• Mason Green (6/6) Mar 16 2009 Blaze 2.0, a 2D game physics engine based on Box2D, is finally here. Th...
• Clay Smith (4/13) Mar 16 2009 Congrats! Some very fine physics examples there in the demo.
• Clay Smith (3/22) Mar 16 2009 The sandbox features found in the mode (Spawn new objects, create joints...
• bearophile (10/10) Mar 16 2009 (I am sorry, the online forum has posted this email in the main D newsgr...
• Mason Green (3/5) Mar 16 2009 Maybe you have an older devil.dll somewhere on your system? It works on...
• bearophile (6/9) Mar 17 2009 Good.
• Kenny B (2/19) Mar 17 2009
• Chad J (3/16) Mar 16 2009 I had the same issue. I didn't have any older blaze demos laying
• Mason Green (3/5) Mar 17 2009 I would recommend compiling it on your machine, with your own system's
• Jarrett Billingsley (11/17) Mar 16 2009 h clear (hopefully) instructions on how to compile. Comments, suggestion...
• Mason Green (3/5) Mar 16 2009 Don't know what to tell you.... it even runs fast for me on a Linux virt...
• Jarrett Billingsley (4/9) Mar 16 2009 =A0Are you using wine?
• Tom S (13/33) Mar 16 2009 They seem to work just fine on my machine and it's a single-core 1.7GHz
• Mason Green (4/6) Mar 16 2009 Yes, I still need to dig a bit more into profiling. Any suggestions, or...
• Brian (10/18) Mar 16 2009 I had GC issues with the old blaze as well, after some profiling i found...
• Mason Green (12/17) Mar 17 2009 Blaze 2.0 is 90% Box2D, using all the same algorithms for the CPU
• Jarrett Billingsley (14/32) Mar 17 2009 y
• Brian (4/24) Mar 18 2009 That sounds good. I'll see if I can do a nice 3 way comparison between
• Mason Green (7/10) Mar 19 2009 Great, if you can find the spare time it would be greatly appreciated
• Bill Baxter (10/28) Mar 16 2009 e:
• Jarrett Billingsley (2/4) Mar 16 2009 GeForce 8600 512MB, version 181.22 of the official drivers.
• Bill Baxter (5/10) Mar 16 2009 Sounds like that should be capable. If you're motivated enough you
• Jarrett Billingsley (12/30) Mar 16 2009 e:
• Jarrett Billingsley (3/14) Mar 16 2009 Ah, that fixed it! Good idea, I didn't consider it since I only just
• Mason Green (2/4) Mar 17 2009 Good to hear it wasn't a graphics card conflict with Hybrid!
• Bill Baxter (7/22) Mar 16 2009 I wasted a few hours last week trying to debug a mysterious

Mason Green <mason.green gmail.com> writes:

Blaze 2.0, a 2D game physics engine based on Box2D, is finally here.  The
testBed examples have been completely overhauled with Hybrid and Dog!

Project page:
http://www.dsource.org/projects/blaze/wiki/WikiStart

Testbed examples (win32 binary):
http://svn.dsource.org/projects/blaze/downloads/blazeDemos.zip

I've taken a stab at writing a `getting started` section on the wiki, with
clear (hopefully) instructions on how to compile. Comments, suggestions,
contributions, and bug reports are appreciated in the dsource forum.

Clay Smith <clayasaurus gmail.com> writes:

Mason Green wrote:
 Blaze 2.0, a 2D game physics engine based on Box2D, is finally here.  The
testBed examples have been completely overhauled with Hybrid and Dog!
 
 Project page:
 http://www.dsource.org/projects/blaze/wiki/WikiStart
 
 Testbed examples (win32 binary):
 http://svn.dsource.org/projects/blaze/downloads/blazeDemos.zip
 
 I've taken a stab at writing a `getting started` section on the wiki, with
clear (hopefully) instructions on how to compile. Comments, suggestions,
contributions, and bug reports are appreciated in the dsource forum.

Congrats! Some very fine physics examples there in the demo.
They are all working pretty well here.

~ Clay

Clay Smith <clayasaurus gmail.com> writes:

Clay Smith wrote:
 Mason Green wrote:
 Blaze 2.0, a 2D game physics engine based on Box2D, is finally here.  
 The testBed examples have been completely overhauled with Hybrid and Dog!

