60 fps

I’ve finally enabled 60 fps on PC, it just changes a few things:

• Everything is rendered at 60 fps
• Bullets position is updated at 60hz
• No more bullet position interpolation
• Camera movement is a bit smoother

Basically all bullets movements are smoother, nothing else change as nothing else goes fast enough to be noticeable.

It really feels nice, it’s very hard to say if something is running at 30 fps or 60 fps just by looking at it… it just feels nicer and smoother when playing at 60fps, especially now that there are dynamic lights (they make bullets more visible).

 

Android / iOs (aka “I’m just stupid”)

Something funny happened today, I noticed a line in my code:

public static final boolean    FORCEMONOCORE                = true;

I had completely forgotten that at some point I disabled multi core support (can’t remember why, a temporary test I guess). It means for the past few weeks Alien Blitz 3d was only using one thread (instead of 2).

So I re-ran a test on my iPod touch, and it is now a lot more playable ! (maybe not on more complex levels though) I can’t test on the Xperia S, but I guess it will also make it playable. It makes no change on Xperia Ray as it’s a mono-core device.

This is very good news because I can now think again about 3d on mobile!

 

Mobile / PC differences

So far I think differences between PC and mobile will be

• Better graphical engine
  • 60 fps
  • More particles & effects
  • Dynamic lights
• Smarter monsters
  • Better path finding (was disabled on mobile for performance issues)
  • More “dynamic” monsters (move more often, won’t “sleep” when player is far away,…)
• Level editor
  • Based on old engine (isometric) in a first time
  • Online level sharing and downloading (with a simple account & rating system, nothing huge)

 

Corrected dynamic lighting

All glitches with dynamic lighting have been corrected, and it is also now multi-core compatible (wasn’t before)

So I’ve added more sources for dynamic lights:

• Buttons on/off
• Keys
• Check points
• Napalm and Poison drops (from barrels or weapons)
• Bullets
• Monsters when shooting

It looks nice