Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Updated Demo & Particle Emitters

I've updated the vector demo over at The Render Engine web site.  It now includes a particle emitter component on the asteroids.  I sped up the rotation of the asteroids so the effect is more evident.  I'll probably slow them back down in the future.  I also want to add some jitter to the particles themselves so they don't look so organized.  Go check it out here:
http://www.renderengine.com/demos.php

What's the Scoop?

Recently it's been about experimenting with The Render Engine.  There are a lot of things I want to do, but only so much I can do so that I can get a beta ready.  For those who haven't seen it, I uploaded a zip file containing the v2.0.0 docs to Github.  I've been working with raycasting and tried an experiment with a layered rendering context.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Raycasting and Collision Model Querying

Over the last few days I've added ray casting and querying to the AbstractCollisionModel class.  Ray casting is the method of tracing a line through a collision model and determining what objects the ray intersects.  Querying is a way to test the collision model for objects which satisfy a certain condition.  Ray casting can be used for quickly determining if something, like a bullet, would impact an object.

Friday, May 13, 2011

v2.0.0 Demo

I have updated the demo page at http://www.renderengine.com/demos.php with an updated version of the Vector Demo (Asteroids Evolution).  It has always been my testbed when it came to how the engine performs.  I base all of my performance testing on it because it demands so much in so many areas of the engine.  Newly added is the Accumulator Particle Engine which accumulates particles and fades old ones out over time.  The Mover2D component was updated to adjust to reduced frame rates and not feel sluggish.  The perfomance is almost identical to the demo from v1.5.3.  In fact, if you run them side-by-side, you should notice that they are nearly equivalent.  However, the v2.0.0 engine is doing so much more behind the scenes so it's a testament to its capabilities.


This update includes a number of things that v1.5.3 didn't have:

  • Abstracted sound engine
  • Accumulator particle engine
  • Native screen redrawing with requestAnimationFrame()
  • Performance improvements in Math objects
  • SAT-based collisions
  • Saving/loading of high score from localStorage
  • Frame rate adaptive mover component
  • ... and more