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[RulerOfNothing]

Here's something I made a few weeks ago:

Spoiler: Why is this image ~91kb? (click to show/hide)

It's a geodesic grid made by repeatedly subdividing a cube and projecting the new points onto a sphere. I was thinking about using it to make a Civ-like 4X game, because it has the useful property that the tiles (which are a bit hard to see because I had the program make a grid with 98,304 of them) look mostly the same almost anywhere on the sphere which would allow my envisioned game to avoid the usual problems encountered around the poles.

[Virex]

Hmm, I have had a bit of a revelation.
I figure I want my game to chug along at a nice little 30FPS max. Right now, uncapped, it does mid 60's when running through the visual studio IDE, but if I go and dive in the bin for the .exe that runs at the high 70's to low 80's.
That is for a 2d level that is 100 by 100 tiles in size. Don't get me wrong, 10,000 tiles is nice, but it does seem a little small. Ideally a large map would be 1,000 by 1,000 in size, bringing me up to 1,000,000 tiles. Further more, I'm planning on implementing a third dimension, so if I had about 10z levels, for a huge 3d level, that brings me to 10,000,000 tiles.
Here is where the horror story kicks in. As it is a multi player game, each player could, in theory, be in their own instance, and if they were all in such a huge instance that brings me to x * 10,000,000 so bring three friends along and we are up to 40,000,000 tiles, being updated at a rate of 30 fps, best outcome for a worst case scenario.
Currently 10,000 tiles makes about 80fps...


Fuck this, I'm jumping ship and starting over in c++. I have had a few ideas for how I should have done things in the first place, so it should all go faster this time around, hopefully.

Switching from properly coded python to properly coded C++ rarely increases the speed by more than a factor 7, so things are still going to be slow.


If I were you, the first thing I would tackle is your drawing algorithm. First of all, you don't need to redraw tiles that don't change. Secondly, you should only draw tiles that the player can actually see and you're not going to see all of the 1.000x1.000 map at once. Finally, the major part of your levels isn't going to change. You can draw the whole level at once (or in chunks) and store that, then blit the level and blit any updates over it. Blitting a single image is fast as hell.

[Willfor]

Could you link me to the source code of something similar. I like to learn by seeing examples but I have no idea what to google to get something similar.

As far as I know, there is no such thing. What I can give you though is a chunk of my own code, which is an overseeing decision block which sends the AI into different functions that do the grunt work. Note that I use some hilariously bad coding practices here, and I also had to add 90% of the comments you'll see literally just now.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

// Higher brain functions (arguably?)

        public void RomanticallyLIVE()
        {
            ComTriBool ctb = CommitmentGet(); // this searches the person's mind for their current highest relationship status, and locks it into bools for the rest of this function to cut down on searches
            // these two are used for flow
            bool SKIP = false;
            int RAND = Game.r.Next(100); // You will see this function a lot: it is my thing's Random function statically linked to a class. I wanted it to take up as little screen space as possible so I named it "r".

            if (reference.host.sexualPressure > 1000) // desperation
            {
                // if desperate, spend roughly half of your time looking for casual sex
                if (RAND > 50)
                    SKIP = true;
            }
            if (reference.host.sexualPressure > 200 && !SKIP) // unpressured courtship
            {
                if (!ctb.Steady) // if you have no steady partner
                {
                    if (feelings.Count < 1) // if you know less than one people as potential romantic partners
                    {
                        MeetSomeone("casual"); // have an encounter with someone new -- this will prevent errors further down the line due to the random nature of ChastePursuit()
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        // you're not steady with anyone yet, so divide your time between trying to get with people you already know, and meeting new people.
                        int rand = Game.r.Next(0, 10);
                        if (rand > 5) // this one tries to woo someone you already know
                        {
                            ChastePursuit();
                        }
                        else // might as well try to expand your pool?
                        {
                            MeetSomeone("casual");
                        }
                    }
                }
                else if (ctb.Steady && !ctb.Engaged) // you're in a commited relationship, but you're still allowed to look for better
                {
                    int rand = Game.r.Next(0, 10);
                    if (rand > 3) // this one tries to woo the one you have
                    {
                        CourtProspect();
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        rand = Game.r.Next(0, 10);
                        if (rand > 5) // this one tries to woo someone you already know
                        {
                            ChastePursuit();
                        }
                        else // this one tries to woo someone completely different
                        {
                            MeetSomeone("casual");
                        }
                    }
                }
                else if (ctb.Engaged && !ctb.Married) // you are engaged, but not yet married. This is here because ComTriBool.CommitmentGet() will return every lesser commitment value down from marriage
                {
                    // throw marriage prep in here later
                    // THIS IS THE BIG CHECK
                    if (Game.clock.year.ToString() == (string)COMING) // this is just a hacked together way of checking if the set marriage date has come up.
                    {
                        // First grab the person you're marrying.
                        Person affection = GrabPersonFromFeelings(MREnum.Engagement);
                        // Then shove them into the function that updates everything to married status :D
                        MARRIAGE(affection);
                    }
                }
                else if (ctb.Married)
                {
                    // Grab a reference to the husband/wife
                    Person affection = GrabPersonFromFeelings(MREnum.Marriage);
                    // find ouyt if sex is on the table during this tick.
                    int rand = Game.r.Next(100);
                    if (affection.sexualPressure > 500 && reference.host.sexualPressure > 500 && rand > 65)
                    {
                        Person.Copulation(reference.host, affection);
                    }
                }
                return; // a handy exit to allow this portion of the flow to come to an end.
            }

