Why does XVE look so basic?

I've literally been inundated by a message about my XVE project, specifically calling out why I have the temerity to describe it as an "Engine when it looks do basic?"

My over simplification in reply being that an engine can be anything you please, the engine is simply the framework within which the content can execute.

 

This applies to Unreal, Unity, Godot all of them, if you have something which will load your models, compile/apply your shaders and render to the screen you have a graphics engine.  If you have a threading model, memory or allocation handling, logging, input, user interface... All these module pieces form an engine.

The reason I am investing time working in my own such project is to explore those modules in which I find my experience or knowledge needing expanding, where I wish to trial alternative approaches, keep up with emergent new techniques or processes.

And of course for the content itself to explore the content creation tools; for instance I am very much a Blender beginner, and learning fast.  I could not say this just three months ago.

 

The major advantage to me in performing this kind of exploratory work at home in my own time is of course that I take a confidence and an assuring confidence back to my real work, as a leader of a small team I feel I am equipped to jump into pair program and just help.  I feel equipped going over a diverse or new code base; for instance recently I explored the Dagor engine used by WarThunder and the Little Vulkan Engine by Brendan Gaela.

 

Chronologically XVE has gone over many internal milestones, long before I began posting anything to YouTube or this blog about it, including:

• CMake & Project Structure
• Coding Standards
• Git & Commit Hook integration for Jenkins Continuous Integration Builds
• Test Framework
• Module Design
• Base
• Renderer
• Data loading
• XML
• CSV
• Wavefront Obj
• Generated type definitions (a whole generator suite written in python
• Entity Component System
• Threading Model
• Thread pool
• Anonymous Async Dispatch
• Promise/Future Standard Exploration
• Memory/Allocator Models
• Slab Allocators
• Dynamic Allocators
• RPMalloc
• Standard Allocator API (Custom)
• Input Framework
• XInput/DirectInput
• SDL2 Input
• SDL3 Input
• GLFW Input
• Custom personal exploration

And only after all this did I begin exploring actual game content and systems and component and entity relationships to represent the game design concepts.

 

The engine becomes a tool, a tool to achieve the delivery of the experience we want our players to experience and enjoy, so they return time & again to our game.

 

The game is key, and if done right the player should never know what engine or framework is being used to deliver that experience to them.

Be Aggressive....

SPOILER ALERT!

I just came back from watching Jumanji : The Next Level.... And... And... yes, good film, the wife and I like them, but I was very ... LIKE VERY... surprised to hear a reference to "Be Aggressive"...

A song from Faith No More's 1992 album "Angel Dust", an album I not only own but own two copies of in different formats, but it's a family film...  In case you missed it, the song is about oral sex, rough oral sex.

So a family film, and the character who made the reference is like what 18, 20 at most, and I can't for the life out of me figure out the pop-culture link from 1992 to that characters mind even via an older script writers pen.

Its gnawing at me (no pun intended) like some ungodly experiment in Kevin Bacon's six degrees of separation.

I just hope that it's not some cheer leader chant the parents are snickering about making their cherub kids sing about from the side lines.

My New Monitors - Research & Pricing

No game footage this evening, we have been playing, but we've also been working hard on the house.  Well, since its now a fortnight since my surgery, I've been forced out into the cold by the wife to get on with some jobs, the first of which has been to clip the rear conifers, they were getting... well I'd like to say out of hand, but that's an understatement, you know when you don't notice something?... Well we'd not really noticed they'd expanded at the base by 6 feet in diameter.

Clipping this excess away on the drive-way side has allowed us to move the junk from below them, and now fit the new van along with the estate car onto the drive way, result!

Next, I've been told to decorate the kitchen, this is on hold awaiting some tools I need (mate you know which ones I'm on about, hehe).

I also have to finish the plastering in the middle room and get on with painting it, so it's all go.

