free to shoot me an email and I'll see what I can do.

The Glyph project has passed the prototype phase and met its minimum functional target this week, we're now forging onwards towards our desirable target. Except a press release and some dev screenshots coming soon. I'll have another .plan with details within a week or two, as well.

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List:	12/14/04 - Plan for Kyle Goodwin 11/02/04 - Plan for Kyle Goodwin 10/21/04 - Plan for Kyle Goodwin 10/07/04 - Plan for Kyle Goodwin 09/24/04 - Plan for Kyle Goodwin 09/20/04 - Plan for Kyle Goodwin 09/09/04 - Plan for Kyle Goodwin 09/01/04 - Plan for Kyle Goodwin

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Nicolas Quijano (Sep 01, 2004 at 23:39 GMT)

Good work, no G4 or G5 yet to take advantage of it here, just my aging g3 snow ibook ;)
Hmmm, those news imacs are awfully tempting...

Kyle Goodwin (Sep 02, 2004 at 00:01 GMT)

Personally I wouldn't buy one of the iMacs. I really would love to be able to praise them, and I love everything about them pretty much expect for one key thing: a crappy, non-upgradable video card (at least not officially upgradable, who knows what's really "possible"). If it weren't for that I'd definitely be pimping them. ;) Right now I'd say your best value is still definitely one of the powermacs. I'll be buying a new one around april, probably, along with a new display, we'll see what apple has up its sleeve by then. :P

Ben Garney (Sep 02, 2004 at 00:14 GMT)

Very nice work! Hopefully we can get this into HEAD ASAP.

Kyle Goodwin (Sep 02, 2004 at 00:32 GMT)

Alright, well the ball is rolling on putting it in HEAD, so everythings cool with that. How many people would be interested in a tutorial on optimizing for mac? I'll write something up about profiling tools, compiler options, coding in altivec, etc. maybe next week if I get some time.

Prairie Games (Sep 02, 2004 at 00:38 GMT)

Our game runs like poop on the Mac as compared to the PC... I would love to see some tricks on optimizing for Mac...

Very cool,
-Josh Ritter
Prairie Games

Russell Tracey (Sep 02, 2004 at 00:52 GMT)

I'm considering a mac only release, so i would be very interested.

Josh Williams (Sep 02, 2004 at 04:39 GMT)

Sweeeeeeeeeeet

Please send your changes to me, joshw@garagegames.com

I will promptly review them and incorporate as soon as possible. Yay! This is something we've been wanting to do for a long time.
Edited on Sep 02, 2004 04:41 GMT

Ben Garney (Sep 02, 2004 at 06:03 GMT)

(Just for clarity - Josh wasn't aware that I'd already talked to and gotten the code from Kyle when he made his post. Unfortunately, he's asleep now, so he can't edit his post. ;)

Alexander Bussman (Sep 02, 2004 at 06:57 GMT)

Kyle, I would love to see a tutorial on optimizing for Mac.
I can't wait til' my Mac arrives (ordered my first Mac ever yesterday, a Power Mac G5 2x2GHz with some minor changes), so I would really like to se a tutorial on optimizing for Mac because I will be a Mac-only user soon :)
Edited on Sep 02, 2004 08:43 GMT

David Montgomery-Blake (Sep 02, 2004 at 13:01 GMT)

I'd love to see some good tutorials for the Mac as I'm new to Mac development (and since I have a shiny dual G5, I feel the severe need to create befuddling logic errors with it).

David \"Fulcrum\" Wyand (Sep 02, 2004 at 14:26 GMT)

Greetings!

Count me in for Mac optimizations. I've got a G4 eMac here.

- LightWave Dave

Mathieu (Sep 02, 2004 at 18:25 GMT)

OMG OMG OMG !!1!
You man are awesome.
Tutorials for mac optimizations will be welcomed gracefully.

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