EpicGames are launching new appstore!

Apollo14 · December 2018

Hey guys!
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/announcing-the-epic-games-store
They're launching new appstore with innovative features, like automatic referal program for youtubers&streamers.

If you opt to participate, creators who refer players to buy your game will receive a share of the revenue that you set (tracked by code or affiliate marketing link)

Looks like they really know what they're doing, they already have extremely successful titles and lots of money to invest. It is quite possible that it will bite off a piece of GooglePlay's pie. With referal program youtubers will promote the hell out of this new appstore.

I guess it would be great for Gideros to support their API?
What do you guys think?

antix · December 2018

Personally I would push Gideros in other directions, like getting some basic native noise, steering behavior, pathfinding (the list of things it needs for basic gaming functionality is rather large) in the core instead of running off after another revenue stream that is likely to be as bad as other ones that currently exist

Apollo14 · December 2018

the list of things it needs for basic gaming functionality is rather large

Thx! Can you pls list it somewhere? Maybe on github section? This way maintainters will know what is missing and see what they can do.

btw, @antix did you test lua-based pathfinding libs? Do they easily become a bottleneck in the project?

antix · December 2018

@Apollo14 yes I've used Lua based A* and it's pretty slow

Apollo14 · December 2018

@antix I don't get what is the main bottleneck there?
The whole lib is pretty tiny: https://github.com/lattejed/a-star-lua/blob/master/a-star.lua

I see 'ipairs' and 'table.insert' are used heavily.
As far as I know, this stuff is expensive in Lua and should be avoided whenever possible.
Also probably 'dist' function is too heavy? (with math.sqrt and math.pow)
I wonder if somebody from advanced Lua Gurus could suggest an optimization hack there?

hgy29 · December 2018

you could check what profiler has to say about it, but making math functions local could help. Also math.pow could be replaced by x^2 and math.sqrt by x^0.5

antix · December 2018

@Apollo14, I didn't use that library, I used some other one. I don't know what the bottleneck was.. it just slowed down a lot so I immediately got rid of it and created my own crazy solution (not A*) for that particular prototype which performed a load better.

@hgy29 so that is a very optimized dist function then.. I'll have to try that out!

Apollo14 · December 2018

hgy29 said:
you could check what profiler has to say about it, but making math functions local could help. Also math.pow could be replaced by x^2 and math.sqrt by x^0.5

okay hackers, Profiler says it's 92ms vs 16ms
looks like it got optimized a little

function dist( x1, y1, x2, y2 )
	return math.sqrt ( math.pow ( x2 - x1, 2 ) + math.pow ( y2 - y1, 2 ) )
end
 
function dist2( x1, y1, x2, y2 )
	return ((x1 - x2)^2 + (y1 - y2)^2)^0.5
end
 
for i=1,100000 do dist(10,10,50,50) end
 
for i=1,100000 do dist2(10,10,50,50) end

SinisterSoft · December 2018

Do it fully inline without the function call, it could possibly be replaced with a macro definition.

Apollo14 · December 2018

SinisterSoft said:
Do it fully inline without the function call, it could possibly be replaced with a macro definition.

I don't get it totally, can you pls share a code snippet, what you mean?

SinisterSoft · December 2018

local x1,y1,x2,y2=10,10,50,50
for i=1,100000 do
 local d=((x1 - x2)^2 + (y1 - y2)^2)^0.5
end

You may have to put the whole lot in a single function call - but then you will know the overhead of using a dist function rather than just having the code inline without a function call at all.

SinisterSoft · December 2018

also try:

local x1,y1,x2,y2=10,10,50,50
for i=1,100000 do
 local dx,dy=x1-x2,y1-y2
 local d=((dx*dx) + (dy*dy))^0.5
end

SinisterSoft · December 2018

Also, if you only need to see which of multiple objects is nearer and not actually bother with distance then you can leave out the ^0.5.

Apollo14 · December 2018

SinisterSoft said:

also try:

local x1,y1,x2,y2=10,10,50,50
for i=1,100000 do
 local dx,dy=x1-x2,y1-y2
 local d=((dx*dx) + (dy*dy))^0.5
end

Also, if you only need to see which of multiple objects is nearer and not actually bother with distance then you can leave out the ^0.5.

Thx!!

p. s. I've tried also '-=' operator, but perfomance was the same, it seems that +- operations affect perfomance very slightly (if at all).

function getDistance3( x1, y1, x2, y2 )
	x1-=x2; y1-=y2
	return (x1^2 + y1^2)^0.5
end

SinisterSoft · December 2018

Yes, they are just sugar I think - I did think they would be faster as there is one less table read - but it may not actually do that in practice. ++ and -- might have save a little (for inc and dec), but people would have got confused with -- also being used for comments.

Apollo14 · December 2018

omg Epic revealed more details, it seems they've decided to totally annihilate the industry with all their upcoming free services that normally cost lots of money:

IMO it would be great for Gideros to support their SDKs.

Apollo14 · January 2019

Lol yesterday EpicGames humiliated Unity

They want 3d devs to move away from Unity, so Unity will become an indie 2d engine

Apollo14 · March 2019

Hey guys! little update, Epic finally launched free online services.
Imo it would be awesome for Gideros to support their SDK.
https://dev.epicgames.com/en-US/services
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/epic-s-free-online-services-launch-for-all-game-developers
(I've submitted suggestion on github section also)

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories

In this Discussion

Top Posters

EpicGames are launching new appstore!

Comments

Howdy, Stranger!

Quick Links

Categories

In this Discussion

Top Posters

EpicGames are launching new appstore!

Comments