Project Update: Solar Flux

Feature: Mesh-Batching

In my last post, which I admit was a while ago (this is because I've been adding loads of new features to Unholy Mess), I was ranting on about Mesh-Batching.

Well since that post, I've integrated Azzaman's Frustum detection and my Bounding Volume Hierarchy code, which means non-visiable meshes are actually not draw, which inadvertantly boosts the total number of meshes that you can play with in a scene to about 100 thousand, which is actually absolutely insane.

So as a result I knocked togeather a little video of an asteroid field, with some depth of field applied (DoF is very expensive, my little laptop cries and slows down to 30FPS), I also did a quick flocking algorithm and stuck some drones in to help give the scene a sense of scale, at which point I removed the DoF. Everything is happily rendered in full HDR !

Anyways, enjoy.

Project Update: Solar Flux

Feature: Mesh-Batching

It's not as good as mesh instancing, but it's certainly quicker and easier to implement than mesh instancing.

On the 8th of april 2008, Solar Flux will be mock pitched, and our prototype demo shown to members of Team 17, so these last few weeks certainly are requiring that some corners be cut, so we can get our little presentation togeather. As a result, one of the features which we will be handling at a later date is mesh instancing, there just isn't time to get all the features into the game before the 8th of april. Without any form of instanced mesh rendering, its time to say goodbye to the idea of 10,000 asteroids on screen and approch the problem in a more pragmatic manner.

Thusly I've begun implementing a batch rendering technique, which is certainly adequete for now, on my meager laptop it begins to drop below 60FPS with 4000 meshes being draw, which is quite an improvement over the non-batched rendering result of about 800.

While 4000 meshes are available to be batched, it's more likely that the technique will only at most be used on 1000 meshes at this stage, but atleast we can render 1000 asteroids now, before that would have been a mere pipedream... Oh and did I mention that they're all normal mapped?

Project Update: Solar Flux

Feature: R.U.S.T. & Unholy Mess

Well I've done pleanty today, or should I say yesturday, well... It's still thursday for me in my head.

Anyways, I've fixed a bunch of bugs, highly exciting stuff honestly! It's quite frustrating if anything, because bug fixes don't always count for much outside of stability of the software... Well at times that is true, certain bug fixes actually get something new working.

As far as feature updates go, R.U.S.T. has an axis manipulation tool, which can be kinda handy, and now the material colouring selection is thankfully flawless.

Unholy Mess is a tool I haven't yet spoken about, it's basically a particle editing suite which allows for a user to generate and test particle effect settings before implementation in engine.

Heh, It's called Unholy Mess because it's initial incarnation was code wise, my idea of an absolute unholy mess. Infact it was so full of hacks I'm surprised it ran.

Anyways... Not very exciting I know, just bug fixes... Although, they should be finished at some point next week if things go well, so I shall profile them both in more depth when the time comes.