How suitable is Cube 1/2 for basic Handhelds, Yeti3D alterna

by Wayne on 07/09/2007 16:50, 15 messages, last message: 07/19/2007 16:21, 2937 views, last view: 04/19/2024 13:06

Hi, I'm new to cube, with an interest in simplifying cross platform handheld/desktop development. I am downloading the games at the moment, but have been very impressed with the little I have seen, and what I have learned of the cube like Yeti 3D in times past.

I am interested in how suitable the cubes (1 and 2) would be for adapting to basic handhelds, like Palm, smart phones, Pocket PC, with software rendering, integer maths, no 3D hardware or floating point maths etc (as well as ones with 3D hardware, like PSP, DS, GBA2, and others) and for development. I've already sent Wouter an email about some of this stuff. I'm not really interested in doing it myself, but in using it from an development perspective, but somebody else might like the idea.

There was an cube like engine called Yeti3D which offered an number of optimisations for software rendering on handhelds, but that disappeared (besides it was an bit expensive for commercial use). The basic handheld market has been an bit poor for 3D fps, and something just as good and optimised is really needed, that is why I am curious about Cube2.


Even though this thread is on handheld cube 1 and 2, there is some newbie stuff I would like to ask:


I am also curious about game creation with it, how it compares to authorware tools like:

http://www.blender.org/
http://www.realityfactory.info/cms/
and
http://www.fpscreatorx10.com/index.php

in terms of comprehensiveness, simplifying creation, and performance for handhelds? Is Cube 2 moving towards an cross platform authorware capable product, like reality factory?


I am yet to get an good description of how cube 1 & 2 does their stuff (the working principle of cubism, that achieves the performance advantages). I have an rough idea of some of it, but, basically, how does it work in simple terms, and what are it's limitations?


I must say, I really like Wouter's level designs, really nice, an bit like far cry in innovativeness, Congratulations. I have noticed mention of Far Cry on Wouter's page, is it at all cubist?



Thanks

Wayne.

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#1: ..

by Passa on 07/09/2007 17:03

Its all great on paper but can not technically happen. If you mean the original Cube, there was an official port to Windows Mobile PDAs a while back. But Sauerbraten? Not for a looong time.

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#2: ..

by theW4, finally can post again on 07/09/2007 21:43

Look into this for running sauerbraten/anygame on your handheld, if you happen to own an iPhone and a mac.

http://code.google.com/p/telekinesis/


Try it out, its pretty kickass. I havnt tried sauerbraten but it should work. It runs x-plane fine, reformated of course. I am not sure how i would use the controls either, it will be hard for fps. It seems much better suited for games like WOW. Here is a video of that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFZA6gRK4qs


If you could reformate this code, or write your own so you dont steal anyones, then you would be able to get sauerbraten onto any powerful enough device. All it needs is ite power to stream video, and maybe a touchscreen.

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#3: ..

by Wayne on 07/10/2007 08:58

Yes, these sorts of programs have been going around for years, and is one sort of way that I could see to putting PC games on PDA's over ten years ago (now PS3 on PSP, I think they will do it). But there are two problems, game screens are large bitmaps that require an compression engine to run along side the game (or an external device), whereas this sort of program normally relies on just issuing draw commands to predefined graphics sets to match windows. The other problem is, as you increase in range you reduce bandwidth and timing. So, being within 30 feet at home, or WIFI hot spot is good (real good), but if you travel then you will need some serious bandwidth over the mobile connection (which costs money).

If anybody is interested, I can direct them in the direction of how they can get sauerbraten running on an PDA by the above method, off the grid, on an mobile even, I have some knowledge of embedded computing.


What I am looking for is serious conversation on the technicalities of cube/sauerbraten.


Have just found pocket blender, the desktop version has an game creation Authorware tool, which could be used for mobile games in future. Which makes me think, if cube/sauerbraten engine, and tools, could be integrated as an separate engine into one of these authorware development environments (reality factory etc as well) it would bring many new tools, features, and third party mods, and greatly enhance the product, without having to separately repeat the work here. Would be an nifty enhancement/feature, but I suppose that belongs in the feature request thread.


My assaultcube has finished downloading, doing around an frame every 2 seconds, looking up optimising documentation. Probably Intel graphics, doesn't cube do software rendering?

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#4: ..

by crudscurdler on 07/12/2007 05:12

3d games and anything that does 3d rendering in general these days requires an accelerated graphics card.

Invest a few hundred dollars in a graphics card if you want to play sauerbraten.

Invest $50 for a card that\'s 4 years old to play cube1.

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#5: Re: ..

by demosthenes on 07/12/2007 07:09, refers to #4

I dunno where you get your cards, but $50 could get you a card in the GeForce 7 lineup, which isn't THAT old and can play Sauerbraten.

My two cards cost me just over two hundred, so a "few hundred" would be a top-of-the-line card, which you don't *need*.

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#6: Re: ..

by demosthenes on 07/12/2007 07:15, refers to #5

Just because I can. Here's a fifty dollar card that could play Sauerbraten easily, if perhaps not at full resolution:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130270

Here's the card I got two of, when they cost 110 USD:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130062

So do some research before you start spouting prices. :)

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#7: ..

by crudscurdler on 07/12/2007 08:51

whatever. I was going to say few hundred for a card that does 200fps 99% of the time but forgot, $50 I'll give my radeon 9800 pro for :P

ok, maybe less, haha.

