Practical tests

Actual usage

12.10.2007

The only way to make script really fast is to do JIT compiler. I don’t want to do real JIT (jet) so I tried to do a simple JIT by tabling all possible script functions instead of doing a switch; and there are many function, actually (parameter_type * parameter_address_mode) ^ number_of_parameters to be exact. In my case that is: (5*8)^3. Fortunately not all combinations are used so I had to do only ~19000 functions.

Anyways the speed improvement was huge, around 3 times better.

Some facts:

• Down to 17 instructions of redundant code per instruction (from ~75).
• Average of ~10 instructions per script instruction (from ~25).

The next step is real JIT. I’ve already invested some time in it and it is just not time right now. I have to move on.

12.09.2007

I tried to port a simple menu script from VS code and found out that script without arrays is useless.

So I had to implement arrays.

The design is set to support unlimited array dimensions however for game engine two dimensions will suffice since I found a very nice way to optimize it (I hope I will not regret it).

And since I started working on script again I also implemented basic typecasting and variable scopes.

Typecasting is a little different than in C/C++. I tried making it the same as in C/C++:

(typename) expression

but I got too many reduce/reduce conflicts so I had to find another pragmatic solution. And that is:

<typename> expression

I know it is a little bizarre and it breaks the copy paste from C/C++ code but it works. I will try and fix that later.

12.07.2007

I took an opportunity and borrowed a couple of joysticks from a friend to do a joystick support. And I completely underestimated the task (wow – that’s a new one). All I wanted to do is a multiple joystick support, device port recognition and… well that’s it. And a presumably 1 hour task prolonged into a 5 hour suffering…

Nevertheless I did it: a multi joystick support with USB port recognition (joystick input index and USB ports can be linked).

12.06.2007

Working without any decant viewport system has become a real annoyance (I sense the visibility will become similar annoyance very soon). So I had to do a simple and elegant viewport design.

I wanted to support a multi viewport multi scene with custom lights (e.g. menu over a scene).

And here is the design:

I also implemented light sets. Light set is a set of lights that light chosen scene. Without light sets all active lights influence all visible objects.

New:

• TViewportManager
• TViewport
• TViewportSet
• TRenderScene
• TLightSet

12.05.2007

Insomnia has one skeleton animation. However you can use it in two ways. You can bind the mesh on skeleton (soft bind) or you can drop the mesh in joint (rigid bind).

12.03.2007

Even in a static design some things can’t be static. One of them is a TProp node inheritance. When it is activated it must link a TPropData and this TPropData can be different every time activation is made. This means that it must change its node child; which is prohibited in a static design.

To solve this problem I created a reserved node (or node reservation). It is a single dormant node owned by TNodeManager and used for one purpose only – to be linked on nodes that need a node reservation.

What you actually do is that you link a reservation node on the Prop on creation time. Then when the Prop is activated you replace reservation node with TPropData node and swap it back again on TProp deactivate.

Few more node optimizations:

• Static node –is an un movable/un rotatable node, it can only be hidden or shown.
• Socket node – only socket nodes can be search and named.

12.03.2007

Prop is a dynamic, scripted, compound, engine element with a preset number of instances. You have limited instances of TPropData and unlimited number of TProps. The TPropDataPool is responsible for prop data assignment.

Example: Trees in a forest. TPropData is a tree and you set number of instances to 50. Then you plant 5000 trees (TProp). The TPropDataPool will take case that only the closest 50 trees (TProp) will have actual TPropData.

New:

• TPropManager
• TPropData
• TProp
• TPropDataPool

12.02.2007

The main source of my frustrations in the last couple of month was inability to resolve my (beautiful) TName class  string value (TName class is only a single integer value that must be looked up in the name manager to get a related string value and VS can’t do that) in debugger.

And today I draw a line (I have image to prove it) – I mean; I wrote a VS debugger plug-in to resolve that issue. And I hope I will live happily ever after.