 Project page:
 http://www.dsource.org/projects/blaze/wiki/WikiStart

 Testbed examples (win32 binary):
 http://svn.dsource.org/projects/blaze/downloads/blazeDemos.zip

 I've taken a stab at writing a `getting started` section on the wiki, 
 with clear (hopefully) instructions on how to compile. Comments, 
 suggestions, contributions, and bug reports are appreciated in the 
 dsource forum.

 
 Congrats! Some very fine physics examples there in the demo.
 They are all working pretty well here.
 
 ~ Clay

The sandbox features found in the mode (Spawn new objects, create joints 
between objects) are great as well. :)

bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:

(I am sorry, the online forum has posted this email in the main D newsgroup).
Stewart Gordon, all the older Blaze demos have worked for me, but this time it
gives me:

...
Registering widget: Angle
Registering widget: SceneView
derelict.util.exception.SharedLibLoadException: Failed to load shared library
devil.dll

And stops.
The DevIL.dll is present beside the exe.

Bye,
bearophile

Mason Green <mason.green gmail.com> writes:

bearophile Wrote:
 And stops.
 The DevIL.dll is present beside the exe.

Maybe you have an older devil.dll somewhere on your system?  It works on both
my work and home Windows machine...

If you're really interested, you can always compile it!

bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:

Mason Green:
 Maybe you have an older devil.dll somewhere on your system?

Nope.


It works on both my work and home Windows machine...<

Good.


 If you're really interested, you can always compile it!<

I may try later.

Bye,
bearophile

Kenny B <funisher gmail.com> writes:

I can reproduce this problem as well... I'm running wine-1.1.17 in gentoo.
Figuring it was a capital name issue, I tried renaming, and it gave the same
error. Then, I tried downloading the latest devil.dll, and got a different
error...

bearophile wrote:
 Mason Green:
 Maybe you have an older devil.dll somewhere on your system?

 
 Nope.
 
 
 It works on both my work and home Windows machine...<

 
 Good.
 
 
 If you're really interested, you can always compile it!<

 
 I may try later.
 
 Bye,
 bearophile

Chad J <gamerchad __spam.is.bad__gmail.com> writes:

bearophile wrote:
 (I am sorry, the online forum has posted this email in the main D newsgroup).
 Stewart Gordon, all the older Blaze demos have worked for me, but this time it
gives me:
 
 ...
 Registering widget: Angle
 Registering widget: SceneView
 derelict.util.exception.SharedLibLoadException: Failed to load shared library
devil.dll
 
 And stops.
 The DevIL.dll is present beside the exe.
 
 Bye,
 bearophile

I had the same issue.  I didn't have any older blaze demos laying
around.  This was on a fairly fresh install of Windows XP 64.

Mason Green <mason.green gmail.com> writes:

Chad J wrote:
 I had the same issue.  I didn't have any older blaze demos laying
 around.  This was on a fairly fresh install of Windows XP 64.

I would recommend compiling it on your machine, with your own system's 
drivers.

Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> writes:

On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Mason Green <mason.green gmail.com> wrote:
 Blaze 2.0, a 2D game physics engine based on Box2D, is finally here. =A0T=

he testBed examples have been completely overhauled with Hybrid and Dog!
 Project page:
 http://www.dsource.org/projects/blaze/wiki/WikiStart

 Testbed examples (win32 binary):
 http://svn.dsource.org/projects/blaze/downloads/blazeDemos.zip

 I've taken a stab at writing a `getting started` section on the wiki, wit=

h clear (hopefully) instructions on how to compile. Comments, suggestions, =
contributions, and bug reports are appreciated in the dsource forum.

I get really strange performance.  It runs.. choppy.  Not slow
framerate, just really choppy, in a nondeterministic manner.  The
Hybrid controls are also incredibly sensitive - one button press sets
them to absurdly large/small values, usually freezing/crashing the
app.

My computer should be able to more than handle this.  It's a dual-core
Athlon X2 4600+.

Mason Green <mason.green gmail.com> writes:

Jarrett Billingsley Wrote:
 I get really strange performance.  It runs.. choppy.  Not slow
 framerate, just really choppy, in a nondeterministic manner. 

