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Work in Progress / Road to PlayBasicFX

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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 3rd Apr 2007 22:37 Edited at: 27th Jul 2011 21:56



....Road to PlayBasicFX (BLOG)....



What's this ? - Well it's a development blog that chronicles some of the many twists and turns during our transition from the PlayBASIC V1.00 towards PlayBASIC V2.00, which is more commonly referred to PlayBasicFX.

What's the difference ? - Everything basically, the original concept for the FX edition, was to expand PlayBASIC in every way, better runtime, more powerful core linguistics, more powerful command sets, new IDE etc etc etc

The heart of the change is the runtime technology. Standard PlayBASIC runs on what we call VM1 runtime (it's more like 1.5 today), where as FX uses the VM2 runtime. These are engines that run your program, In principal they do basically the same job, just VM2 is much faster and more flexible than it's long lost brother. But they're not interchangeable, VM1 is dynamic and VM2 is static.

Our original plan was to migrate from Vm1 -> Vm2 into PlayBASIC around revision V1.50, but this proved just way to problematic. Eventually, it just made more sense to draw a line in the sand and split the two projects. This occurred at revision PlayBASIC V1/63/V1.64. The second stream became the FX stream, so updates from V1.65 all built use VM2 with the alternative Direct 3D command sets.

So as you look through the thread today (this post was edited July 2011) anything that has a version number of V1.65 or above, is an FX revision, where anything that's V1.64 and bellow are standard editions.

Another difference between the two was changing from DirectDraw to Direct3D rendering. Which presents a number of interesting challenges (i joke they're boring actually). As originally the FX engine was to be backward compatible, and it sort of is today. During this time it became obvious though that in order avoid massive culture shock we've have to bend both. So some (once FX only features) have been retro fitted back into PlayBASIC and vice versa.


Anyway, a long time has past since this project started, so much of the old legacy information is now obsolete, so the first couple of pages of this thread have been edited (by me) to remove really out-of-date material and some of the many dead links.

This thread barely scratches the surface though, if want to the real low down, you'll have to read my blog on [url]underwaredesign.com/forums[/url]



Short Cuts to Various PlayBASIC Release Announcements

PlayBASIC V1.64 _Retail Upgrade_ is Now Available (2nd, Sep, 2008)
PlayBASIC V1.64h _Retail Upgrade_ is Now Available (12th, Jan, 2009)
PlayBASIC V1.64i _Retail Upgrade_ is Now Available (5th, Mar, 2009)
PlayBASIC V1.64j _Retail Upgrade_ is Now Available (1st, June, 2009)
PlayBASIC V1.64j2 _Retail Upgrade_ is Now Available (14th, Sep, 2009)
PlayBASIC V1.64k _Retail Upgrade_ is Now Available (15th, Dec, 2009)
PlayBASIC V1.64k Revision #2 _Retail Upgrade_ is Now Available (2nd, Jan, 2010)
PlayBASIC V1.64L _Learning Edition Released (FREE EDITION)
PlayBASIC V1.64M _Retail Upgrade_ is Now Available (1st, Dec, 2010)



Short Cuts to some PlayBASIC FX Release Announcements

PlayBasicFX V1.74 _Retail Upgrade_ is Now Available (2nd Dec 2008)
PlayBasicFX V1.76 _Retail Upgrade_ is Now Available (17th Feb 2010)




OTher Interesting Posts

Play SHape (Polygon Collision Tool)
PlayFont (Font Conversion)



Start Reading At Page #2 For Legacy Info about PlayBasicFX (For really old WIP stuff)


Kevin Picone
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Posted: 3rd Apr 2007 22:40 Edited at: 27th Jul 2010 06:09
Obsolete Post #2 Removed


Old attachment is of a sprite terrain tech.

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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 3rd Apr 2007 22:43 Edited at: 26th Jul 2010 10:00

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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 5th Apr 2007 01:12 Edited at: 26th Jul 2010 09:56
Kevin Picone
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Posted: 8th Apr 2007 09:22 Edited at: 27th Jul 2011 17:40
Obsolete Post #5 Removed.