12.01.2007

Collision must be able to filter the collision objects you want to collide with. For that reason I implemented collision groups. Collision groups are defined on per mesh basis.

Defined collision groups:

• Collision – used for general user collision query.
• Dynamics – used by dynamics.
• Player – used by player.
• Ballistics – used by projectile ballistics weapons.
• Melee – used by melee weapons.
• Decals – used for decals.
• Effects – used for effects.

AGEIA has an efficient custom collision filtering.

11.29.2007

Today I did a player and controller design. Player is an abstract class that links player input and information with the controller which is an actual thing that moves in the environment.

For example controller can be either a first person or third person human or a vehicle that player operates with.

AGEIA has a nice controller class that I used to make a simple player.

11.28.2007

Today I decided that I need a cursor. So I did an input cursor class a multiple mice input system.

New:

• TInputCursor

11.26.2007

It’s been 5 months since I started this little pet project of mine. And as for all anniversaries till now (except the 4^th) I’ll spend some time and compile the past (design) notes into more or less coherent text.

Status and roadmap so far (+ marks new features):

• +Animation
• +Script
• +Threads
• +Collision (AGEIA)
• +Triggers
• +Resource editor (base)
• Render view set
• Player
• Props
• Network
• Animation automat
• Sound (FMOD)
• Blend shapes
• Post process rendering effects (DOF, HDR, Fog)
• Detail textures
• Transparency
• Visibility (portals)
• Effects (particle system, etc)
• Decals
• Instancing
• Engine SDK release
• Multi thread rendering
• PlayStation3 (driver)
• Xbox360 (driver)
• Resource editor (UI)

Hmmm… as you did (or did not) notice the list is not shrinking!?

11.24.2007

And it was time to write a custom Maya user interface so that I can put other non-native objects in engine (e.g. triggers, dynamics, sounds, player, etc.).

For that I wrote a simple property class that describes the object properties and can create a new object from properties or modify an existing one.

This property can be used for Maya objects description and for real-time monitoring and tuning.

Here is the Maya property screen shot.

New:

• TProperty

Thoughts:

• Engine monitor and tuner

11.17.2007

… or collision preparing for the rest of the word.

The collision detection is an essential part of the engine and AGEIA have a really nice collection of collision detection functions.

On top of that these guys know how to do interfaces and how things are done in games.

New:

• TCollisionManager
• TMeshCollision
• TMeshCollisionData

11.15.2007

This simple thing was actually written now since it is simple and I needed an interactive way to test script events. However simple I’ve written some very optimized routines for line segment vs. box and sphere routines (faster than AGEIA).

New:

• TTriggerManager
• TTriggerActor
• TTriggerGeometry

11.13.2007

One very important thing in script is the ability to save state. Without it you have to have separate code that saves the state and script thread functions just loose appeal. Since the design of the script VM is static the load/save only has to save call stack and registers.

The other thing that actually happen by chance is that script can be dynamically rebuild while it is running. Well it will crash if you change persistent thread functions while they are running but otherwise it works great and it’s really useful.

I’ve also written a command functions (lots of them).

11.09.2007

Script threading is a really nice concept. It allows you to write linear script which will run asynchronously with the rest engine. For that goal you have persistent functions – these are functions that can pause script execution and resume it on next script update.

There was also a major overall memory and speed optimization.

11.08.2007

Compiling the auto-generated engine include file “system.h” took almost 2 seconds so I decided and save the precompiled header for this file. It takes only 2ms to load the precompiled headers.

11.07.2007

The mail beauty of the script is that it is fast, simple and it has the same framework as the engine. All engine public functions and managers are accessible from the script (1:1 - engine:script).

I had to create static plug-ins to optimize script initialization (plug-ins that have only one static instance).

11.05.2007

Virtual machine is designed to be simple and as fast as possible. It is register based (no stack) and has only 30 instructions. It has no dynamic allocations.

