Best performance!

[Gard]

Hello all..

What would be the ideal language to create a game in leadwerks? C + +, Lua or BlitzMax?

Ask in matter of performance.

Thanks (:

[carlb]

i would say, use the lang you happy with

this will causes a fight again lol

C++ is the main people will say but if you happy with Blitzmax use it

lua you can use with both lang or just by it self.

 

so best to decide your self and stick to it

[Pixel Perfect]

The actual rendering side (the graphics) will run pretty much at the same speed using any of the languages, it really depends on what you are looking at doing between rendering frames. If you are planning lots of complicated AI for instance you probably would benefit from the raw speed of C++, otherwise any are a valid choice imho. You can of course mix and match either C++ or BlitzMax with LUA. Just don't do anything that's very intensive in LUA. There is also C# too, but I have no experience of using that, but I'm sure its an equally valid option too.

[Rick]

C++ will give the best performance, but they are give good performance.

[Canardia]

C++ and Lua at the same time. You can do things which you find easier to do in either language, and when you need more speed for some algorithm you do it in C++. You find lots of 3rd party libraries on the internet for both too.

[Wchris]

Hello all..

What would be the ideal language to create a game in leadwerks? C + +, Lua or BlitzMax?

Ask in matter of performance.

Thanks (:

 

Noone sofar posted differences in FPS between c++ and blitzmax or Lua. I suppose it's because there is no difference or negligible. But i would be happy to see someone prove me wrong and write samples in each language to compare FPS

 

The language won't allow you to write bad unoptimized code and still get performance. For example, i have read somewhere that Josh pointed out we should avoid calling LE engine commands that browse lists in the main loop. What i want to say is that what will have the most influence on FPS is the way you code, not the language you use.

 

Also, i'm currently experimenting postfilter shaders, and i can tell you that poorly written shaders can drop FPS like hell whatever language you use in main program.

[Marleys Ghost]

Noone sofar posted differences in FPS between c++ and blitzmax or Lua. I suppose it's because there is no difference or negligible. But i would be happy to see someone prove me wrong and write samples in each language to compare FPS

 

 

 

 

I did a test for myself but I couldn't be sure if there was something screwy going on or not to take any notice of the results.

[Chris Paulson]

You'll get different answers from people about speed and whether it matters depending on how far down the road of development they are.

 

Beleive me once you got: -

Pathfinding

Motion graphs/blend trees

AI (FSM, HFSM, BTs)

Lots of physics

IK animation

Lots of line picks

Agent Steering

Cover maps

 

etc (all the things you need to make a half decent game) you'll start noticing a BIG difference and you'll be looking to squeeze every ms you can.

 

There is more to a game other than shaders, pretty lights, fluffy cloads and waves...

[Gard]

Thanks everbody for answers. I will do some simple tests, to see how will the FPS. Anything a post here.

Thanks (:

[Alberto]

C++ will give the best performance, but they are give good performance.

 

Is the progamming language really that important for performance ?

I mean, You code in C++ or Lua just the game logic all the rest depend on the engine

There are so many other bottlenecks in an engine

On the other hand I wonder wether Lua is suitable for an advanced A.I.

I already asked this question in an other thread

I own many AI books, all of them are written in C++

Can I port their code in Lua ?

In theory yes, you can code everything just using if..than statement but I dont think it is an easy task

In other words, in my opinion the choice of the programming language dpende on the complexity of the game logic rather than on performance

[Chris Paulson]

Is the progamming language really that important for performance ?

I mean, You code in C++ or Lua just the game logic all the rest depend on the engine

There are so many other bottlenecks in an engine

On the other hand I wonder wether Lua is suitable for an advanced A.I.

I already asked this question in an other thread

I own many AI books, all of them are written in C++

Can I port their code in Lua ?

In theory yes, you can code everything just using if..than statement but I dont think it is an easy task

In other words, in my opinion the choice of the programming language dpende on the complexity of the game logic rather than on performance

 

There is more to AI then simple "if then" code. For example: -

 

Cover point analyse for FP shooters..

Motion graphs (animation)

Pathfinding graphs

Etc etc

 

AI for a descent FP shooter is doing a lot of maths working on a large amount of data. Speed matters! Thats why AAA titles have to run AI in mutiple threads/cell processors etc.

[Josh]

I would not use Lua for the base-level AI, for a complicated game. I would use it to handle AI reactions and changes in behavior, but not for any math intensive stuff. For example, you might make the bot change from "sad" to "angry", but you would use machine code to handle those actual behaviors.

 

For other less complex games, Lua will do just fine for simple AI.

