FieldRunners
by Dave Young · in iTorque 2D · 03/09/2009 (7:07 am) · 6 replies
Hey guys, the company who made FieldRunners is guest speaker at an IGDC meeting tomorrow here in the Boston area, any questions you'd like me to ask? I can't guarantee that they'll get asked (it might be packed) but I will try!
#2
03/12/2009 (5:24 pm)
Sergei is a good guy, had lunch with him a few weeks ago, he's Portland based. They used Ogre for rendering on the iPhone.
#3
03/12/2009 (5:27 pm)
He said they coded everything in Objective C and he's a graphics coder normally so it was difficult at first to get the hang of but he found he liked Objective C quite a bit. 
#4
Yeah objective C is nice but for me as swiss german user a pain in the ass as [ ] are second alt-gr keys on our keyboard. So I'm forced to switch to US for obj c programming or going nuts, at least until apple supports my Logitech G15 keyboard / logitech supports it on OSX and its G keys so I can map {} and [] (both alt-gr second functions) to G Keys :)
03/12/2009 (7:22 pm)
hehe ... thank you :)Yeah objective C is nice but for me as swiss german user a pain in the ass as [ ] are second alt-gr keys on our keyboard. So I'm forced to switch to US for obj c programming or going nuts, at least until apple supports my Logitech G15 keyboard / logitech supports it on OSX and its G keys so I can map {} and [] (both alt-gr second functions) to G Keys :)
#5
03/12/2009 (7:36 pm)
I wish there was more to tell, but the place was packed and it was mostly a non-tech discussion. But from what I picked up, there is also some adaptive performance handling going on both in terms of tech and design. Everything is optimized. The characters are designed with as few frames as possible, as little Alpha as possible. In design, they separate the waves with more frames from each other. Lots and lot of particles and I think I did pickup the word 'batch' but in reference to what I am not sure.
#6
Batch rendering was clear without even asking, as it would totally die without it as iTGB proofs very well with its non usage of batching (no hell idea why it avoids it, as it even has a quad batch class from TGB 1.0.x / 1.1.x days)
I can tell from the looks of it and the 20-30 hours I played it how the tech works to 80-90%, but I hoped for a bit of information on the dynamic 20-10% as that is what makes it really shine and perform that well even on an iTouch 1st gen.
Guess I will have to record the game while playing then to be able to dissect different behaviors of the same thing in different situation like particle effect scaling and alike.
I've some ideas on how those things work thought, so its not like those are totally in the dark. Its likely mainly an act of balancing them for best performance (also those dynamic scaling makes it possible for the game to look even better on iTouch 2nd gen class devices as it can just scale up the dynamic part). Hoped that they perhaps might have some experience to share on that process and the hurdles they found and had to overcome.
03/13/2009 (5:59 am)
Hehe thanks :)Batch rendering was clear without even asking, as it would totally die without it as iTGB proofs very well with its non usage of batching (no hell idea why it avoids it, as it even has a quad batch class from TGB 1.0.x / 1.1.x days)
I can tell from the looks of it and the 20-30 hours I played it how the tech works to 80-90%, but I hoped for a bit of information on the dynamic 20-10% as that is what makes it really shine and perform that well even on an iTouch 1st gen.
Guess I will have to record the game while playing then to be able to dissect different behaviors of the same thing in different situation like particle effect scaling and alike.
I've some ideas on how those things work thought, so its not like those are totally in the dark. Its likely mainly an act of balancing them for best performance (also those dynamic scaling makes it possible for the game to look even better on iTouch 2nd gen class devices as it can just scale up the dynamic part). Hoped that they perhaps might have some experience to share on that process and the hurdles they found and had to overcome.
Torque 3D Owner Marc Dreamora Schaerer
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