Speed comparison with VS 2005 SP1 C++ compiler (full optimizations):

• recursion ~115 times slower
• iteration ~95 times slower

There is so much room for optimization (but enough time spend on this for now – move on!).

11.01.2007

C+ is a simplified script language based on C with some features of C++.

Script can be written with C++ source assistance programs like VS InteliSense and VisualAssistX.

The error codes and formatting is the same as in VS so that error tracing and error help can be used from VS.

Main differences with C:

• build-in types are int, float, vector and string
• function class parameters are used as pointers (void Foo(TClass bar) { bar->DoIt(); } )
• global variables can have only a single constant assignment (int a=1)
• no pre compiler (only #include statement)
• no structures and typedefs
• variables can be defined anywhere (C++)
• class can have only method definitions (C++)

Not implemented yet:

• arrays (already implemented)
• scopes (already implemented)
• typecasting (already implemented)
• function parameter of built-in type as a reference
• vector component access (a.x)

And here is the C+ syntax (updated):

program                              : root_statement*

root_statement                    : ‘include’ ‘”’ file_name ‘”’

                                            | function

                                            | class_definition

                                            | global_variable_definition

function                                : (‘thread’)? type name ‘(‘parameters_definition‘)’  ‘{‘ ( statement ‘;’ )* ‘}’

                                            | ‘event’ (‘thread’)? type name ‘::’ name ‘(‘parameters_definition‘)’ ‘{‘ ( statement ‘;’ )* ‘}’

class_definition                    : ‘class’ name ‘{‘ (type name ‘(‘ parameters_definition ‘)’ ‘;’ )* ‘}’ ‘;’

global_variable_definition    : (‘property’)? type name (‘[‘ literal_int ‘]’ )? (‘=’ literal )? ‘;’

statement                            :

                                            | expression

                                            | ‘if’ ’(‘ expression ‘)’ statement ( ‘else’ statement )?

                                            | ‘for’ ‘(‘ expression ‘;’ expression ‘;’ expression ‘)’ statement

                                            | ‘while’ ‘(‘ expression ‘)’ statement

                                            | ‘do’ statement ‘while’ ‘(‘ expression ‘)’

                                            | ‘switch’ ‘(‘ expression ‘)’ ‘{‘ ( case_statement ‘;’ )* ‘}’

                                            | ‘break’

                                            | ‘continue’

                                            | ‘return’ ( expression )?

                                            | ‘{‘ ( statement ‘;’ )* ‘}’

case_statement                   : ‘case’ expression ‘:’ statement?

                                            | ‘default’ ‘:’ statement?

expression                           : (type?) name

                                            (‘=’|’+=’|’-=’|’*=’|’/=’|’%=’|’|=’|’$=’|^=’|’<<=’|>>=’) expression

                                            | (‘-‘|’+’|’!’|’~’) expression

                                            | expression (‘==’|’!=’|’||’|’$$’|’^^’) expression

                                            | expression (’+’|’-’|’*’|’/’|’%’|’|’|’$’|^’|’<<’|>>’) expression

                                            | ‘(‘ expression ‘)’

                                            | ‘<’ type ‘>’ expression

                                            | expression ‘[‘ expression ‘]’

                                            | name ( ‘.’ name )+ ‘(‘ expression ( ‘,’ expression )* ‘)’

type                                     : ‘int’ | ‘float’ | ‘vector’ | ‘string’ | name

parameters_definition          : ( type name  ( ‘,’ type name )* )?

10.27.2007

It started quite nice. I had LUA script up and running in a day. But then problems began to pile up. So many little problems:

• too simplified and  inelegant syntax
• tons of dynamic allocations
• unable to do load in place
• no save/load interface

And it all led to conclusion that it will be more rational to write my own script language (again!).

10.21.2007

I’ve created a mini animation virtual machine (really fast) that is capable of performing various animation functions (set, blend and add) on multiple animations, animation poses and skeleton poses.