Don't know what to tell you.... it even runs fast for me on a Linux virtual
machine (vmware Fusion) running on my MacBook Pro.

Please compile it yourself and let me know if you have the same behavior.  Are
you using wine?

Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> writes:

On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 9:04 PM, Mason Green <mason.green gmail.com> wrote:
 Jarrett Billingsley Wrote:
 I get really strange performance. =A0It runs.. choppy. =A0Not slow
 framerate, just really choppy, in a nondeterministic manner.

 Don't know what to tell you.... it even runs fast for me on a Linux virtu=

al machine (vmware Fusion) running on my MacBook Pro.
 Please compile it yourself and let me know if you have the same behavior.=

 =A0Are you using wine?

I'm running it in XP.  I'll try compiling..

Tom S <h3r3tic remove.mat.uni.torun.pl> writes:

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
 On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Mason Green <mason.green gmail.com> wrote:
 Blaze 2.0, a 2D game physics engine based on Box2D, is finally here.  The
testBed examples have been completely overhauled with Hybrid and Dog!

 Project page:
 http://www.dsource.org/projects/blaze/wiki/WikiStart

 Testbed examples (win32 binary):
 http://svn.dsource.org/projects/blaze/downloads/blazeDemos.zip

 I've taken a stab at writing a `getting started` section on the wiki, with
clear (hopefully) instructions on how to compile. Comments, suggestions,
contributions, and bug reports are appreciated in the dsource forum.

 
 I get really strange performance.  It runs.. choppy.  Not slow
 framerate, just really choppy, in a nondeterministic manner.  The
 Hybrid controls are also incredibly sensitive - one button press sets
 them to absurdly large/small values, usually freezing/crashing the
 app.
 
 My computer should be able to more than handle this.  It's a dual-core
 Athlon X2 4600+.

They seem to work just fine on my machine and it's a single-core 1.7GHz 
Centrino laptop with a Mobility Radeon 7500 GPU and 1.5GB of RAM... The 
heavier tests (Compound shapes, Domino tower) seem choppy, but I don't 
get any weird Widget behavior. The performance could be improved, cause 
my simple profiling attempts seem to indicate that Blaze is abusing the 
GC a bit.

Overall, great job, Mason! :D The demo is really fun and I'm proud that 
my crazy GUI lib can be a part of it :)


-- 
Tomasz Stachowiak
http://h3.team0xf.com/
h3/h3r3tic on #D freenode

Mason Green <mason.green gmail.com> writes:

Tom S wrote:
  The performance could be improved, cause
 my simple profiling attempts seem to indicate that Blaze is abusing the 
 GC a bit.

Yes, I still need to dig a bit more into profiling.  Any suggestions, or 
contributions :-), for improving GC performance would be much appreciated!

Brian <digitalmars brianguertin.com> writes:

On Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:56:50 -0400, Mason Green wrote:

 Tom S wrote:
   The performance could be improved, cause
 my simple profiling attempts seem to indicate that Blaze is abusing the
 GC a bit.

 
 Yes, I still need to dig a bit more into profiling.  Any suggestions, or
 contributions :-), for improving GC performance would be much
 appreciated!

I had GC issues with the old blaze as well, after some profiling i found 
some unnecessary allocations and .dups that I removed for a nice speedup. 
Before i fixed those spots, the GC would get so beat up that it would 
just crash after about 8 seconds of collisions.

I don't know how different Blaze 2.0 is from the version i had, but I'll 
take a look when I get a chance and see if I can be of any help.  I'm 
using Box2D for the time being because there were still GC issues, but 
I'm very excited about "smoothed partial hydrodynamics" and non-convex 
models/partitioning.

Mason Green <mason.green gmail.com> writes:

Brian wrote:
 I don't know how different Blaze 2.0 is from the version i had, but I'll 
 take a look when I get a chance and see if I can be of any help.  I'm 
 using Box2D for the time being because there were still GC issues, but 
 I'm very excited about "smoothed partial hydrodynamics" and non-convex 
 models/partitioning.

Blaze 2.0 is 90% Box2D, using all the same algorithms for the CPU 
intensive tasks.  All I did was add smoothed particle dynamics, and 
force generators from the Motor2 engine. The new version is much, much 
different from Blaze 1.0.

