Introduction to BPE’s Blit Engine
Hi everyone!
Just a heads-up to let you know that a video with an introduction to BPE’s Blit Engine is up on our YouTube Channel.
Thanks to everyone that has voiced an opinion about BPE, good, bad, bugs and whatnot, we appreciate it.
Posted: February 9th, 2010
at 8:14pm by Vlad
Tagged with Bold Pixel Engine, FlashGameBlogs
Categories: The code of VGS
Comments: 2 comments
Bold Pixel Engine Released
Hi all!
Great day today! We are releasing Bold Pixel Engine today. Along with this release we are also opening our YouTube channel.
Is that nice or what?
Visit our Bold Pixel Engine Page for information and download and our YouTube channel for the first glimpse of it.
See you later…
Posted: February 7th, 2010
at 7:23pm by Vlad
Tagged with Bold Pixel Engine, FlashGameBlogs
Categories: The code of VGS
Comments: 2 comments
Bold Pixel Engine Blit Performance Test
Hi all, Vlad here!
Wrote a quick performance test yesterday comparing movieclips with our own blit engine. Usually tests are performed with a number of objects. To test several loads, usually a different number of objects is used to test the results. I didn’t want that since we all know that many games don’t have a fixed ammount of objects rendered. Even if object pooling is used, what concerns me is the objects rendered.
What I did was to create one object per frame and then move all the existing objects away from the starting point. This would give an instant visual reference about how well blit performs against movieclips.
Give it a try and then read on.
Tried it? Cool!
Movement is time-based in both tests, this means that test 1, ran with movie clips took longer since the spread is bigger. This indicates a frame drop, but if you run it again and notice that there are different spreads, so not only it drops but it drops in a rather inconsistent way. Obviously the test also took longer to conclude.
On the other hand, blit engine performs rather smoothly, to the point where frame drop is not inconsistent and allows the objects to stay pretty close to each other. Above that, the test is damn quick compared to the first one, proved by the small spread (although I could’ve included a clock, I admit).
This is nothing we didn’t already know, I agree! The true testing will be with animation, rotation and scaling of blit entities.
Posted: February 4th, 2010
at 11:52am by Vlad
Tagged with Bold Pixel Engine, FlashGameBlogs
Categories: The code of VGS
Comments: 14 comments
Bold Pixel Engine v0.9 refactor
Hi everyone!
As promised, as soon as BPE has a couple of games under its belt, it will be made available. There are a couple of games going on with it and those are almost done, but the engine’s part is finished.
With all we’ve been through with it, refactoring was needed so I put a bit of work in the engine this evening (coding on a Saturday evening… geek!) and I’d like to show you how to do something with it.
I’d love that you take a look at the code and let me know if you think it is easy to follow, since this is the philosophy behind most of BPE’s classes.
|
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package
{
import bpe.blit.*;
import bpe.managers.*;
import flash.display.MovieClip;
import flash.events.Event;
public class BoldPixelEngine extends MovieClip
{
public function BoldPixelEngine():void
{
addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, init);
}
private function init(e:Event)
{
var engine:Engine = new Engine(640, 480);
var layer:Layer = engine.layer.create();
var actor:Entity = layer.entity.create();
var animation:uint = TextureManager.createCollectionFromMovieClip(idle);
addChild(engine.render.window);
actor.x = 320;
actor.y = 140;
actor.animation.loop(animation);
Loop.AddListener(engine.update);
}
}
} |
What this code does is to create a blit engine instance in the stage and draw a time based animation in it.
What I’d like to know is, without any further explaining, does this look simple and intuitive to you?
Thanks!
Posted: January 30th, 2010
at 11:52pm by Vlad
Tagged with Bold Pixel Engine, FlashGameBlogs
Categories: The code of VGS
Comments: 9 comments
Downgrading from engine to toolkit
While I was discussing the release or not of Bold Pixel Engine, I came to the conclusion that it was not an engine, but a framework. What’s really the difference I wonder… I don’t know, but I did conclude that. Without googling for some reasoning and from the experience I have with game engines (not a lot but enough for what I’m about to write) I’d say that an engine runs while your game logic is processed.
On the other hand, a framework is a pre-build codebase that you use to raise your productivity. It does most of the work and takes control of the most obnoxious tasks. Our engine does that but it does not run while processing logic.
So it was kinda easy to conclude it is a framework, but not an engine.
Then I found out that a framework will take control of the dreadful tasks by creating automation for it. That would be an issue I read and I read that a toolkit is a much simpler approach, with a much lower maintenance overhead that assumes the programmer is in control of getting it done, while the toolkit only provides functionality.
“Damn!” I thought while I was reading… our engine is a toolkit.
And what’s the purpose of this post? None! While semantics are being discussed, our engine is currently being used to create games. And we will call it engine because regardless of what we call it, it will do what it was designed to do and because we really love the notion of engine regardless of the actual name being right or wrong.
So, engine, framework or toolkit: Bold Pixel Engine is alive and well and it will be released freely as soon as it has some games out just to be sure that it is stable enough for game development.
Posted: August 27th, 2009
at 11:42pm by Vlad
Tagged with Bold Pixel Engine, FlashGameBlogs
Categories: The code of VGS
Comments: 1 comment