I’ve also implemented constant animation motion compensation, additive animations and

weight sets.

New:

• TAnimationFunction
• TAnimationWeightSet
• TAnimationPose
• TSkeletonPose

10.19.2007

Doing it the old fashioned way (that is saving matrix for every frame) worked like a charm. Nothing easier – everything was already set in place so I just had to switch curve with matrix and magic –animations are finally working.

New:

• TAnimationMatrix
• TAnimationData
• TAnimation
• TAnimationManager
• TSkeletonMeshData

10.18.2007

Doing it the wrong way again! I always wanted to try and do animations with Maya curves. You get a nice sample how to export and how to evaluate the curves. Everyone is telling you how much better this is. And yes – if you think about it: you have only few animation keys (much less data than saving matrices in one way or another for every frame) and you have a perfectly smooth evaluation. But nobody tells you that the evaluation code is not working properly for all cases and nobody mentions that IK and limits are not in the curves… (there is more stuff that gets even more complicated that I will not mention… for my sanity sake).

10.3.2007

Looking at PIXWIN logs I noticed that tons of render states are set redundantly over and over again (not to mention Begin/End – Capture/Apply). The way to filter this redundant state changes is to write custom effect state manager.

I’ve upgraded DX state manager with a little more filtering (SetVertexDeclaration, SetStreamSource, SetIndices, SetRenderTarget) so that all DX states are set only if really changed.

And here are the results of a “smart” effect state manager:

• ~1% speed improvement for ~20 batches
• ~24% speed improvement for ~150 batches

10.1.2007

All commands are now linked with a buffered input (e.g. alt+Enter, ctrl+Num/).

I’ve also added a multi monitor support (now you can assign a key to move an application from one monitor to another).

                action.toggle “ctrl+alt+Num*” device.adapter

9.29.2007

I created a dynamic mesh data object for dynamic meshed. I needed this class for some time to do an optimized canvas functions.

And so I did canvas functions:

• Line
• Box
• Circle
• Sphere
• Axis
• Frustum
• Arrow

New:

• TDynamicMeshManager
• TDynamicMesh

9.27.2007

I decided to fully finalize the console (to do both 90% of it) and it all blow up in my face. I had to do tons of small thingies in order to do that (old sins).

I also did a simple console design and insomnia icon (warning programmer’s art ahead).

Parsing syntax:

System font color table:

9.26.2007

And here we are at a 3^rd month anniversary. The last two months were a little bumpy. I’ve quit from my last job what gave me more time for this project but brought other annoyance…

Anyways – it’s time to reflect on what was done and what lies ahead (+ marks new features):

• + Render manager
• + Render To Texture
• + Deferred rendering
• + Deferred lighting
• + Shadows
• + Load in place Maya export
• + Console
• Animation
• Script (LUA + CPP)
• Threads
• Collision (AGEIA)
• Triggers
• Resource editor (base)
• Instancing
• Transparency
• Multi thread rendering
• Render view set
• Visibility
• Sound (FMOD)
• Effects (particle system, etc)
• Decals
• SDK
• PlayStation3 (driver)
• Xbox360 (driver)
• Resource editor (UI)
• Network

And today was still in the sign of old sins. I had to write a buffered input and input focus to finish the console. Too be honest all the console logic (text editing, auto-completion browsing, command history, etc.) took much more time than I expected – but it is so sweet to have a fully functional console.

New:

• TBufferedInput
• TInputFocus
• TConsoleManager

9.25.2007

I noticed today that I still haven’t got a most basic hard core thingy – the console. And so I spent a day in old sins – basic commands (e.g. set, quit) and command auto completion.

9.24.2007

At the beginning I tried to use as many build-in parameters as possible from Maya objects but it was getting more and more ugly so I added few extra parameters – well several to be honest.

I also started creating a dedicated web page for the engine http://www.evi1m3.com/insomnia with this dev-diary and download section and stuff.