But, last night we spent a little over £114 at Ikea, we bought a new stainless steel standing lamp, the Klaab model, for the middle room, I got some LED down-lighters, and stuck them under the kitchen cupboards, to the kitchen is now lit at night not by the combines 120watts of overhead lighting, but just 0.6watts of LED lighting, and it's almost as bright at the worktop level, where we need the light of an evening.

We also have a new solid metal hat & coat stand, and I have a lovely new pillow for my office chair, which I'm sat on right now.

However, all this aside is not the exciting thing about the evening, no, for this evening I've had the green light to pick new monitors for my office...

My requirements here have been dual screen for a long long time, and I generally play on my Dell monitor and play video on my phillips monitor, they're both 1050p (no, that is not a typo, they're not even full 1080p).

Now, both of these screens are going to be retired, one will be kept as a spare, the other sold on ebay for a bare minimum.

But, the question is where do I go?... Now, I still need a VGA connector on one of these new beasts, and I need at least two... The rest is up in the air, I have dial DVI-D on my graphics card, a HDMI and a display port output, so I have the world of monitors at my behest....

Wait, wait, why VGA you ask?... Well, because I have to repair broken machines from other people, and I have a vested interest in older PC hardware.  All of which require a VGA port as a bare minimum for me.

This VGA requirement is most definitely not for my main screen, so lets ignore that for now and discuss more about what I require for my main screen.

MOOORRRREEEEE SCREEN SPACE!... Yes, it's as simple as that, with virtual machines, development pages, scripts and other junk open on the main screen; even with the second screen; I need more space in that my main work space, so I want a resolution of 2560 x 1440.  I'd also like the screen to minimum eye strain, so Low blue light, and a high view angle (IPS) would be good.

How big do I want the screen?... Well, the current screens are both 23.5 inch.  And we're upgrading... So lets say 27" as a minimum, now I want two of them, so that's a combined length of 54".  And looking at my screen any larger is not going to fit.

Right, our first milestone, we've picked a size... So, what have we got... Hitting the "Gaming Monitor" reviews, I want anything with a response time of lower than 5ms... I would say I'd love 144hz or 1ms but, to be honest, we running an nVidia 770 GTX card, so 144hz refresh rates at such high resolutions we'll have available are going to be impossible.

Now, searching, I got several options, my notes...

Asus seemed to be a top running brand, as does Acer, Benq and Samsung...

Samsung however, all seemed to be more expensive and less able, so I dropped them out of the mix.  This is a shame as I have all Samsung electronics screens for my TV's in the house, and I'm happy with them, but I'm not going to be paying a premium for lower spec screens here.

I did also, at this time, take a good look and have notes on 24 inch screens, and came across the Asus VX24AH, a 2560x1440 resolution 5MS IPS screen.  At only £200 this was a bargain, and is still a strong contender for my secondary screen, however, it's only 24 inches... 

I then considered three of these, in portrait mode, that would rock, even with the bezels in the way, however, the stand was not adjustable, it only provided tilt, so three of them was not going to be possible without also buying into a complete mounting system, but these desks could't support that, so I'd also have to be fitting to the wall, and the wall has old Victorian era plaster (yes 150 year old plaster!) which is about ready to come off.

So, quit the 24 inches, and look at Asus 27 inches... Ooo, ooo... I got a heavy high contender for the main screen... The Asus MX27AQ, it has ultra low blue light, IPS, it's 100M:1 ratio, 300cd/m2, 5ms response, 2560x1440 resolution and it has display port and HDMI, so can be driven easily from my card without need of a splitter or display port hub.  It come in at a little under £400....  Via amazon....That is very expensive, but I want to buy something of quality and then a lower priced utility second screen... However, I notice it's sold through Amazon by Scan, so what's their direct price... £375... Already £25 cheaper... I could potentially go pick this screen up too, that'd be £4.95 delivery saved... That's 5 litres of diesel paid for, which is more than enough to cover a 4 hour round trip... But, for now, we'll assume delivery from Scan at £4.95 on top, so we're at a price of around £380.

