Performance fixed?

Lime
#21

@ryan - It certainly isn’t a solution for everyone, and as you say does sort of take away the point of a tile engine but if it works for this particular case then at least it is better than nothing. The performance issues are really annoying and I’m hoping that during the upcoming webcast mentioned by Carlos we will be able to ask exactly what Ansca are planning on doing and making sure we are heard.

@rakoonic - Lime currently uses SpriteSheets for its tiles. [import]uid: 5833 topic_id: 8728 reply_id: 34087[/import]

#22

Cheers for the clarification Graham. I assumed it did, but its certainly not a natural approach when people first start coding their own attempts at the same thing. I must admit the general speed of Corona leaves me sad, coming off the back of playing in Unity. I know its geared towards RAD but still, there’s some seriously inefficient code going on somewhere - there’s no reason we can’t have the best of both worlds!

I’ve had a quick trawl over these forums, but haven’t yet found any serious examples of Lime at work, so I can’t really say if its worth me possibly buying it. Any chance of a few links? :slight_smile:

Barry [import]uid: 46639 topic_id: 8728 reply_id: 34102[/import]

#23

I’m confident that the speed issues in Corona and thus Lime will be solved with whatever additions/fixes get added in for this next release. Just not sure how soon that release will be.

As for links to examples, at present I don’t have many really. I have seem some very promising videos from users showing their creations however they have asked me not to share them yet until they are more ready.

I have created a sample app that shows off some map types etc and this was going to be submitted to the App store however at present with the state of the performance it didn’t seem appropriate. However I could tidy up the look of it and try to make a video of it in the simulator if that would be useful to you? [import]uid: 5833 topic_id: 8728 reply_id: 34109[/import]

#24

I wouldn’t say no to a demo vid - ideally one that shows more than just a bit of tile scrolling and parallax. I’m interested to see how the more advanced stuff from Tiled etc gets used in Lime really.
If you don’t have time, no big deal, but it just seemed strange that I couldn’t really find out more about something for sale!

Barry [import]uid: 46639 topic_id: 8728 reply_id: 34143[/import]

#25

The lack of media on it is mainly down to my lack of time, it is literally just me working on it so between answering daily buckets of emails ( not complaining, keep sending your questions in! ), other projects, freelance stuff, and the occasional desire to eat it’s sometimes hard to find the time.

What sort of features specifically would you like to see, that way I can make a better video for you. [import]uid: 5833 topic_id: 8728 reply_id: 34151[/import]

#26

After some refactoring I find Advanced Tiled Loader as very fast compared to Lime :slight_smile:
http://love2d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2567
Regards [import]uid: 12704 topic_id: 8728 reply_id: 34314[/import]

#27

Are you saying that you reworked ATL to use the corona API instead of Love2D and that it performs quite well on actual hardware?

Would you be willing to share the refactoring if that’s the case? [import]uid: 50570 topic_id: 8728 reply_id: 34315[/import]

#28

Hey, I never even knew ATL existed. I will be taking a look at it over the weekend to see if I can get any ideas on how to fix Lime issues. Thank you very much for the link. [import]uid: 5833 topic_id: 8728 reply_id: 34348[/import]

#29

Would you be willing to share the refactoring if that’s the case?

Unlikely. Graham put a lot of work in Lime and give You lots of tools. Advanced Tiled Loader rebuild is simple map loader. This is not my idea so I can’t take any money and free release hitting Graham efforts.
Regards [import]uid: 12704 topic_id: 8728 reply_id: 34353[/import]

#30

@ gtatarkin - Thank you very much for that, very kind and considerate of you! :slight_smile:

@ jdsmith2816 - I hope to be able to roll as many of the fixes into Lime as soon as I can, preferably for the next release, so you will receive all the fixes for free anyway. [import]uid: 5833 topic_id: 8728 reply_id: 34356[/import]

#31

@gtartarkin, what is your idea? I hope you can share your code to Garaham , I don’t know if I can wait for ansca to solve the performance issue. [import]uid: 12088 topic_id: 8728 reply_id: 34360[/import]

