February 08, 2010
This is a short one, so I've provided full text today. As always, Ventspace is the source.
I've now added service and ASP.NET profiling support to SlimTune. Services seem to work, although I've tested it pretty minimally. ASP.NET should work but I'm really not set up to test it properly. I might att…
I've now added service and ASP.NET profiling support to SlimTune. Services seem to work, although I've tested it pretty minimally. ASP.NET should work but I'm really not set up to test it properly. I might att…
February 07, 2010
I've mentioned before that most of SlimTune's core functionality is pluggable. This actually includes the underlying data storage system. The app works through a fairly simple interface, and even SQL is only used by the visualizers and not the core program. To date, the engine in use was Microsoft'…
February 01, 2010
I've been doing some work on SlimTune quietly, and now it's to the point that I have to decide what the next phase of things should be. There are essentially three major groups of work to tackle: UI improvements, memory profiling, and instrumentation. I'll spend this post explaining what I'm lookin…
January 23, 2010
Late copy of a post from Ventspace. Full text today.
One of the create flags for D3D 9 devices is FpuPreserve. It tells the Direct3D runtime that you don't want it to mess with the FPU flags, which it does to improve performance. And you should probably be using it.
FPU computations are a really hide…
One of the create flags for D3D 9 devices is FpuPreserve. It tells the Direct3D runtime that you don't want it to mess with the FPU flags, which it does to improve performance. And you should probably be using it.
FPU computations are a really hide…
January 21, 2010
Every so often, someone complains about the overall price depression on the iTunes App Store to rock bottom. It's a theme that recurs fairly often, and I'm generally a little dubious about the people who are upset about it. It seems mostly to be a product of an actual free market -- you may think y…
January 13, 2010
This is from Ventspace, but today I've decided to give you the full text, on time.
I'd like to introduce you all to our new company, Action = Reaction Labs LLC. Our goal is to bring a pair of new technologies to the games market, starting with the iPhone, that I think could really change things. I k…
I'd like to introduce you all to our new company, Action = Reaction Labs LLC. Our goal is to bring a pair of new technologies to the games market, starting with the iPhone, that I think could really change things. I k…
January 11, 2010
A few months ago, I pushed for GameDev.Net to add a new forum, Breaking into the Games Industry. Overall, this has been a great place and some excellent discussion has happened there. I've noticed one particular trend though, and I wanted to discuss it a little bit. Basically, there's a surprisingl…
January 08, 2010
Recently, a developer (hereafter referred to as "Moron") posted a tirade about how much better OpenGL is than DirectX. This moron of course got himself linked by another group of morons known as "Slashdot", and probably some adjunct groups of particularly stupid (but not quite moronic) people such …
December 30, 2009
Just a thought. I've been learning a lot about television technology lately, and one of the tricky things about it is the difference between video and film. It's generally well known that movies and film are at 24 fps, supposedly because that's the frame rate at which we can't distinguish it from r…
November 24, 2009
Remember, the real home of this journal is Ventspace.
So, it's come to the junction where you've decided that you'd like to form and head up a project. It's time to recruit a proper team and build something real. Should be no problem, right? Your idea is bloody brilliant, and you're certain that peo…
So, it's come to the junction where you've decided that you'd like to form and head up a project. It's time to recruit a proper team and build something real. Should be no problem, right? Your idea is bloody brilliant, and you're certain that peo…
October 01, 2009
Let's look at a real, in the trenches SlimDX bug that results from a problematic subtlety in .NET. This one isn't even fixed in trunk yet. Here's our main function of interest:
generic where T : value class
Result BaseEffect::SetValue( EffectHandle^ parameter, T value )
{
…
September 24, 2009
I promised this a long time ago, and here it is. I prefer to let the video speak for itself. This is a demo from January, so it's actually a much older iteration of what we've got now.
">Link!
">Link!
September 18, 2009
Link
I'll concede it doesn't look like much, but honestly, the game is really addictive and fun. And it's a dollar.
One of the technologies in this is the binaural audio system that I discussed earlier. On the above page, there's a linked video -- put on headphones and watch it. You'll get the point …
I'll concede it doesn't look like much, but honestly, the game is really addictive and fun. And it's a dollar.
