Author Topic: Coming up soon: graphical load testing tool (windows, linux, osx folks needed!)  (Read 22151 times)

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
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Hey folks,

In the next couple of days I'm going to put together a little multi-platform "game" (I use the term incredibly loosely) that will let you view a couple of static scenes with some stock art of specific complexities, and it will record the performance of drawing those scenes on your computer as well as some information about your computer.  You can then look at the output log it created and send it to us, if you're comfortable (there's nothing private there).

There are a number of permutations of how Blue and I can do the art for this game, and I'm not sure which will have the best performance to visual ratio, while also being the most tune-able for different kinds of graphics cards.

Blue has been out with a power outage since last Thursday thanks to Hermine, but she's back now and working first on the logo, and then far zoom icons (things will be coming up for feedback on the latter tomorrow), and then we'll be moving in to actual ship art and so forth after that.

But before we get too invested in one approach, I want to see just how far we can push the exciting quality bar without making performance a dog.  At present in the design document I wrote from the perspective of a minimum-possible-load perspective, but more recently I'm realizing that because of the nature of the game I probably have FAR more latitude than that.

This tester "game" won't actually have any game logic at all in it, nor any original art for this game.  But it will do a great job giving me a profile of what is and is not acceptable, and what works the best on your machines, and thus determine the art style path as this moves forward.  I have a sneaking suspicion that we can do more than what I'd originally been thinking... ;D

I need folks on windows, linux, and osx, so if you want to be notified please reply to this thread with the "Notify me of replies." on, and I'll post here on probably Friday or Saturday when it is ready.  Knock on wood those days...
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline kasnavada

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Ok, count me in. Windows only but that's probably going to be the majority of testing needed anyway.

Offline Captain Jack

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So.... art work is only just starting? Is Blue handling all the spritework this time around? If so I have a favor: could you ask Blue to keep the color schemes of the Mk IV and Mk V ships, but use them on the Mk Is and IIs respectively? It'd save design time, and ram home to long time players that things have changed.

Of course keeping the same color schemes from Classic all the way through saves even more time and effort so I'm fine either way.

Oh amd sign me up for this, I have two PCs of different ability and I can probably get a low end Mac as well.

Offline Nuc_Temeron

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I'd be happy to help! Just let me know what to do.

Offline x4000

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Cool beans, thanks.

In terms of art work for the game:
1. Some of it is just starting, yes.
2. Other pieces are not.
3. We're not really trying to recreate units from the original game, aside from a few central ones.
4. Certainly not color schemes.

A lot of the art from the original game was from free sources or otherwise just really off for various reasons.   It was all pixel-art-based, and now we're moving toward 3D when zoomed in and vector-style art that is cleaner and easier on the eyes when zoomed out.  We'll have images of the vector stuff soon, but the graphical load tester noted here is specifically for testing the 3D end of it.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline Tridus

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Sign me up. :) Hopefully AIW 2 is friendly to my 4k monitor. :)

Offline chemical_art

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Count me in  :)
Life is short. Have fun.

Offline Misery

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Sure, I'll give it a go as well.

Offline mithrandi

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Count me in for some Linux testing :)

Offline steelwing

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Linux tester reporting for duty! 8)

Offline NickAragua

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Sure, I'll help out.

Offline Captain Jack

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Cool beans, thanks.

In terms of art work for the game:
1. Some of it is just starting, yes.
2. Other pieces are not.
3. We're not really trying to recreate units from the original game, aside from a few central ones.
4. Certainly not color schemes.

A lot of the art from the original game was from free sources or otherwise just really off for various reasons.   It was all pixel-art-based, and now we're moving toward 3D when zoomed in and vector-style art that is cleaner and easier on the eyes when zoomed out.  We'll have images of the vector stuff soon, but the graphical load tester noted here is specifically for testing the 3D end of it.
Haha you weren't kidding about chaning things, I completely missed that. Aight, looking forward to seeing what they end up being.

Offline Cyborg

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Windows here, if needed.
Kahuna strategy guide:
http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13369.0.html

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http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/

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Offline Pumpkin

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Linux with cheap graphic card, reporting for duty.

"Notify me of replies." ? Is that a magic word for invoking the Grep daemon? ;)

I can't wait for these new 3D arts!!
Please excuse my english: I'm not a native speaker. Don't hesitate to correct me.

Offline PokerChen

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Windows laptop, reasonably top end Nvidia, will test multiple performance settings (should give you a range of clock speeds as data points), can also test on integrated graphics(!) to tackle the opposite end if desired.

 

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