#32

My idea? Do it yourself. LUA if fun :slight_smile: Here is start point :slight_smile:
www.concat.pl/temp/atl.zip

BTW. It’s just map reader without any methods/properites etc etc

Regards [import]uid: 12704 topic_id: 8728 reply_id: 34363[/import]

#33

Sorry for the delay in replying Graham. Well, thing is I don’t really know what features Tiled and Lime support beyond a basic ‘here’s a tile map, so here it is on-screen’.
I guess I’d be interested to see how using both you can get / set up physics easily (because in all honesty I use proper physics as little as possible, so maybe I’m missing some opportunities).
Anything you can think of above and beyond the basics, since I’ve already got that happily working here.

I’m also interested in frame-rates though, if Lime is quicker than what I have now, I’d likely be more than happy switching just for that.

Barry [import]uid: 46639 topic_id: 8728 reply_id: 34417[/import]

#34

From the last few posts, it seems to me from what I understand that Lime’s issue is that it tries to support too much. In flexibility comes a performance hit.
Maybe Lime could have 2 code paths, depending on whether you need the bells and whistles, or an optimised route just for displaying a basic tile map?
Just a suggestion. I must admit, I’ve considered re-working and releasing my own tile engine, because it seems from what I’ve read over here that I’ve got if not the fastest, but one of the fastest solutions for just dumping a tile map to the screen, but I think its a bit early for me to go down that route, and in fact I’ve even become hesitant in helping people who suffer from this problem (although I have loosely detailed my method elsewhere in this forum).

For example - because I can handle extremely large maps, loading from XML has proved to be an annoying delay. Result? I wrote a convertor that changes level data structures into formatted Lua code - there’s nothing quicker than native (as it can get) code, right? [import]uid: 46639 topic_id: 8728 reply_id: 34418[/import]

#35

I was attempting to write a tiled to Lua table converter a while ago without much luck (not an amazing Lua coder ;)) any chance you could let me take a peak at the source? [import]uid: 46343 topic_id: 8728 reply_id: 34435[/import]

#36

@ everyone - After looking at ATL while on a coach earlier I have now managed to get all compressed map formats working ( not that exciting, but useful ) as well as proper object positioning for iso maps. The next step is to sort out the performance stuff that the ATL developer implemented.

@ rakoonic - I am hoping to get a video sorted for the release of 3.3, not sure how polished it will be as I am no video producer however it should show quite a bit off. Also, a “lite” version was something that I have been considering for a while so I will give it some more thought.

@ gtartarkin - Thank you again for finding ATL, it has been useful. I was thinking that at somepoint I would actually try to port Lime to Love for desktop apps, but now I’m not sure if there is a need. And I also hope Ansca allow desktop apps with Corona anyway. [import]uid: 5833 topic_id: 8728 reply_id: 34437[/import]

#37

@Dubcanada, all I did was search the forums for an XML loader, fix it (!) and then its just a case of copying table structures as you write the data out. I just used tostring() and tonumber() to get at it all, and trawled through the sample code library that comes with corona until I found file IO stuff. [import]uid: 46639 topic_id: 8728 reply_id: 34440[/import]

#38

@Graham - I guess it depends on how sure you are that Ansca will fix whatever is the terrible speed bottleneck within Corona. I honestly can’t understand why shifting so few sprites around is a problem, so I’d hope they actually have a look into this, since its quite a high priority need, judging by the posts you have to field. [import]uid: 46639 topic_id: 8728 reply_id: 34444[/import]

#39

I am fully confident that it can and will be fixed because as you say Corona should be more than capable to push some sprites around.

Whether a lite version would still be required once performance is something I will have to look into. [import]uid: 5833 topic_id: 8728 reply_id: 34446[/import]

#40

Hi,

If you make an little version of Lime, only to load and draw the map, do you get a better performance?

Thank [import]uid: 42318 topic_id: 8728 reply_id: 35453[/import]