[Soc-2012-dev] GSoC BGE Fixup Status Report Week 11

[Mitchell Stokes]

Here is my report for week 11:
http://mogurijin.wordpress.com/2012/08/03/gsoc-bge-fixup-status-report-week-11/

Task List:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Moguri/GSoC_2012_BGE_Fixup_Docs

Mentor: Dalai

Contents of report:
What did you do this week?
Recently I’ve been profiling the BGE’s VBO code, and I’ve been rather
disappointed with it. Even after some cleanup/optimization (including
a nice speedup to skinned meshes and other frequently updating
meshes), I could not get VBOs as fast as vertex arrays with display
lists. I’ve also come to find out that Nvidia has a particularly nice
display list compiler, which will make it difficult to get Nvidia
cards running faster with VBOs than with display lists. I was,
however, hoping to at least get ATI and Intel cards to run faster.
However, on those two cards, VBOs are still running slower than vertex
arrays alone (no display lists!). I might try to get more gains out of
VBOs, but I think I might want to start looking elsewhere.

Taking a look at components, I got the branch to compile again and I
improved reloading of components; they now update properties instead
of recreating (meaning you don’t lose your settings). While looking at
the code, I realized that it had some style issues, so I cleaned it up
to better match what I could remember from Blender’s style guide
(C-style comments in C code, K&R bracing for loops and ifs).

As for the bug tracker, I managed to close the following bugs this week:
  * Action actuator doesn’t finish playing if frame rate drops {fixed r49349}
  * BGE Vertex deformer optimized method does not work properly {fixed r49371}
  * Character physics type colliding with sensor type {fixed r49373}
I also fixed a couple of bugs that were reported to me outside of the tracker:
  * Performance regression with 2D Filters {fixed r49326}
  * Restrict Animation Updates option not framerate independent {fixed r49732}
Tracker stats:
New: 6
Closed: 3 (3 by me)
Net Change: +3
Current: 152
And we’re back to four pages. :(

What do you plan to do next week?
More optimizing and bug fixing, with more of an emphasis on optimizing.

Are there any problems that will require extra attention and what
impact will they have on your proposed schedule?
Nope, things are going smoothly.

Are there any builds available?
There are some on GraphicAll.

Cheers,
Moguri