Next a secondary, the Asus appeal now is the small bezel, and this is going to be side by side, so what else do they offer... Well, in the MX series, there's the MX279H, a screen with rave reviews, AH-IPS, 300 cd/m2, it has VGA and 2 x HDMI, so is okay for my bare minimum connectivity, it's only 1920 x 1080 resolution, but it is 100M:1 ration, 5ms response time and AH-IPS.  It's a cost of £229 though, to very much too much with the main monitor included.  Though they'd look identical.

With Scan this second screen is £10 more than with Amazon, and with their delivery it's £14.95 more, so Amazon is the source there.  Two different screens from two deliveries, not ideal.... But, we're after cost here.  However, my budget for this is around £500, and I'm at a standing of  £609, that's definitively over budget.

However, in the Asus range I also spotted the VC279H, it's a much lower fidelity screen, 80M:1 ratio, I doubt from my old screens I'd see any difference, but it's a cost to performance challenge now, then the resolution is the same 1920x1080, and 5Ms response, the connectivity however is a little better for my needs, VGA, DVI and HDMI.  Costs, this is £172, that's bringing the main screen and this as an option in at £552, I think £52 over budget I can talk my way out of.

The question is with this lower priced VC series, is, "how different" is different looking?... And it seems, not very...

From the images I've looked at (which we can see above) the main differences are the bezel, on the main screen will be silver, whilst black on the secondary, and then the stand is a hollow sun dial style on the primary and a solid plastic on the secondary.

I think however, this is the end of my searching, and I'm going to the wife with a cost of £552.

In my defense, my current right hand screen is a little under 15 years old, whilst the second screen is around 7 years old.  I got both of these for around £125 each, so I've made that investment last... At this ratio, I need to make these new screens last well into 2022, and I think they'll do that with ease, I certainly see my needing to rebuild the whole PC before I buy anything newer than these screens.

Solder, Short Circuit and Surgery

I started the weekend finally trying to sort out a little board for ken to mount in his blacksmith shop, using three LEDs to give a flickering flame effect...

I can run nice pinned wires from the arduino to the header I've included here, and it allows me to change the intensity of things, the resistors help keep the different channels dimmer for the LED's and so the light is not over powering.

However, whilst working on this board I found the soldering iron was being a real pig, it took forever to get to temperature, solder would not really melt - despite being fine previously - and then I found the handle to be very warm, and the solder would instantly vapouriser if touched on the iron's shroud.

So, I powered it off, let it cool, checked the tip... Nothing seemingly wrong, I plug it all back in, and as I flick the power switch the whole house goes dark.. Yep, I tripped the house's main fuse.. WHOOPS.

But, this freaking iron, I think it's dead.... I may have to start researching and flutter my eye lids at the wife to let me go buy a proper nice, temperature controlled soldering station.

And now finally, I have my date for my ankle surgery, yes they need to go back into the right ankle joint and have a tinker around, I went for my pre-op on Friday, and they operate in a fortnight... However, right now I have an appointment with a respiratory doctor and a stinking cold... Gah.

Gaming wise, I've been playing lots of World of Warships, but I'm also still playing Crown of the Gods, a clone of Lord of Ultima.

And project-wise, for code at least, I've started working on my own SDL2 based, XML driven 2D UI, for adding overlays or creating tools in C++, this is going to be useful for high-speed customisable and internationalization tasks I need perform; both at home and at work.

PC Upgrade - SSD

Main PC overhaul, it's been a long time coming, but I finally have an upgrade for my main PC.  It comes off of the back of Black Friday where I got 48% off of the list price, so got to indulge.

It's of course, a new SSD, I've bought a SanDisk, 6g/sec SATA, 2.5" unit.  Windows has been installed on it, Linux is not going on this directly, that'll go on another of my drives as a dial boot option.

