Articles posted October 2007

I Think This One Is Going To Be Slow…

In a fairly typical move, I've blown off all my other projects to look at something shiny. There's some decent progress, but any textures that aren't coplanar with the screen are clearly quite wonky. In fact, it's driving me a bit batty at the moment. At least it is working enough to parse the model data, and you can watch the intro with its rotating camera and rain effects (see last picture -- it looks better in motion). There is still a ton of stuff that I don't yet understand. Having a PCB would be very handy (not only for this but for weeding out the remaining TMS32031 math bugs). Anyone got one they want to loan me for a few months? :)

Faster, Soul Master

I like to call it "software SLI":


>set OSDPROCESSORS=1
>mamepm blitz -nothrottle -video none -nosound -str 90
Average speed: 47.37% (89 seconds)

>v64mame blitz -nothrottle -video none -nosound -str 90
Average speed: 59.33% (89 seconds)

>set OSDPROCESSORS=2
>mamepm blitz -nothrottle -video none -nosound -str 90
Average speed: 63.88% (89 seconds)

>v64mame blitz -nothrottle -video none -nosound -str 90
Average speed: 79.31% (89 seconds)

In terms of actual performance on my 2.4GHz Core 2 laptop (64-bit version for obvious reasons), Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey now runs 100% except for the occasional zooms. The Carnevil clown is close to 100% as well. San Francisco Rush gets about 40-50% in-game, and Gauntlet Legends runs at about 50% speed. Rather playable, in fact.