Thursday 27 November 2014

Multi-Core Lightmapping Is Back In

Took all day but I found and fixed the issue with the 'mega nasty freeze crash issue' when the lightmapper ran via threading, which in turn was 'really' due to intercepting the process with Sync calls, and so by changing the order in which the render-able parts where updated, I could make the freeze go away.  This then freed me to move the new progress bar over to the threading version of the lightmapper and now we have a super fast light mapping bake process back.

The Escape level used to take 'quite a while' with the old single thread approach but now it takes less than a minute, and rest assured there is a LOT to lightmap in there.

In other news, App Game Kit 2 continues to do well and yesterday evening we even got on the front page of Steam, which was a bit of a shock.  It might have had something to do with the Steam system accidently promoting our launch offer to 66% off which was not the plan, but it was quickly corrected and it's back down to our 33% off price.



Not before a few lucky AGK2 users snagged themselves a great price at 66% :) I dare say such discounts will happen again so I think the moral of the story is to tune into Steam every day in case bargains are abound.  We even did nicely on the mobile version of the Steam site too:



If you are interested in AGK2, you can find it on Steam here:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/325180/

Or you can find it on a new Bundle Stars promotion here:

http://www.bundlestars.com/store/app-game-kit-2/

Back to Reloaded news, we continue to have a barrel of laughs testing the multiplayer part of the product, and here is the latest in crazy landings. I can only imagine how bad his nose hurts:



I still have some small data alignment issues and then I can move on 'finally' to a new chunk of task to sort.  Best we get the lightmapper rock solid before I move on as it's a pretty deep and complex code base and while it's fresh in my mind I want to do as much as time allows.  Until Friday when I hope to have a new screen shot to show that is nothing to do with light maps :)

4 comments:

  1. (Until Friday when I hope to have a new screen shot to show that is nothing to do with light maps :)0
    Sounds interesting Lee,great progress.Well done the team.


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  2. As AGK has just been released I think Lee is okay to mention it here a few times. I know that most won't be interested of course, but some will.

    The new bake times sound a bit better than in prior blogs now!

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  3. AGK Sales = Revenue = More Money To Spend On Reloaded = Better Product :)

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