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#8: Re: ..

by sinsky on 07/13/2007 00:05, refers to #6

Those cards cool with fans.. very retro.

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#9: Re: ..

by Passa on 07/13/2007 01:35, refers to #8

Uhh.. what? I'm on an 8800GTS at the moment and it has a fan too.. the only GPUs without fans are the underpowered ones that should never go into any sort of 3D mode (ie the 9250.. why did I buy a whole bundle of them?.. *sigh*)

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#10: Re: ..

by demosthenes on 07/13/2007 06:44, refers to #9

He might be trying to establish some leetness by implying that all he uses is watercooling, but really, it didn't work, because noone but overpriced shops which try to lure in "pro" gamers sell cards with waterblocks pre-installed.

Anyway, the point is that decent graphics cards aren't expensive.

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#11: Re: ..

by sinsky on 07/13/2007 10:44, refers to #10

I was kidding & also showing my zero experience in computer hardware and shopping :) But for what it's worth I'm happy with the 9550 which is fanless and was less than $80 about an year ago. It's true I don't do 3D much (my gaming is mostly limited to Ultima which has 2d engine about 10 years old) but sometimes I play 3D for hours. Stuff like Sauer doesn't cause any problems but when I play with the new Ultima client, which is a 3D engine that uses high-resolution 2D tiles, in a few hours it begins to melt :/

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#12: ..

by Acord on 07/13/2007 15:30

FPS Creator - This thing is fun to play around with, but very irritating in several aspects. First off, creating maps works using a "tiled" system, where you create and import 3D map tiles. This seems like a great idea, but it quickly becomes frustrating to work with. Second, the AI is absolutely terrible.

Also, to import any new art, you'll be using command line tools - not a big deal, but that download in and of itself is very bulky.

As a bonus though, you do get to download a really great 3DS .bip animation file with tons of great animations. Shame that 3DS is a little out of my pricerange.

Reality Factory - You can do a couple of types of games with this, but the engine is fairly dated and somewhat difficult to work with. The best efforts appear to be done with adventure games. Some of the later screenshots indicate that the engine has improved since the last time I tinkered with it though, so take this impression with a grain of salt.

Blender - You can do anything you want with this sucker, but because it relies heavily on scripting it is not a good idea for fast paced games with lots of players/enemies. The art pipeline is great - if you use blender for it. I decided not to use this because I wanted hundreds of things onscreen at once, and even with simple AI I started getting slowdown.

Torque - Torque... Has aged badly. Reliance on BSP geometry makes importing levels a pain in the ass, not to mention that it's a very OLD BSP format. The art pipeline is dodgy, and if you use scripted AI, forget about having more than 20 things on screen at once without slowdown.

Also, unless you want to slap down some serious cash for what is essentially a beta, no shaders for you. All in all, I don't recommend Torque.

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#13: Back to topic.

by Wayne on 07/13/2007 17:18

Wow, at least we got off the graphic card thing, but software render performance is the most important for me, in handheld respect. BTW, new DX10 cards from ATI start pretty near $50 retail (surprise, surprise).

The Rest:
Thanks for the advice Acord. I imagine the DX10 FPS creator is an improved product, but thanks for the heads up, I will have to watch out for that. I had been recommended Torque for the PPC, thanks for the heads up again. But the topic is more of where Cube 1/2 are going in terms of development environment, as well as how suitable it is for software/hardware rendered handheld use.

I am surprised that people haven\'t figured out to compile script to improve performance, I am taking it from your comments, that they use an interpreter. Portability is not an problem, they can just compile once loaded on the users machine, saved, and re-used.


Cube Cube 2 information:
I have explored some brief information on cube, and it is way more primitive than what I thought, or my theoretical system I had wanted to implement. Is there any detailed information on how the cube 2 engine does it\'s stuff?


Software rendering, and Yeti potential:
The problem remains, the software render performance of cube, is not there, it is showing worse picture and performance then Unreal Tournament, I think Unreals software renderer (If I remember correctly, it was designed by the people that designed renderware, which I haven\'t found out how good, or expensive, that is, any idea?). Which should not be, cube should be much faster. Which makes me question it compared to Yeti, which unfortunately, is abandoned, and licensed for non commercial use only. I was recently asked if I could track down it\'s programmers, who is also in Australia, maybe that is an idea. To ask him if he could open up the license, even, potentially, asking him if he would like to amalgamate his effort with the cube creator, for an handheld/software optimised version of cube/cube2.

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#14: Messiah

by Wayne on 07/13/2007 17:26

I am also curious about how the system compares to the functionality and performance of the LOD systems that started with "Messiah" game. If I remember correctly, they used geometric shapes to build up models, and wrapped them dynamically with polygons as you moved closer and further away, designed to start running on something like an 100Mhz 486 from memory (but that could be wrong).


Still haven't heard back from Wouter through email, maybe he is not interested?

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#15: ..

by Wayne on 07/19/2007 16:21

Got an answer from Wouter, not much information, but he doesn't seem interested in non-commercial handheld. Pretty much I would advice him to get large sponsorship of an company like MS/Intel/ARM to make the engines available for developers of those platforms. So, that pretty much kills the promise of that, except I might be getting an 3D accelerated phone.

Now, to replace my broken system so I can run cube ;).

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