Blog for Alexander "taualex" Gaevoy at GarageGames.com

Game Devs, show off your game!

Alexander "taualex" Gaevoy — 2007-05-26T21:50:03+00:00

Long time no blogging, well I was kinda busy with moving around country and changing jobs... Very tiresome...

Well, I wanted to let people to know about an interesting web-site, which is game video tabloid (or blog?) like; have you seen celebrity tabloids? it's kinda the same but for games.

They say that you can feature a movie clip about your game, it should be fun to watch :) , which is very helpful if you are trying to expose your own game to wide audience. They may host your movie, but mostly they use other video hosting like youtube and such... Anyway, check them: Fun Game Videos

As for my game projects - things are going very slow, I even starting to question myself, why do I try to make games? What's special in it? Is it my thing?

Cheers

Why I'm not moving to TGE 1.5

Alexander "taualex" Gaevoy — 2006-12-12T17:30:05+00:00

The new TGE 1.5 looks quite good and promissing... on screenshots. Anyway, after testing it on old hardware, I was quite dissapointed about its performace with and without dynamic lightning: the average fps was about 4 with dynamic lightning on, and 15 fps without (TGE 1.5 demo). The hardware was Celeron 1.5Ghz, NVidia GForce4MX and Intel 945 integrated card. The TGE 1.5 demo is not that COMPLEX, and can be compared to an average scene from a game of any genre (amount of gfx, textures, polygons, etc). Seems like GG has a long way of polishing this one, and I wish it could happen soon ;)
Even my trusty X800GTO with 256Mb of memory (fresh drivers) cannot squeeze more then 50-60 fps from the demo, which is sad... and strange...

Here some statistics:
Video card market share (Winter 2006):

Intel with integrated cards - 40%
ATI - 22%
NVidia - 20%
Other - 18%

Just my $0.02...

Battlefield 2142 In-game Ads Use Spyware Tactics

Alexander "taualex" Gaevoy — 2006-10-19T19:39:20+00:00

The advertising technology scans your computer, finds out where you live

Electronic Arts today announced that Battlefield 2142 has shipped to retailers in North America and Europe for the PC. After ripping open the box, but before putting the disc into their systems, gamers may notice a slip of paper with a disclaimer written on it. CGW Podcast read the disclaimer on air, which we have transcribed below:

"The software may incorporate technology developed by IGA Worldwide, the advertising technology. The purpose of the advertising technology is to deliver in-game ads when you use the software while connected to the Internet. When you use the software while connected to the Internet, the advertising technology may record your IP address and other anonymous information. That advertising data is temporarily used by IGA to enable the presentation and measurement of in-game ads and other in-game object which are uploaded temporarily to the your PC or game console, and change during online gameplay. The advertising technology does not collect personal or identifiable information about you."

Yeah, baby!
Install spyware, do it, please, on top of those $50 that we for the game...

Torque: C# and Java on Framework.NET, Mono, JSEE

Alexander "taualex" Gaevoy — 2006-04-14T18:25:46+00:00

Howdy

After recent discussions about using C# or Java with Torque with Jason Swearingen and Josh Ritter, I just decided to do some research and benchmark all those platforms.
The test code was small, so memory and the swapping were avoided; the C# code was created and compiled in VS2003 and VS2005, then run on FW.net v1.1 and v2.0, then the same code was ported to Java and compiled with Sun JDK 1.4. I also compiled the class file with ikvmc.mono into native executable, and it runs(!).
All the tests were executed on AMD 3700+/1Gb/SATAII(3Gb/s) under Win XP Pro (I didnt try it yet on Linux or Mac yet); Mono v1.1.14, JDK 1.4, FW v1.1, FW v2.0.
Java code compiled with JDK 1.5 doesnt run on Mono at'all.

Here're the execution time (average time after 3 runs):

-= C# =-
Executable compiled under FW.net v1.1:
.NET v1.1  - 12.484 ms (used heap - 4180 Kb)
Mono       - 35.358 ms (used heap - 6044 Kb)

Executable compiled under FW.net v2.0:
.NET v2.0  - 20.984 ms (used heap - 4144 Kb)
Mono       - 34.8 ms (used heap - 6628 Kb)

-= Java =-
JAR compiled under JDK 1.4:
java (1.4)  - 15.610 ms (used heap - 6196 Kb) 
mono (ikvm) - 50.782 ms (used heap - 27024 Kb)

EXE compiled with ikvmc from JAR:
native      - 15.890 ms (used heap - 11276 Kb)

Well...
Interesting facts:
* Mono still lacks the perfomance of FW.net under Windows (worse time: ~50% at min, ~110% at max).
* .NET v1.1 is faster then v2.0 (but may change after some updates from M$) on simple computation tasks (bloated vtables?).
* MONO executes .NET v2.0 code faster then v1.1 (was targeted, I guess)
* IKVM can compile java code into native and it runs as fast as JDK compiled JAR on WIndows, but uses more heap.
* FW.net uses less heap then Mono, but Mono startup time is less.
* Java is faster then FW.net v2.0, but slower FW.net v1.1 on Windows.

I dont have the test sources with me, but they are really simple:

start_time = current_time();
for (i = 0; i < int.MaxValue(); i++)
{
   r *= i + 1;
}
total_time = current_time() - start_time;

int is equal on all the tested platforms, 32 bits.
Any thoughts?

DirectX - is there any light in the tunnel?..

Alexander "taualex" Gaevoy — 2006-03-09T05:08:09+00:00

Tom Miller - you suck :)
Guys, Do not update your DirectX SDK to December 2005 or Febrary 2006!
All the API was changed...
It seems like Tom Miller does his work without giving a serious though to software architecture practices.
I spend 4 hours trying to port our development code from April 2005 to February 2006 SDK, then I just gave up... I'm gonna talk to our Director of Research and Development Department to move all the code to OpenGL!
I fed up!

Cheers.

Frustrations...

Alexander "taualex" Gaevoy — 2006-03-05T19:25:32+00:00

Alright... I guess, this is really close to the most of fella indie developers around here... and talking about this may help to release... :)

I've just noticed that I'm starting procrastinate, jumping from one game engine to another, trying to find the right one for my next project:... I need to develope a client for my distributed system and I dunno which path to choose: TGE (and stick with ready-to-go scene graph, networked movement predictions, but developing new flexible material system) or Ogre3D (with it's awsome material system and flexibility, but developing networked object prediction on my own)...

I guess, I will end up taking two sheets of paper and writing down all Pros and Cons for both solutions, and spending a long night with my trusty botle of CocaCola Zero, figuring out what will be less expensive (time wise)...

Cheers

Sunday Dec 19 11:10

Alexander "taualex" Gaevoy — 2004-12-19T11:10:00+00:00

SpeedWars:
1) Texture distance check (resource)
2) Flying up score image on damage (like in japanese RPG)
3) Change skin on-fly code