Added WIP shot from a later post

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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 9th Apr 2007 19:59 Edited at: 27th Jul 2011 17:42
Obsolete Post #6 Removed.

Add WIP shot from

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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 13th Apr 2007 16:55 Edited at: 27th Jul 2011 17:47
Obsolete Post #7 Removed.

Added a WIP thumb

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Cash Curtis II
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Posted: 13th Apr 2007 19:40
It's too bad that I've never been into 2D games, Playbasic looks like a fabulous system for making a 2D games. Your new 3D particle effects look really nice, and using DX7 is pretty cool, because it would work on every system. I can imagine a 2D game with cool effects like these.


Come see the WIP!
Kevin Picone
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Posted: 14th Apr 2007 05:54 Edited at: 27th Jul 2011 17:49
Obsolete Post #8 Removed.

Filtered Terrain WIP thumb

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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 17th Apr 2007 08:55 Edited at: 27th Jul 2011 17:59
PlayBASIC V1.64J2 Thumb Gallery (used in later announcement)

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Milkman
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Posted: 17th Apr 2007 09:01
It seems like you would be in competition with tgc, yet you're posting on their forums?

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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 17th Apr 2007 10:35 Edited at: 27th Jul 2011 18:11
erm, TGC have been a licensed reseller of PlayBASIC for almost two years now!

http://playbasic.thegamecreators.com/

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Milkman
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Posted: 17th Apr 2007 10:58
See, you learn something new every day. I always wondered what the connection was...

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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 25th Apr 2007 20:41 Edited at: 27th Jul 2011 18:14

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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 2nd May 2007 07:16 Edited at: 27th Jul 2011 18:17
Edit: Falling Blocks Thumb

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Kevin Picone
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Kevin Picone
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Kevin Picone
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Kevin Picone
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Kevin Picone
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Kevin Picone
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Kevin Picone
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Kevin Picone
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Kevin Picone
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Obsolete Post #20 Removed..
Kevin Picone
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Obsolete Post #21 Removed..
Kevin Picone
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Kevin Picone
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Kevin Picone
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Kevin Picone
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Obsolete Post #25 Removed.


The attached picture is the Thesius XIII sample game demo.

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Kevin Picone
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Kevin Picone
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Kevin Picone
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Kevin Picone
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Kevin Picone
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Kevin Picone
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Kevin Picone
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Kevin Picone
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Obsolete Post #33 Removed.

OLD SHOW CASE PIC's

Kevin Picone
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Kevin Picone
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Kevin Picone
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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 30th Aug 2007 18:28 Edited at: 27th Jul 2010 06:11
PBFX V1.70

Now that batch of tedious little jobs are out of the way PBFX 1.70 development is underway. Should have a new BETA tonight in fact.

Kevin Picone
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Posted: 2nd Sep 2007 08:51 Edited at: 27th Jul 2010 06:11
PBFX 1.70a Mapping Test

Here's the first look see (for what's it worth) of the rebuilt mapping engine. While I could I have 'modified' the original edition of the library, it really needed to be re-written around the new image system. Which is the current little task. Initially, I was expecting the first slapped together version it to be slower than the older mature version of the library found PB1.63 for example. But interestingly the code bellow is running 80fps quicker in PB1.70a than PB1.63n. Which is more a collective improvement than just the map rendering thing I think.



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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 4th Sep 2007 22:24 Edited at: 27th Jul 2010 06:12
A Mapping We Will Go

After an extremely busy 3/4 days (baby sitting, 2 birthdays and then fathers day) , the new mapping library is rapidly taking shape. At the moment all of the base functionality is in place. The only missing elements now are the Block Animation commands and the block collision stuff. Had few drama's with clipping the maps yesterday, basically it refused to draw tiles on the left hand edge. Seemed like the clipper problem, but turned out to the logic error in another part of the code. ya get that!

The new mapping command set is slightly different than the old edition. While there'll be few new commands, the changes mostly relate to how levels width/heights +animations sizes used to be zero inclusive. Which I never liked the idea of, but was talked into it. Much like how arrays indexes work, which was the logic behind it. Anyway, changing this behavior may well mean some old map code will need to have it's the widths/heights etc adjusted accordingly.