One of the technologies in this is the binaural audio system that I discussed earlier. On the above page, there's a linked video -- put on headphones and watch it. You'll get the point …
August 21, 2009
This post is a late copy from Ventspace.
Just to be clear, I'm restricting my comments to the DirectX section of the codepack. I'll probably be integrating some of the other bits (jump list support etc) into SlimTune, so we'll see how that goes later. But around a week ago, they finally released 1.0…
Just to be clear, I'm restricting my comments to the DirectX section of the codepack. I'll probably be integrating some of the other bits (jump list support etc) into SlimTune, so we'll see how that goes later. But around a week ago, they finally released 1.0…
August 13, 2009
Let's recap. For about two months now, I've been working on a brand new profiling tool for .NET, C#, CLR, and all that jazz. It's open source, completely free, and supports frameworks 2.0 and later (no 1.x, sorry). Some of the notable features include remote profiling, real time results analysis, a…
August 08, 2009
I decided to try out the dotTrace Profiler, which runs $200 for a personal license and $500 per developer for organizations. IOW, it's expensive. That $200 license makes it the cheapest of the commercial options, and I ran the trial on one of my games. They have some nice UI touches I like. The dat…
August 02, 2009
This is actually a combination of two Ventspace posts.
I guess what I posted must have made the rounds or something, cause three days after I said what I was doing, a new NProf was released. Here I went to all this trouble of creating a new profiler, and all I really had to do was complain [grin]
I h…
I guess what I posted must have made the rounds or something, cause three days after I said what I was doing, a new NProf was released. Here I went to all this trouble of creating a new profiler, and all I really had to do was complain [grin]
I h…
July 27, 2009
So I was wondering, how do you decide at what frequency to sample when you're building a sampling based profiler?
No, seriously. What are you supposed to punch in? I'm taking samples 4ms apart because it sounds less like a bullshit number than 1 or 5. I have literally no idea how to choose. Lower in…
No, seriously. What are you supposed to punch in? I'm taking samples 4ms apart because it sounds less like a bullshit number than 1 or 5. I have literally no idea how to choose. Lower in…
July 20, 2009
July 18, 2009
I've decided that "Windows API Code Pack" is far too long to say/write in casual conversation. WACP it is.
These are terms I came up with a few weeks ago, and I wanted to document them properly. I feel that they're good descriptions of what a wrapping API like SlimDX allows, and it's useful to be ab…
These are terms I came up with a few weeks ago, and I wanted to document them properly. I feel that they're good descriptions of what a wrapping API like SlimDX allows, and it's useful to be ab…
July 17, 2009
At least, not to begin with. There are some drawbacks to not being a security professional, one of which is that I have neither the qualifications nor the experience to do a proper security analysis of the profiler backend. Since I can't audit the backend for security, it will be considered insecur…
July 14, 2009
I basically took last week off from blogging. Time to try and get some new entries out! Things have been very SlimDX focused, but what did you expect? It's what I do. Maybe today's will inspire a bit more general interest.
As a creature of GameDev.Net, I get to see lots and lots of discussions quest…
As a creature of GameDev.Net, I get to see lots and lots of discussions quest…
July 13, 2009
I'm not equipped at the moment to undertake a full treatment of SlimDX's performance right now, as that's a rather touchy set of problems. However, I did want to provide a general overview of what kinds of things affect SlimDX performance and what you can expect from your own programs. Strictly fro…
July 10, 2009
SlimDX has had Direct3D 10 support for a long time, and it's almost certainly the single best way to get 10 support from C# or any other .NET language. While it's true that the very original prototype didn't plan on it, that was over two years ago and it's very much a first class citizen. Although …
July 09, 2009
I asked Josh to write up a follow up to the first two parts, covering the ancillary object support in our ObjectTable, which he graciously agreed to. Here it is.
I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about a class you've almost certainly seen if you're doing any SlimDX work: DataStream. I'd d…
I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about a class you've almost certainly seen if you're doing any SlimDX work: DataStream. I'd d…
July 01, 2009
I've just been awarded XNA/DirectX MVP status by Microsoft! I'm still poking around the new sites I've been given access to, but there's a lot of cool stuff here, courtesy of Microsoft. They're giving me MSDN and TechNet subscriptions, for example, which I'm thrilled about. I'm also eager to finall…
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