SpriteMethodTest/Advice and Donations Questions

[Jim L.]

Hey Chris:

Thanks for releasing your source. I'm currently working on my own 2d
tiled game using an OpenGL ES framework. I've looked into your
SpriteMethodTest code and run it on the default android emulator that
ships with the SDK. I've been getting weird FPS that differs from
your Google I/O slides. I believe you stated that draw_texture ran
the fastest with the most sprites to draw on a screen. When I run it
on the emulator at 100 sprites, I get around 8 FPS using draw_texture
and 10 FPS with VBOs and I get over 60+ FPS with the 2d canvas
objects. I am assuming this is because of the emulator as I believe
you ran your test on a G1. If this is the case, is there any way I
can setup my emulator to G1 specs or Droid specs for that matter?
When I run my game tests I achieve a Max of 20 fps for around 150
tiles drawn (either on a 2d canvas or a GLSurfaceView using VBOs). I
currently don't have a phone to test on and would like it if I could
emulate a phone until I am ready to buy it.

Secondly, do you have something setup for donations at all? With all
this help you are giving the community I'm sure many of us would like
to contribute a little :)

Thanks again!

-Jim

[Chris Pruett]

Hi Jim,

Yeah, you can't use the emulator for any sort of performance-related
work. The emulator implements a software OpenGL renderer, so there's
no benefit to draw_texture or VBOs. On real hardware, these functions
are accelerated by the graphics chip, but on the emulator they all
just run on the CPU. The emulator is also slow--much, much slower
than any sort of real phone. It's useful to testing code, but it's
not indicative at all of real world performance. For real games
development you need hardware.

Chris

PS: Thanks for the offer for donations, but the best thing you can do
is make a cool game and let me know when you release it!