In terms of speed, I'm pretty surprised by the performance of the new rendering routines. With PBFX 1.70b being able to render the full screen (800*600*32) transparent map approximately 80fps faster than PB1.63n retail can. And this is pre-optimization! I wouldn't expect miracles from opting it however, but there's some a little room to move left in the code. So hopefully I can stretch the difference out even further.

Anyway, I was going to release a new beta yesterday, but i think I'll wait now till the mapping it done in couple of days. Then you can test it, while I get stuck into some other tidbits. The To Do List is getting pretty short

Kevin Picone
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Posted: 8th Sep 2007 11:32 Edited at: 27th Jul 2010 06:13
PBFX V1.70d _WIP BETA_ (Retail Compiler Only / Registered Users ONLY)

PBFX V1.70d is the current stability test of the new PB graphics engine. Version 1.70 doesn't fully replicate the command set functionality from older PB1.63 releases at the moment, but it's pretty close now. While there will no doubt be some commands missing/broken, the main missing area in this revision is Sprite collision. But all the base fundamentals now have some support though. Ie. core 2D, Image, Sprite, Fonts & Mappings. So that's where you should focus your experiments on !

This edition includes a completely re-written mapping engine. There's a few commands at the time of writing that are known to be broken (CloneLevel + Copy Level come to mind) Also, Maps/Levels/Animations etc are no longer Zero inclusive. This will no doubt break some old that relies upon it.

Ie.

CreateMap 1, 2

in PB1.63 and bellow this would create map 1 with provision for 3 levels. Level 0, Level 1 & level 2.

however in PB1.70 you'll only get 2 levels Level 0 and Level 1. Although if you're using NewLevel() it won't make any difference to you.



Edit: Old Download link removed.

Kevin Picone
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Posted: 11th Sep 2007 19:52 Edited at: 27th Jul 2010 06:15
PBFX 1.70e - Even faster Mapping

The replacement mapping library is basically finished in PBFX 1.70e. So everything should be working again from Map Animation, Block importation through to the level helper commands. While the first rewrite of library was approximately 25% faster than the old library in PB1.63e and bellow, I still had a few tricks up my sleeve optimization wise. (and a few more ) Which have been implemented into PBFX 1.70e level render. Which in turn give us approximately another 25% performance improvement. Making the new engine around twice as fast as it was.

The following pics are the previous examples running in the current update. Both demos are around 90->100fps faster than the previous test. If you run in full screen exclusive it's even quicker. For the example the Xenon test which runs around the 390->400fps in windowed mode, clocks around 480->490fps in full screen exclusive.

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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 11th Sep 2007 19:54 Edited at: 27th Jul 2010 06:16
Attached is a picture of the Xenon Tech Demo running in PBFX V1.70

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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 11th Sep 2007 20:55 Edited at: 27th Jul 2010 06:17
PBFX V1.70e _BETA_ (Retail Compiler Only / Registered Users ONLY)

PBFX V1.70e is the current stability test of the new PB graphics engine. Version 1.70 doesn't fully replicate the command set functionality from older PB1.63 releases at the moment, but it's pretty close now. While there will no doubt be some commands missing/broken, the remaining missing features are basically Sprite collision. So all the base fundamentals now have some support. Ie. core 2D, Image, Sprite, Fonts & Mapping.

This edition includes has complete mapping engine replacement with level rendering optimizations.


Download

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Diggsey
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Posted: 11th Sep 2007 22:50
Wow, that's gotta be a about 40 messages in a row!

Kevin Picone
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Posted: 13th Sep 2007 00:21 Edited at: 27th Jul 2010 06:18
Kevin Picone
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Posted: 13th Sep 2007 00:22 Edited at: 27th Jul 2010 06:20
PBFX 1.70f - Shape Rotation

This piccy is a very early test of the revised shape library for PBFX v1.70f. In the pic it's rotating & drawing a 50,000 point shape in dot mode.

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