And I made a simple installer application to ease the installation and for better first impression.

Thoughts:

• I need an automated process to update this blog (winword to web magic).

9.23.2007

Today I finished a big thing. Maya plug-in can now export final data for engine. Basically it required from engine to be capable to restart at any point – and I already had that. What I had to do is to append the initial resource data file with new data from Maya.

And that’s it folks.

9.19.2007

After some thinking I came to the conclusion that after all I need dynamic array load in place. Resources and nodes are too limited if they have a hard limit and it becomes a real annoyance to live with it – additionally having a static array for resource tree bulks-up all classes derived from the TResource class.

9.16.2007

How to put an engine into Maya window? Well not easy that’s for sure. But there is a way –

 Maya 8.5 has MViewportRenderer class which can be used to derive a custom renderer. Unfortunately it is still a little buggy (sometimes it start flickering or duplicate a render window in other windows) and API a little incomplete (some functions are not implemented to the full extend).

But it is great. You can tweak everything in real time – change parameters, move/rotate/scale objects,…

9.12.2007

O my god… I completely forgot how frustrating the projection matrices can be. I’ve been joggling with them for 2 days to get a decent spot light shadow.

Well a lot of effort was also spent on a mechanism to do the whole lighting with all shadows in a single pass.

New:

• TShadowManager

Thoughts:

• I will have to write a ps.2.0 for lighting – this will cause lighting to be a little less efficient and slower but compatible with previous gen.
• Directional light shadow – PSSM, CSM or what? None seems to be good enough…

9.10.2007

I implemented basic light types:

• directional light
• point light
• spot light

Thoughts:

• I need to write an effect state filter to optimize effects begin/end state changing.
• LOD shader.

9.08.2007

The time has come to do the proper lighting. I decided to go with deferred rendering since the results I’ve seen in past confirm that it is at the moment best rendering method to achieve high quality real time rendering.

In the next table are input channels and the how they are packed in textures.

I implemented deferred rendering in two steps:

• G-buffer creation
• Ligting

G-buffer is created with MRT (Multi Render Target).

Next table shows how the channels are being used.

Lighting is a performed as a single full screen render with all the lights fed into pixel shader.

New:

• TDeferredRenderingManager

Thoughts:

• Optimize render targets.

9.06.2007

I had to prepare for a real rendering. Mesh objects need to be arrange in some order so I wrote a simple render queue manager.

I also need a Maya cameras and lights.

New:

• TRenderQueue
• TRenderQueueManager

8.24.2007

I added full resource management a.k.a. each resource knows exactly his parents and children resources and knows how many times is it being used by a parent resources and how many child resources are loaded.

Render targets were modified to coop with new resource management.

I also found and fixed some memory leaks.

8.23.2007

Three days of shader reshaping and joggling finally paid off. I found a simple and clean solution  for shaders and shader programs. The point is in using shared effect parameters and minimizing shader parameters settings.

I have three types of parameters:

• global parameters plugins– set only once per frame by shader manager (eg. projection matrix, camera matrix, global shader settings)
• local parameters plugins – set for each shader program that uses it (eg. object matrix)
• local parameters – set for all programs on shader that uses it

8.15.2007

Render target finalization and system architecture.

Multi resource management: system resources, game resources.

New:

• TRenderTarget
• TRenderTargetManager

8.14.2007

Windows window handling… holly crap… so much code for so little functionality (resize, activate, suspend, etc.).

7.30.2007

Today I had to create a basic animation skeleton structure to get all basics straight with shaders.

New:

• TSkeleton
• TSkeletonData
• TSkeletonJoint
• TSkeletonPose
• TSkeletonManager

Thoughts:

• Must use quaternions for local animation matrix.
• Try Maya animation curve.

7.29.2007

Finally I’ve gotten to the sweet part – shaders. I wrote basic normal map and specular shader.