For this SSD is for gaming.

WarThunder was 90% downloaded last night before I caught myself drifting off to sleep in my very chair, but other games have to follow, and I need to set up my Track IR (again) and my Sietek Hotas.

The driving force behind the upgrade has been oneof the drives (I carry 6 in the machine) has developed a clicky, sometimes whine, so I wanted to replace the main boot disk and then work out which was making this noise and retired it.

I only have to be very careful now in backing up all the data I want to store.

Vmware player at home will be my next task, I love vmware player, at work I've been supplied with VmWare workstation, and I use it so much to do different things with whole different systems, that at home I've also taken to being used to firing up Linux inside windows, or windows inside linux, it's just so much easier.

Anyway, main machine is literally up on blocks... Tonight, is sorting out the cabling and packing it all back together.

Big Catch Up - Gaming, Programming, Model Railways

Well, I've not been around here for a while... So, where have I been for over a month?...

Just busy... But that doesn't mean I don't have a bunch of stuff to share with you all, I think this break from posting started with the wife and I going on Holiday.  We went to Wales just as the Rugby World Cup started, have you ever been English in Wales as the Welsh beat England at Twickenham?... Not a good vibe towards the English, that's all I'll say.

But Wales was great, so great, we're going back next year.

One thing that struck me however, was that I heard people speaking Welsh, and not just on touristy things, down the coop, people speaking Welsh.  I've not been to Wales since the late 80's, back then as a kid I don't remember hearing anyone speak Welsh, it sort of wasn't done, at least not done in front of us English, lest the Welsh themselves feel self conscious or they avoided trying to make it look like they were talking about us.

Luckily now, speaking Welsh seems to be in vogue, and so I heard that strange, lyrical, twitter a lot.  Down the pub, down the shop, at the chippy... We only had one place where I was conscious that we were being talked about and they took the piss, and that was the chippy, where they over charged the wife for cod & chips, and were commenting on it in Welsh.

For you see there are some words, which just translate, and whatever the woman actually said, what I heard was "how much shall I add onto this English fish?"  And the reply was "double it"...  Hey ho.  She paid, she enjoyed the meal, whatever.

In programming circles, I've continued to be using Python in anger, moving from an Android based app to creating a new website for the company using Apache and mod_python.  This has been a learning experience for me, and I have lots of tutorials in mind to add to the blog.

Gaming I've been playing two major titles, Payday 2 and WarThunder, the later of which I finally bought a premium set the German 109 G2 and some little tank, so there, finally a premium owner, more about that later.

And I've been playing a game called "Human Resource Machine", again more about that later.

Finally, I've been helping the father-in-law debug his model railway track... I have a series of videos and a few pictures here for you all now:

Origami shunting sheds, with Christmas lights inside, then the diesel shunters and to the right one of the diesel (maybe a Deltic) loco's and just pulling out of the station on the right, one of the steam loco's.

Here we see the Pinkston and Bestwood colliery trains on the inner, tight, circles.  Then the Queen of Scots (Mallard class) coming on the outer radius, before we get a de-railment on the far side.

We also see the DCC sound loco struggling to move with the power needs.

A view of the seven station circumferences.

Some movement along the station side, pictured previously.

More footage of the outer radius.

Coronation Class (I think) on the back straight, with DCC Sound playing.

Personal Update: Networking the House

About six months ago, I told you all I'd bought some really nice shielded cat 5 cable, and I planned to install this between the router in the living room and the office, well today I've finally taken that leap, drilling through victorian ceiling and soot, missing twentieth century power lines and an awkwardly placed floor joist....

My ping which was round 83ms TTL is now 7ms, I have my full download speed from my supplier, and indeed I am.  But it was a bloody messy process.

I have sacrificed a few ethernet plugs to the gods getting the wire down and through, the first wire I pushed through just disappeared, I think along the back of the victorian cornice in the living room; one day I may find it.

