Post-DBP Update

The performance on Perplex Beats wasn’t exactly where I wanted it to be when we sent it to DBP. True, we had 60 FPS but it only made those times when the FPS dropped to 55-58 seem to stand out more. To that end, I’ve been working on optimizations, primarily removing allocations during the screen Update where I can them. If I had been on a quest to make the code as ugly as possible instead, it might have turned out the way it looks now anyway.

The others will probably tell me that after 5+ hours of painstaking changes the game looks exactly the same. Well they’re right, it does. But the back-end is entirely different now. Anywhere that I could turn a new allocation into a jagged array cache of instances to be recycled, I did or am in the process of doing. There are a lot of differences because so many objects are shared now. In the old paradigm the puzzle note columns would politely request their note symbols to draw themselves, given colors and shapes that both sides agreed were appropriate for them to be. Now there are 10 shared symbols, 5 on each side. Each instance shares the identity of every note currently on screen.

Implementing the Best Practices Guide didn’t take very long at all, there were only one or two items in the list that hadn’t already been covered.

Digby is also taking another pass on the tracks. We really want each track to have a unique visual style, as well as dynamic note placement, and (perhaps most importantly) to be in rhythm with the song that’s playing. For the DBP we didn’t have much art to show off during the levels. There was just the space scene (we plan to explore more environments!) which had some little rockets, meteors, space ships, orbiting stations, and planets. I think they all appeared in the videos. Not only do we want our tracks to be special because of the rhythm of the song and the puzzle patterns, we also want each track to show you some new things and do some exciting things with the background. Lots of cool little decorations that show up and animate so you get distracted and miss the puzzle notes!

Oh, and recently the Perplex Beats SVN server reached (and quickly passed) the 200th revision.  Happy Bi-centennial, Perplex Beats!