Kimny wrote:

Personally, McSven is quite right in asking, what kind if tech in C/ assembler could Josh implement to get the performance tweaks he's suggested?

I think that is the more intriguing question. Others have offered nice guesses/assessments of what Josh might have been implementing, but all have mostly focused on the code design patterns, on the programming modularity. While certainly the code design can operate significant performance gains when it corrects previous design mistakes, firstly I doubt that a great coder always focused on optimization like Josh would have made such detrimental performance mistakes in the past.

Secondly, while beneficial to the productivity, I very much doubt that altering the code design, or the modularity alone, would give the orders of magnitude gain that Josh has talked about. I remember, however, Josh commenting that the use of scripting language within the main code has grown to the point of affecting performance, so I would guess that most significant parts of the performance gain came from better integrating LTSL within the main engine, or even from re-writing LTSL in a lighter-weight fashion.

FormalMoss wrote: Personally, McSven is quite right in asking, what kind if tech in C/ assembler could Josh implement to get the performance tweaks he's suggested?
I remember Michael Abrash joined iD Software for Quake or Quake 2, to help optimise rendering pipelines back in the day.
Abrash now works with Valve last I heard.

So programmers/ techies/ anyone, what do you reckon Josh has done with this latest tech?
What's the mostly astoundingly difficult thing to achieve in a game engine that most programmers would never go near?

Silverware wrote:I think what has happened is he has followed the linux philosophy, and broken his engine into many parts, each doing their job independently of the others.

What I keep seeing is that he is making it easier to work on any individual part, and to try and avoid bugs propagating around when trying to fix them, which suggests to me that he has created a very modular breakdown of the old engine.
Something where each module takes a set of inputs and provides a set of outputs, where he can technically rip any of them out, and only break some functionality rather than all of it.
I expect that he has also optimized his compiling so that he doesn't have to recompile the entire engine but only the tiny part of it that needs to be redone (although modern compilers can do this even without a modular system).

But he was mentioning how he had this monolithic code, and how that was interfering with his work. So I expect he has broken it down into a less monolithic state.

While the end result shouldn't be that different to user's or modders, it should happen faster, as he no longer has to fight the entire engine to recode things. It should also provide a capability to replace chunks of the code without having to have the original source code too.

Although this is pure speculation, without knowing what the engine architecture looked like before we can't really make useful guesses.

In my experience, and from studying the experience of others, code redesign is the only reliable way to obtain orders-of-magnitude improvement in performance.

Remember Josh has been at this for years, and there will be some deep lying stuff that makes him feel ashamed about how poorly

I mean, it's not like he was writing the whole program in one 70,000+ line .cpp file.
Or at least, I hope he wasn't.

JoshParnell wrote: Best part is, I am now at the point where I can concurrently develop any pieces that I wish, be it engine, game, or the platform on which it all rests.

Run LT
- open platform
- prepare environment
- What would you like to do:
-- Play LT
-- Screensaver mode
-- Play LT Headless

Play LT:
- Platform initialises LTSL scripts, and verifies Engine is ready
- Game is created by Platform, using inputs from LTSL scripts and Engine
- Platform periodically performs polling of LTSL scripts for changes, and tells the Game to update

blackdot wrote:does josh's last update mean that he's done with the engine and can now finally concentrate on the content and gameplay? because that's what i understood, but if that's true, i wouldn't expect LT before 2017, right?

BFett wrote:

blackdot wrote:does josh's last update mean that he's done with the engine and can now finally concentrate on the content and gameplay? because that's what i understood, but if that's true, i wouldn't expect LT before 2017, right?

Yes, it does sound like the mysterious "platform" is now complete. For the release date, just set it to release in the same week as the next Star Wars film and you shouldn't be too disappointed (Dec 16, 2016).

BFett wrote:

blackdot wrote:does josh's last update mean that he's done with the engine and can now finally concentrate on the content and gameplay? because that's what i understood, but if that's true, i wouldn't expect LT before 2017, right?

Yes, it does sound like the mysterious "platform" is now complete. For the release date, just set it to release in the same week as the next Star Wars film and you shouldn't be too disappointed (Dec 16, 2016).

blackdot wrote:

BFett wrote:

blackdot wrote:does josh's last update mean that he's done with the engine and can now finally concentrate on the content and gameplay? because that's what i understood, but if that's true, i wouldn't expect LT before 2017, right?

Yes, it does sound like the mysterious "platform" is now complete. For the release date, just set it to release in the same week as the next Star Wars film and you shouldn't be too disappointed (Dec 16, 2016).

that would be clever in terms marketing . "All aboard the space train: Long awaited kickstarter game steals Star Wars the show."

The Story:

On Aug 24th 2012 we sent my son's favorite train "Stanley" to space in a weather balloon with a HD camera and an old cell phone for GPS. He was recovered 27 miles away in a corn field. This video documents the journey from liftoff to landing.
PLEASE read below, it answers most questions I get emailed.

My 4 year old and Stanley are inseparable like Calvin and Hobbes. He's been attached to him since he was two, and they play, sleep and do everything together. I animated Stanley's face with After Effects and Photoshop to bring him to life how I imagine my son sees him.

Here's the first video I made of my son and Stanley when he was 2 years old, documenting the beginning of their friendship.