Sunday, June 9, 2013
Summary
Great day, but not particularly coherent. One of the more exciting things I did was build a small console program designed to run the bare-bones universe simulation, stripped of all graphics / user interaction code. Not only is it a good test to ensure that my engine architecture has properly separated the graphics and simulation to the extent that it should, but it will also be invaluable in testing my simulation code. With only the simulation running, I'll be able to achieve simulations that run way faster than real-time, meaning I can watch the universe evolve in hyper speed to quickly see the impacts of my changes. Some preliminary measurement using this new program shows that I can currently simulate at about 50x real-time (so in one minute I can simulate almost an hour of game time). At the beginning of the day that number was 20x, so you can tell that I did some nice simulation optimization today
I think my target will be 100x. That should be enough to quickly test my changes. Imagine, I'd be able to simulate more than 4 days of solid game time in a single hour! Mind you, that's full-precision simulation. In other words, it's exactly the same as if you left the normal game on for 4 days. I could watch factions rise and fall, planets change ownership, AI players work from rags to riches...and others work themselves into the grave. All in a few hours or so. Neat
There was a lot of other good work today, but since it was so scattered, I can't remember it very well, and I'd rather leave some room to explain the final change that happened today...something that is exciting, relieving, and scary all at the same time!
As you know, I have recently become a significantly more multiplatform kind of fellow What you may not know is that Dell is currently repairing my laptop, and I also recently purchased an AMD machine which should be arriving soon (no more breaking compatibility with AMD cards ever again!) which will yield a grand total of 3 development machines. And what you may have guessed, but not necessarily known, is that the current hourly logging system is kind of a major pain, both in that it does not support other platforms (forcing me to make educated guesses), nor does it allow easy usage across multiple machines (there is no automatic merging of the hours...so I have had to do it myself in the past when I split time between my laptop/desktop). Finally, what you definitely know is that, when we have a problem around here ... we rip it out
Today I introduce a new logging system! This new one, called "RescueTime," works on all platforms. It also automatically merges data between all of your computers. As if this wasn't already enough reason to switch, it also generates embedded charts automatically, with zero interaction from me!!! Um, where do I sign up!?!?! Just kidding. I already did.
So, the bottom line is that you won't be seeing hourly tallies in the dev logs anymore, but you can visit:
devtime.ltheory.com
In some ways it gives you more detail than the old logs, and in some ways less. It's a compromise, but it provides me with so many benefits that I can't pass it up. Now I can just go about my business and these charts update automatically 24/7 without taking any time away from development!! Awesome It's also neat how it rates your efficiency based on application usage. So driving that number up is going to be fun. Off to a pretty good start to the week at 80%
Post
Sun Jun 09, 2013 11:16 pm
#1
Week of June 9, 2013
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford