I have the fortune to be part of the graphics 2 testing group, and (with the Corona team’s blessing) I’d like to share a few screenshots of some stuff I’ve been working on to help show off some of the functionality.
http://imgur.com/a/FuTGU <- Dungeoneer specific album (newest updates here)
http://imgur.com/a/0RRhj <- General graphics 2 images
Here is the current state of the Dungeoneer game (it has progressed way beyond a demo!):
And it has a 2 and 4 player split-screen option!
Whoa! Thanks for sharing - loving the Road Rash style of the first screens, and the dungeon section looks equally as amazing. I really didn’t anticipate this with 2.0.
Whats performance like?
For the racing game which is reasonably well optimised, I get 60 fps with CPU to spare on an iPad 2. Applying the blur does drop it - to what I cant be sure as the nature of the blur makes it look smoother than it is, but I’d wager 20fps? Should proobably put in a FPS counter 
The dungeon demo varies but isn’t particularly quick. I’d say… dunno, 8 fps? It wasn’t meant to be a realtime thing (think Dungeon Master, not Quake), but also it really isn’t optimised at all - I wrote the demo from scratch yesterday, so it does a lot of slow and brute force methods that I’d rewrite for a proper game (I’d normally expect my optimiisations to at least double the frame rate if not more, but can’t say for sure in this case as it is new territory for me in Corona). The main speed up would come from culling in code which is very feasible, but not a quick job although I do intend to look into it.
I just did a quick and crude test (literally counting seconds in my head to see how long it takes to cover a set distance) and it appears that the full screen blur lowers the frame rate to a steady 30 fps - better than I’d hoped
Is there a way you could use performance meter and give us a screencap? There is a thirst in my soul for numbers
http://developer.coronalabs.com/code/easy-use-performance-meter-memory-texture-memory-fps
I shall try a quick test using that code shortly and report back.
Very impressive! I particularly like the Dungeoneering shots.
Does gfx 2.0 do 3d?
Or is this your own concoction?
Panc - witness!
http://i.imgur.com/eyzrDpw.jpg
30 fps Must admit it surprised me, but I’m certainly not going to complain!
It doesn’t have true 3D support now, this is my own concoction using the ability to distort the corner of images how you want.
WOW! This looks amazing! Are there any noticable performance improvements with your previous projects? Man, I hope Corona releases this update soon!
Well it depends, I’ve not done any straight speed tests for chucking images around the screen.
All my tests have focused on the new features which naturally makes comparisons impossible.
It is claimed to be quicker, but I think really what we gain from it is flexibility - you can now do so much more with images than before.
Yes I think so, too. I was pretty impressed about the graphics 2.0 sneak peak by Walter one or to weeks ago when he made a quick video about textures and lightning… There seems to be soooo much more possibilities. I´ve got some new prototypes done and think they would look pretty cool with graphics 2.0 features.
I guess we are going to see a new blog post anytime soon about all the new major features?
Nice job. this is that “2.5d” style management of textures to mimic 3d right? Something similar to the engines built for those old FPS games like Doom.
You still must have some trig heavy algorithms that distort and place these textures at the correct x,y locations? If you care to share one day I’d like to see your code.
Well, there’s no dynamic movement in my demo, you move cell by cell (see games like dungeon master or LavaLevel’s QuestLord). I could adapt it slightly (and in fact did some quick tests) but hte problem is the framerate. I get, for a reasonable draw distance, around 8 fps on the ipad 2 - it is a looot of big distorted images.
I’m re-writing the code now to speed it up and include culling etc, but with the best will in the world I’d not expect to get realtime values, and having dynamic movement would remove a lot of the optimisations I can have due to a semi-fixed viewpoint (the viewpoint can be pretty much anywhere - what really needs to be fixed are the view directions).
The maths is really actually quite simple, in some places it is as simple as:
local screenX = x / z * screenScalar
local screenY = y / z * screenScalar
just repeated for the corners.
One thing I’ve not thought about, that would be a problem for a more free-form 3D engine is clipping. Past experience tells me that when polygons start crossing the Z = 0 plane, things go haywire reeeeally quickly!
I don’t want to be a tease, as this isn’t an actual game (yet?), but I redid the drawing code and it runs much faster.
I also changed it to use containers, and the end results are… well, take a look 
Yes you can play it 4 player, albeit cramped!
I’m confused So the dungeon was originally ~8fps, but now it’s 8 times quicker - does that mean you’re getting ~60fps on the dungeon code?
Love these screen shots - I was wondering how long it would be before someone started their custom 3D engine
I’ve never seen Road Rash, but the road demo does remind me of E-Type on the Acorn Archimedes: http://youtu.be/ib9Hn4aQYAo?t=20s