[Pixel Perfect]

To put it simply .... the more your game has to do in code, the more difficult you will find it to fit that in between each frame render in order to maintain a decent frame rate. This is where the raw speed and performance of a language comes into play; before you get to that point you will see no difference. Most people have relatively little or no code executing between frame renders at the moment so they see little or no difference between any of the languages. This is simply because they have not really started to tackle what is really needed in a game engine to make a game.

 

If you intend making a very simple game then you will get away with using LUA (which at times may execute 50 times slower than C++ for example) but if you intend making a modern day contender for a FPS, RPG etc then basing your engine design totally on LUA would be impractical. Well written routines in C++ will execute the fastest of all the languages mentioned with BlitzMax and C# falling in between and LUA trailing well behind at the end.

 

Lua can be combined with other languages successfully and used with serious engine designs but in this case it is normally relegated to a scripting language carrying out high level logic with all the clever and tricky stuff being done underneath in faster code, as Josh was highlighting above.

 

It's all a question of choosing what is right for your game but also listening to those with experience, because unless you have been there before these things are not always obvious at the beginning but will hit you hard later on if you get it wrong.

[Naughty Alien]

..in my game where some quite complex scenery arise at some points(30+ characters doing some stuff simultaneously, dialogues, lipsync, AI, etc)..i figured out that speed difference between Bmax and C++ practically 'doesnt' exist (it does exist but its so so so minor that FPS is absolutely unnoticable)..and it was not worth to sacrifice, clean look and simplicity of code in bmax for exchange with less than 0.2 msec speed difference i have gained with C++ .. so, in my book, I highly recommend Bmax..

[Rick]

It would also depend on how you write it. You can bloat C/C++ to a point where you kill any performance gains from it. I think the benefit is that you have more control over how C/C++ works and can get pretty low level on speed intensive code to make a bigger difference. You could even mix some assembly in there to get even faster results if you so wanted to. The speed you will get will come from removing any "fanciness" that C++ has and get bare bones. That part of the code will probably look pretty ugly but it will run noticeably faster than any language where you can't get lower level access.

 

This is why everyone in the industry uses C/C++. If you ever get points in your code that become bottlenecks you can most likely always optimize it better with C/C++ than any other higher level language.

 

 

On a side note I actually find C/C++ much cleaner and crispier than any language I have seen before. Something about the brackets that I love. I'm so sick of typing 'End', 'Next' at work in VB.NET it's not even funny.

[Wchris]

It would also depend on how you write it. You can bloat C/C++ to a point where you kill any performance gains from it.

 

That's very true Rick, the main bottleneck in performance is the programmers coding ability. I can prove this easily ... "Vista is written in C++"

 

But ok, very skilled programmers will squeeze out more fps out of c++, but not much more that a skilled blitzmax programmer ... the problem is non skilled programmers choose blitzmax or other compiled languages because they look simpler to use than c++, they will produce slower unoptimized code and make you think it's the language fault, but it is not. Once compiled in machine code there's not a big difference in performance like naugthy alien said.

 

Nevertheless low skilled programmers will have access to a large cut & paste library of code shared by the many users of c++, and much more help in forums. So C++ is still a language of choice. And if you want to integrate external API like Raknet or a SQL database ... it'll be easyer to find headers and help with C++, but that's not a matter of performance. The performance is boosted by the help you get. Help is important, because the more help you get from skilled programmers, the more you'll be able to produce optimized code, they will show you how to. That's the main advantage of C++.

 

Of course Lua is not compiled, so it'll be slower, like all interpreted languages.

[Pixel Perfect]

..in my game where some quite complex scenery arise at some points(30+ characters doing some stuff simultaneously, dialogues, lipsync, AI, etc)..i figured out that speed difference between Bmax and C++ practically 'doesnt' exist (it does exist but its so so so minor that FPS is absolutely unnoticable)..and it was not worth to sacrifice, clean look and simplicity of code in bmax for exchange with less than 0.2 msec speed difference i have gained with C++ .. so, in my book, I highly recommend Bmax..

I'd agree, there is no reason why a game couldn't be written using BlitzMax, in fact it's a good choice for people new to programming (which in no means undermines BM as it's a very capable language). The differences between C++, BlitzMax and C# are much closer. But your statement fascinates me, are you saying that you have your entire engine written in both languages and are able to run benchmark tests between them? How much processing time is taken up by your code on average per game cycle, min and max values would be a good insight if you have these figures? Do you use multithreading or any other processes devised to average out peak processing demands over multiple game cycles? You are far closer than most of us to having a completed game and some feedback on this would be really useful.

[Rick]

I was wondering the same thing. It would seem unlikely to me that anyone would write their game in 2 languages.