Implementing recursive shader compilation (if shader compilation fails it opens a debugger and message window and after a message window is closed it tries to compile again) and runtime shader recompilation was a win. I also added notepad++ debug support – failed shader is opened in notepad++ and send to error line.

Thoughts:

• Decompressing resources could be faster than reading them from slow media
• Try Torrance-Cook specular method

7.28.2007

Maya 8.5 presented a new way of acquiring a mesh already prepared for rendering – which is unfortunately not working properly ATM.  So I had to do it myself.

Currently exported Maya objects:

• Mesh
• Skin
• Face
• Vertex
• Position
• Color
• Normal
• S and T (Tangent space)
• Textures
• Light
• Camera

And so I was able to play a little with shaders.

7.26.2007

And I think it’s time for the roadmap.

• + Load in place
• + Resource system
• + Manager system
• + DirectX (driver)
• + Input system
• + Command system
• + Dynamics (AGEIA)
• + Localization
• + Maya exporter
• Render manager
• Render To Texture
• Deferred rendering
• Shadows
• Animation
• Resource editor (base)
• Threads
• Multi thread rendering
• Render view set
• Visibility
• Sound (FMOD)
• Collision (AGEIA)
• Effects
• Decals
• Transparency
• Script (LUA + CPP)
• PlayStation3 (driver)
• Xbox360 (driver)
• Resource editor (UI)
• Network

7.25.2007

All display texts will be saved as uni-string. Yes – I’m steaming it out.

New:

• TUniString
• TDialog
• TLocalizationManager

7.20.2007

“Collada research” or “what a waste of time”. In theory it is a very compelling idea but the implementation and usage and speed and code… OMG. I had to port the code to compile it under Maya 8.5 not to mention that source code needed to compile it is hidden all over the net. And when you have all up and running it’s not running because it is too slow.

A day !well spent.

7.19.2007

Clearing the resources. Font stayed in. How to find DirectX memory leaks. Hideous task...

CRT Memory leaks.

Thoughts:

• Deferred rendering
• Could shader program be a resource so that it can be saved as resource - precompiled?

7.18.2007

After no breakthroughs with Maya I had to shift my focus on dynamics (for sanity sake). And surprisingly all wend according to plans. AGEIA knows its ways. Interface is clean and straight to the point and more importantly it is working. I had the whole interface up and running in not time at all. And more you have a remote debugger and visualization. To simply put – it is great.

Thoughts:

• Engine SDK/ license/ open source...

Notes:

• Collision interface

7.16.2007

After yesterdays fiasco I decided to ease my mind and do a long postponed maintenance. So I finalized command system: simple compiler, basic commands, cleanup, testing... and now the engine main looks a whole lot cleaner.

I also implemented manager locking system to control manager internal usage. Internal usage is allowed only after manager initialize and until manager finalize is called.

Thoughts:

• I have to write effect state manager to optimize render state changes.
• Find an efficient way to extract effect states for non render state aware platforms (cg based).

Note:

• All commands parameters must be validated.
• Basic commands (set, bind, etc.)

7.15.2007

I find myself again before the Maya API. Not as enthusiastic as yesterday, when I thought that this will be done in a sec. Anyways I need to get that exporter running – writing an exporter from scratch would be too long, suffering, experience (and I did that already).

7.14.2007

I was very disappointed when I found out that Maya .x export plugin was NOT in the June DirectX SDK and even more disappointed when I found out that it is uncompilable in February version of DirectX SDK...

So to cool my steam I redirected focus on dynamics. I took a quick look at AGEIA and Bullet Physics Library SDKs documentation and demos... and AGEIA won.

So I need to implement it. But first I need to take care for my ladies.

Thoughts:

• TResource needs ‘ResourceLost’ and ‘ResourceReset’ functions to coop with system reset capability (windows DirectX only).
• String array one limited memory pool for string data and sArray<const char*,max>.