My eventual trick was to use a 20mm polymer pipe to encase the wire, and also to guide it down the wall in the lower room, this resulted in the wire being out of sight (least colourwise) against the light coloured walls.

Java Posts...

Well, my recent two posts about writing a game in java have been abject failures, not only have they not garnered any views (16 in total) but they've got me bored with them.... There is a part 3 scheduled for next Monday, but after that I'll not be pushing myself to generate more on that genre.

Instead I've been looking at SDL in my favourite guise C++.

I have used SDL 1.2 before, but this time I'm looking at the new SDL 2.0, as well as the SDL Image extension.

I think combining that with my image processing with CImg may result in a very powerful way of laying out graphics, 2D initially, but we'll see.

In personal news I'm so very busy, and Dude is not well, he has Lung Cancer, so he's not got long with us.

Dangerous Dogs

I have to say this ladies experience is similar to the problems I dealt with last year, having to tackle staffies attacking a neighbours dog and also the persistent straying of a dog from a rented property on our street.

The police in our area were totally in effective in the second case, but in the first the woman bitten in the scuffle with the dogs refused to press charges, they let that dog get away with attacking theirs unprovoked, now you can see the struggle these people had with that large dog in that report.

I was riding the back of such a dog, and at the time I'd punched, pulled and tried to control that animal, and I have a black belt in karate, my punches get attention.

My only options were to stick a screw driver into the things brain, or throttle it... I was reduced to strangling the thing to death.

As the owner of four dogs, one an older lab, and three young, small, dogs... if any of them were now attacked I'd simply have to kill the attacking dog, because these pitbulls and staffies are trophy dogs they're not under control, many times - like that one reported - they have no lead, no collar, or collars which can be slipped, and never any muzzle.  Because people, mostly - but not exclusively - young men are using them as weapons.

Because if two dogs are fighting and you intervene, and the dogs bite you, the law says its your fault, its not a dog attack, it was animal on animal... But that is such a shaded area, for a large dog attacking my little dog, my little dog is 3 kilos... a large dog would kill him... I'd have to kill that dog.  And I'm afraid to say what else I'd do to its owner with the grief.

But, I should not have to have that worry, people should self control their dogs, they should not be a burden on me for their life choices.  And if their life choice is stupid, like having these huge uncontrollable dogs, then the law and society should protect me, not reinforce their right to stupidity... The laws current stance smacks of being too softly softly touchy feely, and it leaves me for one feeling very exposed.

Man Flu

I feel thoroughly drubbed over, I'm sat at work right now, staring at lines of code wondering why the fuck am I here.  The reason for this isn't some deep mid-life crisis, its not some in-fathomable coding glitch either, its the simple fact that I've got a cold.

In Britain, and I guess elsewhere, when a man has a cold he gets short sharp shrift as regards sympathy... "You'll find sympathy in the dictionary somewhere between Shit and Syphilis" as the saying goes.  But also here in Britain there's this rule of not bringing illness to your work colleagues.

So this morning I phoned in to HR and said, "I've got a stinking cold, I can come in, but I'll give it everyone, what do you want?"... They told me to come in.

There we go, here I am, and I've now been to the kitchenette - good luck anyone touching the taps, the coffee machine or the water cooler!  I did wash my hands, but still, good luck.  I'm also coughing and sneezing over my desk - so anyone wanting a document off me is going to get a short barrel of snot.

Consequently, because I was ill, I spent most of yesterday in bed - or being made to do things by the wife - whom would not let me rest...

So I missed this:

This is the second "offer" from them I've missed, I missed out on the gold for fights the other week, and I missed out on this, the reason being illness, but also the current economy has left me feeling lack lustre towards playing at all, its too costly to play the game at the tier I have access to.

I've effectively stopped playing, until they fix the economy there, but its cutting my nose off to spite my face, I would clearly have liked 24 hours of premium.... maybe not yesterday as I was so ill.