Motor2 has a few other features that I may eventually incorporate, but 
as I mentioned, for all practical purposes Blaze 2.0 is pretty much a 
straight port of Box2D.

Performance should be on par with the Java and Action Script variants of 
Box2D, aside from their more efficient garbage collectors. If there are 
D specific tricks I can use to speed up the engine, I would definitely 
appreciate the help and/or contribution.

Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> writes:

On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 6:54 PM, Mason Green <mason.green gmail.com> wrote:
 Brian wrote:
 I don't know how different Blaze 2.0 is from the version i had, but I'll
 take a look when I get a chance and see if I can be of any help. =A0I'm =


using
 Box2D for the time being because there were still GC issues, but I'm ver=


y
 excited about "smoothed partial hydrodynamics" and non-convex
 models/partitioning.

 Blaze 2.0 is 90% Box2D, using all the same algorithms for the CPU intensi=

ve
 tasks. =A0All I did was add smoothed particle dynamics, and force generat=

ors
 from the Motor2 engine. The new version is much, much different from Blaz=

e
 1.0.

 Motor2 has a few other features that I may eventually incorporate, but as=

 I
 mentioned, for all practical purposes Blaze 2.0 is pretty much a straight
 port of Box2D.

 Performance should be on par with the Java and Action Script variants of
 Box2D, aside from their more efficient garbage collectors. If there are D
 specific tricks I can use to speed up the engine, I would definitely
 appreciate the help and/or contribution.

Using value types where possible would probably help.  Porting the SOA
from the C++ version of Box2D would probably also give a tremendous
speedup (and fewer GC pauses), though I don't know what effects that
would have on the API.  The way it is now is really noticeably
GC-bound.  On some of the more complex testbed scenes (like the
compound bodies test), there's a noticeable pause every two seconds or
so.

Brian <digitalmars brianguertin.com> writes:

On Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:54:23 -0400, Mason Green wrote:

 Brian wrote:
 I don't know how different Blaze 2.0 is from the version i had, but
 I'll take a look when I get a chance and see if I can be of any help. 
 I'm using Box2D for the time being because there were still GC issues,
 but I'm very excited about "smoothed partial hydrodynamics" and
 non-convex models/partitioning.

 
 Blaze 2.0 is 90% Box2D, using all the same algorithms for the CPU
 intensive tasks.  All I did was add smoothed particle dynamics, and
 force generators from the Motor2 engine. The new version is much, much
 different from Blaze 1.0.
 
 Motor2 has a few other features that I may eventually incorporate, but
 as I mentioned, for all practical purposes Blaze 2.0 is pretty much a
 straight port of Box2D.
 
 Performance should be on par with the Java and Action Script variants of
 Box2D, aside from their more efficient garbage collectors. If there are
 D specific tricks I can use to speed up the engine, I would definitely
 appreciate the help and/or contribution.

That sounds good. I'll see if I can do a nice 3 way comparison between 
box2d and blaze 1.0/2.0 and also see if I can find any speedups. I don't 
have much time to spare unfortunately.

Mason Green <mason.green gmail.com> writes:

Brian wrote:
 That sounds good. I'll see if I can do a nice 3 way comparison between 
 box2d and blaze 1.0/2.0 and also see if I can find any speedups. I don't 
 have much time to spare unfortunately.

Great, if you can find the spare time it would be greatly appreciated 
:-) I think a comparison with box2d would be very enlightening...

Actually, a performance analysis of box2D vs. jBox2D vs. Blaze 2.0 would 
be quite useful.  It may prove helpful for other folks who are 
considering porting c++ or Java applications to D.

Would anyone consider a set of memory management best practices a good idea?

Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> writes:

On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 8:38 AM, Jarrett Billingsley
<jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> wrote:
 On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Mason Green <mason.green gmail.com> wrot=

e:
 Blaze 2.0, a 2D game physics engine based on Box2D, is finally here. =


=A0The testBed examples have been completely overhauled with Hybrid and Dog=
!
 Project page:
 http://www.dsource.org/projects/blaze/wiki/WikiStart

 Testbed examples (win32 binary):
 http://svn.dsource.org/projects/blaze/downloads/blazeDemos.zip

 I've taken a stab at writing a `getting started` section on the wiki, w=


ith clear (hopefully) instructions on how to compile. Comments, suggestions=
, contributions, and bug reports are appreciated in the dsource forum.