7.13.2007

Shaders are still uncompiled (for development purpose) however the engine is ready for some test driving, to be honest a ten second test and you’ve seen it all because there is not much to see.

It’s what beneath the hood that actually plays the difference:

• 8ms launch time of which 8ms is taken by DirectX device creation.
• 7 memory allocations
• 7 disk reads
• 122 objects constructor calls

In a word LightningFast!

You can download it here. For running you will need DirectX 9.0 June (d3d9_34.dll) and msvcr80.dll and msvcp80.dll.

7.12.2007

It all started pretty badly. Something that should be done in a sec took me nearly two hours. Hell in PIXWIN...

So I exercised my thought from yesterday and added a macro around all DirectX calls, reporting all errors and I managed to narrow down a bug in a mere minute.

Anyways, in a day or two I will be ready to show first screen shot... I hope. Don’t expect too much!

Thoughts:

• Today I was thinking a lot about a resource editor; how to easily interconnect resources into a coherent dependency list; it also needs to be platform and localization friendly.

Lesson:

• Always check everything for errors.

7.11.2007

Today was a good day. I managed to write a basic camera WSAD + mouse movability. It was a great test of the input architecture (it’ flawless if I may add).

I also added DirectX .x file import to include textures and multiple materials per mesh.

Thoughts:

• Trap all function error results.

Note:

• Save precompiled shaders.

7.10.2007

I’m not so sure anymore... after a not so good night sleep I reevaluated the dynamic vs. static managers I got to a new conclusions. What I got with dynamic managers is:

• Control over when managers are created (+).
• Additional new calls and management (-).
• Still no control over what can and cannot be done in constructors (-)

After some deliberation I found a simple way to gain control over constructors issue. Basically it is an old trick that I already practice in the file system. That is to lock the file system until it is safe to use it. And with that solution all managers can be static since it doesn’t matter anymore when they are created because they can only do stuff that is allowed. And it is also negligibly faster.

I finally written a test manager class with a simple forward rendering.

Thoughts:

• Asynchronous resource reading must collect all resources to be loaded and sort them by file offset.
• I need render manager.

7.09.2007

The experience from the old engine thought me a lesson about static managers. They are a pain to control the creation order (does ‘#pragma init_seg(lib)’ ring any bells) and what is allowed and not allowed to be done in constructors.

I also need a command interface with user commands and variables. Commands are custom plugins to execute specific commands (e.g. ‘quit’) while variables are simple callbacks for user variables (e.g. ‘set window.resolution 1024 768’) that can be queried from within the engine.

Shaders... the final frontier. The last several times I designed (fixed) the system for shaders I always did something wrong (3:0 - shaders vs. me). So based on those experiences I embarked on an epic designing once again and the time will show the score this time.

New:

• TVariant – variant type that can hold either int, float or vector value (used for TVariable)
• TCommand – command interface class
• TVariable – command
• TCommandManager -
• TColor – very simple unsigned int color wrapper class.
• TBox - with center and extends. I’ve been using box class with min and max position for years and 
• TCanvasManager
• TFontManager
• Basic font functionality to write text.
• TDxFontManager implementation

Note:

• Font caching must be written to reuse frame to frame text render.
• Write command compiler.

7.08.2007

I’ve finally given some thought on how to name my new engine. Well my motto for the engine is to be fast and simple, so I was considering a name ‘simplex’ (Latin for simple). However the fact that I work on the engine in late night hours gave me a thought to name it ‘insomnia’. So until further...

Anyways it was time to know what time it is so I added a simple timer class with basic functionality (time query, delta time, pause and resume, etc.)

New:

• TCyleTimer
• TTimer

7.07.2007

Today I was looking at a something in my brand new window with an even newer camera. I know what it should be even if it doesn’t look like it... yet.

And it snapped “I need an input!”. So I created a plugin driver based input system and wrote driver for mouse and keyboard.

