Handmade Hero»Forums»Code
Kirill Artemov
4 posts
HMH Lighting: was it worth the performance degradation?
Edited by Kirill Artemov on Reason: Initial post
Looking at the latest HMH episodes after the brand new lighting system has been implemented the game is now unplayable in debug mode (150ms/frame) and still dips a bit below 60fps in release (20-22ms/frame). That is after Casey's done SIMD optimizations on it. So in your opinion was it worth implementing? Sure it's a very interesting system, but the end result is not very satisfying imo. (also I'm unfamiliar about any plans to make further optimizations to it)
Simon Anciaux
1337 posts
HMH Lighting: was it worth the performance degradation?
I don't think Casey has done much optimizations on the lighting code. If I remember correctly, he wanted to have real assets in the game before optimizing more.
45 posts
HMH Lighting: was it worth the performance degradation?
The problem with the lighting system, like so much else in HMH, is that the engine is totally divorced from the actual game.

Who knows wether or not the lighting system is gratuitous or not (I suspect it is, but we'll see) being that there's simply not enough game available to be able to make an assessment. Colored blocks do not suffice when it comes to testing a lighting system like HMH's, you need some way of approximating what the actual environments are going to look like in order to make reality-based assessments. Even simple grass, wall and indoor floor tile placeholders would have gone a long way in this regards.