            if (SKIP) // if the person has arrived inside this portion of the flow, they've reached a desperation point.
            {
                if (!ctb.Engaged || WanderingEyes) // either they are not engaged, or they have wandering eyes
                {
                    if (feelings.Count < 6) // if the pool isn't large enough, expand it
                    {
                        MeetSomeone("desperation");
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        // split your time between meeting new people and going after people you already know in desperation.
                        int rand = Game.r.Next(10);
                        if (rand > 5)
                        {
                            MeetSomeone("desperation");
                        }
                        else
                        {
                            BootyCall();
                        }
                    }
                    return; // an exit for the flow.
                }
            }
        }


What you're going to need on your own if you want to recreate it is: A bunch of people who have been given personality features, a way to determine what personality features they like in someone, varying sexual drives, and a loop that sends each of them into this function.

This is only a small part of a larger hobby simulation I'm making, but I needed characters inside who were constantly being given positive or negative stimulii to build histories. Romance seemed like an ideal way to get this constantly happening...

Also, ChastePursuit() is not actually all that chaste inside the actual code in case someone was wondering.

[Levi]

Hmm, I have had a bit of a revelation.
I figure I want my game to chug along at a nice little 30FPS max. Right now, uncapped, it does mid 60's when running through the visual studio IDE, but if I go and dive in the bin for the .exe that runs at the high 70's to low 80's.
That is for a 2d level that is 100 by 100 tiles in size. Don't get me wrong, 10,000 tiles is nice, but it does seem a little small. Ideally a large map would be 1,000 by 1,000 in size, bringing me up to 1,000,000 tiles. Further more, I'm planning on implementing a third dimension, so if I had about 10z levels, for a huge 3d level, that brings me to 10,000,000 tiles.
Here is where the horror story kicks in. As it is a multi player game, each player could, in theory, be in their own instance, and if they were all in such a huge instance that brings me to x * 10,000,000 so bring three friends along and we are up to 40,000,000 tiles, being updated at a rate of 30 fps, best outcome for a worst case scenario.
Currently 10,000 tiles makes about 80fps...


Fuck this, I'm jumping ship and starting over in c++. I have had a few ideas for how I should have done things in the first place, so it should all go faster this time around, hopefully.

Another option is to not update each tile individually.  For example, I have a list of monsters,objects,etc on my map that need updating in an array.  I just iterate through that list instead of every tile, which saves a ton of time. c++ will give you savings, but changing the algorithm will probably help way more!

Edit:  Or what Virex said. 

Here's something I made a few weeks ago:

Spoiler: Why is this image ~91kb? (click to show/hide)

It's a geodesic grid made by repeatedly subdividing a cube and projecting the new points onto a sphere. I was thinking about using it to make a Civ-like 4X game, because it has the useful property that the tiles (which are a bit hard to see because I had the program make a grid with 98,304 of them) look mostly the same almost anywhere on the sphere which would allow my envisioned game to avoid the usual problems encountered around the poles.

That is pretty cool.  Its that sort of thing I'm hopeless at. 

[MagmaMcFry]

Here is a rough screenie of something I've been working on with python and libtcod.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I've been lazy for the last few weeks though and haven't done much.  I think I'll try to put in more of an effort this week.

I'd play this just for the [T].

[Stargrasper]

Hmm, I have had a bit of a revelation.
I figure I want my game to chug along at a nice little 30FPS max. Right now, uncapped, it does mid 60's when running through the visual studio IDE, but if I go and dive in the bin for the .exe that runs at the high 70's to low 80's.
That is for a 2d level that is 100 by 100 tiles in size. Don't get me wrong, 10,000 tiles is nice, but it does seem a little small. Ideally a large map would be 1,000 by 1,000 in size, bringing me up to 1,000,000 tiles. Further more, I'm planning on implementing a third dimension, so if I had about 10z levels, for a huge 3d level, that brings me to 10,000,000 tiles.
Here is where the horror story kicks in. As it is a multi player game, each player could, in theory, be in their own instance, and if they were all in such a huge instance that brings me to x * 10,000,000 so bring three friends along and we are up to 40,000,000 tiles, being updated at a rate of 30 fps, best outcome for a worst case scenario.
Currently 10,000 tiles makes about 80fps...