New:

• TInput
• TInputManager
• TWinInputManager

Thoughts:

• Buffered input for console.
• Windows input driver for Xbox 360 controller.
• Input action linking.
• Game friendly input focus system.

7.06.2007

[TW] Plugin

New:

• TPlugin
• TPluginManager

7.04.2007

I have window, I can render a mesh... now I need a camera to look with. A simple Maya  based projection system (aperture width, height and focal distance) will suffice.

New:

• TCamera
• TCameraManager

7.03.2007

Windows window and main DirectX initialization. I hate that part but it needs to be done in order to get to the good part.

I’ve used D3DX utilities to load .x and .dds files and converted them into my native format.

6.31.2007

Well... I was certain that storage concept was working. I did save all the arrays and load them back, update the pointers and it all work fine... until I tried load only and change the code a bit so that something changed. And it took me one hour to figure it out what went wrong. Today’s topic should give you a clue.

Yes, I forgot to update the virtual function pointers (or __vfptr as you see it in VS). It was pretty easy from here on.

I decided to put all platform dependant functions (for threads, input output, atomic functions, system messages, kernel functions, etc.) into single header file for easier porting.

I also written a log system with .html preview ‘system.log.html’ (sweet if you ask me) and an attribute wrapper class (not really worth mentioning).

New:

• TLog
• TAttribute

Thoughts:

• Dynamic memory allocation is very slow – reduce usage to minimum.
• Remove all unnecessary constructors.
• Engine must not have any linear searches in run-time.
• Simple way to mark and track slow functions (as linear search).

6.30.2007

I had to write a couple of engine classes and managers to test the concept.

I also wrote a TName class. It is basically a single integer that holds a CRC 32 value of a name. This class can be easily saved (as int) and provides an extremely fast way for searching, sorting and mapping. However a asChar() resolving function is little slower.

[TW] Template naming convention (DdSs).

New:

• TName
• DSet
• SSet
• SMap
• TDeviceManager
• TDxDeviceManager
• TMaterialManager
• TDxMaterialManager
• TTextureManager
• TDxTextureManager
• TShaderManager
• TDxShaderManager

6.29.2007

I have two types of storage pointers, known and inherited. Known pointers are pointers of a known storage class types (e.g. TNode) while inherited pointers are pointers that are inherited from other storage classes (e.g. TMeshData is inherited from TResource which is storage class).

Storage system must be able to distinct between these two types in order to fix them.

[TW] More detailed about storage system and load in place.

New:

• TManager
• TManagerManager
• TNode
• TNodeManager
• TResource
• TResourceManager
• TDxMeshManager

Thoughts:

• Name must be simple int class with CRC32 for index.
• I really need a static map template.
• Precompiled headers are a must.
• Everything that I write must be either final or mark explicitly and noted for future update.

6.28.2007

An engine must be data driven. All starts and ends with resource data manipulation and how efficient you are with it.

Data is divided in two parts resource properties and resource data. All resources property is loaded in main memory and connections fixed while resource data must be prepared in such way that it can be directly loaded into video memory without any modifications.

[TW] Storage system

[TW] Cluster system

New:

• TStorage –storage system for resource properties pointer resolving
• TCluster – array registration and storage functionality
• TClusterManager
• TMesh

Thoughts:

• Separate tool chain engine from runtime engine.
• Separate data into two chunks – resource properties and resource data
• Load properties as one block and fix pointers
• Protect everything that shouldn’t be accessed directly and write access functions.

6.26.2007

An accidental late night playing with a thought how bulky my old engine spawned a bold question “Why not write a new one... from scratch... brand new... shiny... with all the new stuff I cannot do in the old one...?”

Any a new question few seconds after “Is this feasible for one man alone?”

And so I spend the rest of the night writing random templates and functions with an agenda to write a new engine.

Thoughts:

• Simple design
• Pragmatic/direct approach
• Speed
• Static data members
• Portable
• Data oriented
• Plugin based