GitHub Repository:
I have now set up a GitHub repository which can be accessed via : http://github.com/AmritP777/MAD-Tank-Team . This TypePad blog has weekly/bi-weekly progress reports, if you would like updates on a more regular basis (up to 3 times every day - WARNING for non-programmers: our GitHub progress notes are almost always in "programming jargon"), please join GitHub and follow us there as well as here. In our GitHub update notes we detail more or less exactly what has been changed since last commit as well as any bugs we may be experiencing at that point in time. I am also attempting to establish a "bugs database" using the Wiki service provided by GitHub (Tank Team Wiki). There I will list from now on, all bugs that I come across and how they were solved. If you see a bug that seems familiar to you and you might be able to provide clues as to how to sort it out, please send me a message!
Project 2 : Amrit/James
I got a chance to test the application on an iPhone 3G (all this time I have been testing on 3GS) and found that the performance was actually pretty bad.
Following this, I have been encouraged to start porting the application from its current state over to Open GL via Cocos2d. It might be a bit difficult, but it will mean that our game will be playable and also have far greater potential. I also understand that with some of the extra audio playback libraries provided, it may also be able to solve our sound problems.
So far from what I've tried, I'm pretty happy with the results, Cocos2d is very good to work with and thankfully so far I have not had to make any changes at all in the GameEngine so all I've had to focus on is adding and removing sprites as well as trying to figure out how to use the texture cache. For now I am not using sprite sheets, but eventually will try to integrate that once I have sourced some proper artwork to use on this project (but I have to decide on a nice new theme first! Tanks are boring, any suggestions?).
A couple of previews of the porting progress :
Port Progress pic 1
Just testing to see what would happen if I randomly generate 1100 bullets and get them to draw, one by one, to the screen. At 32 fps, performance is not that bad! Definitely one good reason to love Open GL!
Port Progress pic 2
Slight improvement upon previous one, you can see less memory usage (counter on the bottom right) as well as higher FPS. It's actually normally steady 60 FPS but it dropped somehow when I was taking this screenshot
One funny thing I found out when debugging was that NSLogs have a HUGE impact on performance, at one time I had 3 NSLogs occurring once per gameLoop and this dropped frame rate from 60 to 30 FPS. I was really confused as to what bugs I had added to lead to this drop. It got me for a long time until I added a few more NSLogs where I found out that frame rate dropped more after adding each NSLog call.
- Amrit
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