Problems are a Gas:
'why?'
They expand to fill thier container =)
This is a cute way of noting how even when big problems go away, the problems that were little feel just as big when there is nothing bigger =)
WTF are you talking about?
Well, now that MW is done, there are things that did not seem so big in comparison, but now seem big.
There are a few things I want to do before MW sees the light of day:
(did this during lunch, yay for productivity!)
1. DirectDraw adaptor - This is the middle-road between using the GDI adaptor and the Direct3D adaptor, it provides the same look as GDI (though with better scaling), but still no lighting or alpha blending, but is far more performant. Thankfully I already have an adaptor built for such, it will just require a little work to get it up to the current adaptor spec.
2. Memory Usage - MW uses a LOT of memory, and I am not sure why, of course it uses lots of graphics (being a 2D game), but it would seem that I am doing somthing wrong somewhere.
3. Speed Bottlenecks - Primarily around spell casting, somthing about casting spells (I haven't profiled yet so I dont know exactly why) makes casting large spells very slow, it could be a variety of things:
(keep in mind a large spell is on the order of, oh about 500 particles(they are big particles))
-lots of allocating (not recycling magic particles)
-introduction of lots of lights (each particle is lit)
-too many sprites on-screen (unlikely)
-playing too much cast audio
I really need to get this worked out =/
4. Lighting speed - the lighting system works great in MW, primarily because it uses very discreet ray-casting (each light illuminates each tile in it's radius if it is seen) but I think the use of the ray-casting is a pretty big bottleneck, especially when you get ~500 lights on-screen =D
5. OpenGL adaptor - likely to be released after the true release, since it is a large project. Potentially unneccisary as well, however the idea behind the flare engine is choice of graphics api
6. WSS Audio Adaptor - Again, an alternative to the DirectSound based adaptor, might use OpenAL instead; but again likely to come as an update versus on version 1
7. Some better Sound FX - a lot of the SFX for enemies and spells are either poor or absent, this would be an out-of-pocket expense, but might be worth it.
All in all there are still things that would make the game better, though they might have to wait. I am nearing the 6th at break-neck speed. =D