 I get really strange performance. =A0It runs.. choppy. =A0Not slow
 framerate, just really choppy, in a nondeterministic manner. =A0The
 Hybrid controls are also incredibly sensitive - one button press sets
 them to absurdly large/small values, usually freezing/crashing the
 app.

 My computer should be able to more than handle this. =A0It's a dual-core
 Athlon X2 4600+.

The video card you have, and which drivers you are using for it, might
be more relevant factors than the speed of your CPU.

--bb

Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> writes:

On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 9:24 PM, Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> wrote:
 The video card you have, and which drivers you are using for it, might
 be more relevant factors than the speed of your CPU.

GeForce 8600 512MB, version 181.22 of the official drivers.

Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> writes:

On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 10:33 AM, Jarrett Billingsley
<jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> wrote:
 On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 9:24 PM, Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> wrote:
 The video card you have, and which drivers you are using for it, might
 be more relevant factors than the speed of your CPU.

 GeForce 8600 512MB, version 181.22 of the official drivers.

Sounds like that should be capable.  If you're motivated enough you
could try installing the 182.08 drivers to see if that fixes it.

--bb

Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> writes:

On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 7:38 PM, Jarrett Billingsley
<jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> wrote:
 On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Mason Green <mason.green gmail.com> wrot=

e:
 Blaze 2.0, a 2D game physics engine based on Box2D, is finally here. =A0=


The testBed examples have been completely overhauled with Hybrid and Dog!
 Project page:
 http://www.dsource.org/projects/blaze/wiki/WikiStart

 Testbed examples (win32 binary):
 http://svn.dsource.org/projects/blaze/downloads/blazeDemos.zip

 I've taken a stab at writing a `getting started` section on the wiki, wi=


th clear (hopefully) instructions on how to compile. Comments, suggestions,=
 contributions, and bug reports are appreciated in the dsource forum.

 I get really strange performance. =A0It runs.. choppy. =A0Not slow
 framerate, just really choppy, in a nondeterministic manner. =A0The
 Hybrid controls are also incredibly sensitive - one button press sets
 them to absurdly large/small values, usually freezing/crashing the
 app.

 My computer should be able to more than handle this. =A0It's a dual-core
 Athlon X2 4600+.

I've tried messing with all my driver's 3D settings to no effect.

The framerate is like.. like it's running at 60fps, and then it'll
just skip a bunch of frames.  Like it suddenly processed way faster
than the screen was able to update.  It does this constantly - just
switching between normal speed and super-fast a few times a second at
seemingly random intervals.

Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> writes:

On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 9:56 PM, Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> wrote:
 On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 10:33 AM, Jarrett Billingsley
 <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> wrote:
 On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 9:24 PM, Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> wrote:
 The video card you have, and which drivers you are using for it, might
 be more relevant factors than the speed of your CPU.

 GeForce 8600 512MB, version 181.22 of the official drivers.

 Sounds like that should be capable. =A0If you're motivated enough you
 could try installing the 182.08 drivers to see if that fixes it.

Ah, that fixed it!  Good idea, I didn't consider it since I only just
updated my drivers a couple weeks ago.  Figures.

Mason Green <mason.green gmail.com> writes:

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
 Ah, that fixed it!  Good idea, I didn't consider it since I only just
 updated my drivers a couple weeks ago.  Figures.

Good to hear it wasn't a graphics card conflict with Hybrid!

Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> writes:

On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 12:18 PM, Jarrett Billingsley
<jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> wrote:
 On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 9:56 PM, Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> wrote:
 On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 10:33 AM, Jarrett Billingsley
 <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> wrote:
 On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 9:24 PM, Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> wrote:
 The video card you have, and which drivers you are using for it, might
 be more relevant factors than the speed of your CPU.

 GeForce 8600 512MB, version 181.22 of the official drivers.

 Sounds like that should be capable. =A0If you're motivated enough you
 could try installing the 182.08 drivers to see if that fixes it.

 Ah, that fixed it! =A0Good idea, I didn't consider it since I only just
 updated my drivers a couple weeks ago. =A0Figures.

I wasted a few hours last week trying to debug a mysterious
performance problem.  Finally I installed some new drivers out of
frustration, and suddenly the performance problem was gone.   So the
experience was fresh on my mind.

--bb