[Archive] Project One v0.8.8 - full power news

Performance

This update was focused on technical improvements. Improved performance, reduced memory consumption, new libraries, but also improved difficulty settings, status menu, online highscore (with the help of Game Jolt), some trophies, and other stuff.

Especially the performance-increase was quite significant (+50-65%) after I fixed some of the major mistakes I made. Some basic OpenGL development Tips:

• never use glCopyTex[Sub]Image to write into a texture (only for compatibility), use framebuffer objects, even after re-drawing the scene the framebuffer is still 3-4 times faster
• never implement a particle system without instancing
• never use glGet-functions in your main loop, try to cache the values, those functions block, because they need to execute all remaining OpenGL-commands in the queue to provide the requested value as accurate as possible
• check your texture formats, if you don't need an alpha channel use GL_RGB instead of GL_RGBA (or something similar), it saves a lot of memory
• texture lookups are the most expensive operation in a shader, try to use them as few as possible
• gDEBugger and GPU PerfStudio are amazing tools to analyze, debug and improve computer graphics applications

Performance improvement in Project One (mid-tier test system):
140 fps -> 230 fps idle, 80 fps -> 210 fps under heavy pressure

This will be the last update for now. I got some side projects and much pressure at work.

v0.8.8 (2013-07-29)

• General
  • Implemented Boss 03-02 Tiger MK-2
  • Reduced video memory consumption (around -20%)
  • Increased the performance (+50% (!) faster overall rendering, lesser impact of special effects)
  • Updated SDL 1.2 to SDL 2.0 (better overall performance, stability and compatibility)
• Gameplay
  • Adapted casual difficulty (got some feedback, that it is still to hard for some players, of course I want the game to be hard, but not on the lowest difficulty)
  • Reduced number of difficulty levels from 5 to 3
  • Trophies are now visible and achievable without Game Jolt account
  • Scoring
    • Added online highscores with the Game Jolt API
    • Score multiplier is only reducible in Darkmode/Darkness now
• Menu
  • Implemented the status menu
  • Added some statistic values
  • Added game overview with game progress and average scores (Single Fight, Classic Run and upcoming Boss Rush)
  • Added online highscore table displays
  • Moved Game Jolt login and trophies to the status menu
  • Added selected equipment on/near the player tabs
  • Added basic Classic Run menu structure
  • Improved the world map
  • Renamed Unique difficulty to Hardcore
• Graphics
  • Improved the post processing effects
  • Added option to make player bullets transparent for better overview
• Music and Sound
  • Added option to toggle environment sound
• Bugfixes
  • Hotfixed in v0.8.7: Removed a critical performance bug
  • Removed wrong equipment drops from bosses on Classic Run
  • Configuration will not be saved anymore if game crashes on new video settings
  • Fixed a couple of minor bugs, maybe added new ones, dunno

Version: 0.8.8 (2013-07-29)

Thank you
- Martin