Fuck this, I'm jumping ship and starting over in c++. I have had a few ideas for how I should have done things in the first place, so it should all go faster this time around, hopefully.

Switching from properly coded python to properly coded C++ rarely increases the speed by more than a factor 7, so things are still going to be slow.


If I were you, the first thing I would tackle is your drawing algorithm. First of all, you don't need to redraw tiles that don't change. Secondly, you should only draw tiles that the player can actually see and you're not going to see all of the 1.000x1.000 map at once. Finally, the major part of your levels isn't going to change. You can draw the whole level at once (or in chunks) and store that, then blit the level and blit any updates over it. Blitting a single image is fast as hell.

He started with C#, not Python.  C# may be slowing things down.  .NET may also slow things down.  Straight C++ should be faster.  And you control your own memory in C++, which I'm assuming C# doesn't do.  Furthermore, if efficiency is killing you, it's easier to embed assembly in C++ than pretty much any higher level language.

Good luck, Max.  Let us know how it works out and if we can help.  I'm decent at C++.

[Virex]

Oh that's even less of a difference then, as you don't have to bother with an interpreter and memory allocation is blazing fast in the .net VM (At the 'cost' of having a garbage collector). Difference between C# and C++ is roughly a factor 2, depending on application of course. From his description, max was aiming for a speed increase of a factor 4000 or something and no language can give you that much of a speed increase.

[Siquo]

Language wouldn't make a difference like that, but since 99% of all his tiles aren't changed every 1/30th of a second, he should probably rethink his drawing and updating loops

[Willfor]

Also, try lessening your calls to libtcod's pathfinding algorithm. It takes up more time from larger maps, and honestly, the fewer calls I made, the better speeds I would get.

[Aqizzar]

Okay, so this is probably a dumb (C#) question, but MSDN is not forthcoming with answers.  Is there a way to return and then alter multiple values in an array in one statement?

In my roguelike, I store the player's position as a byte array of two numbers (x and y position) so that it can be sent into and returned from functions as a single thing.  But for the walking function, I want to be able to change it in as simple a statement as possible, so is there some way to ++ or -- multiple array values, without having to pull them out and then plug them back in?

EDIT: Actually, I guess it's unnecessary, since I think I can just do this in two lines instead of one.  But I'm still curious anyway.

EDIT: Fuck yeah, I have walk-around collision detection.  I'd post a screenshot, but it's not like there's much to see.

[Levi]

Okay, so this is probably a dumb (C#) question, but MSDN is not forthcoming with answers.  Is there a way to return and then alter multiple values in an array in one statement?

No idea, but ruby has the extremely useful map method, where you can do things like this:

Code: [Select]

array = [1,2,3,4,5,6]
array.map() {|a| a * 2}  #returns [2,4,6,8,10,12]

I'm not sure if c# has something similar though.  Not a lot of languages take advantage of closures.

Edit:  Actually, I think I read your question wrong...

[Aqizzar]

Edit:  Actually, I think I read your question wrong...

Yeah, what I wound up doing (in C#) is this.

Code: [Select]

playerPosition[0]++;
playerPosition[1]++;

And so forth.  I'm curious if there's a way to condense that into a single line, not that it's really necessary.

[Levi]

Edit:  Actually, I think I read your question wrong...

Yeah, what I wound up doing (in C#) is this.

Code: [Select]

playerPosition[0]++;
playerPosition[1]++;

And so forth.  I'm curious if there's a way to condense that into a single line, not that it's really necessary.

Hee hee, sort of.  I bet this will work:

Code: [Select]

playerPosition[0]++; playerPosition[1]++;

Some people frown on cramming multiple things on the same line like this, but hell its your code so who cares.   

[Willfor]

Edit:  Actually, I think I read your question wrong...

Yeah, what I wound up doing (in C#) is this.

Code: [Select]

playerPosition[0]++;
playerPosition[1]++;

And so forth.  I'm curious if there's a way to condense that into a single line, not that it's really necessary.

Code: [Select]

playerPosition[0]++; playerPosition[1]++;

BOOM. ... Okay, yeah, that's probably not as fancy as you would like. I usually use System.Drawing.Point for my x/y coordinate positions, and even then I usually end up using two lines, so I'm not sure I can be useful here.

Pre-edit: I've been ninja'd...

[Aqizzar]

Yes, I was expecting the obvious formatting joke.  You guys know what I mean.

Anyway, I guess I need to make things besides the player move around.  And first make things besides the player, who isn't actually an object.