- corrections to docs
- disallow calling controller.activate(actuator) when the controller is not active. (Raise a SystemError)
- Added 2 new attributes, CValue.name - deprecates CValue.getName(), KX_GameObject.children deprecated KX_GameObject.getChildren(), (same for getChildrenRecursive()).
A new type of "Sensor" physics object is available in the GE for advanced
collision management. It's called Sensor for its similarities with the
physics objects that underlie the Near and Radar sensors.
Like the Near and Radar object it is:
- static and ghost
- invisible by default
- always active to ensure correct collision detection
- capable of detecting both static and dynamic objects
- ignoring collision with their parent
- capable of broadphase filtering based on:
* Actor option: the collisioning object must have the Actor flag set to be detected
* property/material: as specified in the collision sensors attached to it
Broadphase filtering is important for performance reason: the collision points
will be computed only for the objects that pass the broahphase filter.
- automatically removed from the simulation when no collision sensor is active on it
Unlike the Near and Radar object it can:
- take any shape, including triangle mesh
- be made visible for debugging (just use the Visible actuator)
- have multiple collision sensors using it
Other than that, the sensor objects are ordinary objects. You can move them
freely or parent them. When parented to a dynamic object, they can provide
advanced collision control to this object.
The type of collision capability depends on the shape:
- box, sphere, cylinder, cone, convex hull provide volume detection.
- triangle mesh provides surface detection but you can give some volume
to the suface by increasing the margin in the Advanced Settings panel.
The margin applies on both sides of the surface.
Performance tip:
- Sensor objects perform better than Near and Radar: they do less synchronizations
because of the Scenegraph optimizations and they can have multiple collision sensors
on them (with different property filtering for example).
- Always prefer simple shape (box, sphere) to complex shape whenever possible.
- Always use broadphase filtering (avoid collision sensor with empty propery/material)
- Use collision sensor only when you need them. When no collision sensor is active
on the sensor object, it is removed from the simulation and consume no CPU.
Known limitations:
- When running Blender in debug mode, you will see one warning line of the console:
"warning btCollisionDispatcher::needsCollision: static-static collision!"
In release mode this message is not printed.
- Collision margin has no effect on sphere, cone and cylinder shape.
Other performance improvements:
- Remove unnecessary interpolation for Near and Radar objects and by extension
sensor objects.
- Use direct matrix copy instead of quaternion to synchronize orientation.
Other bug fix:
- Fix Near/Radar position error on newly activated objects. This was causing
several detection problems in YoFrankie
- Fix margin not passed correctly to gImpact shape.
- Disable force/velocity actions on static objects
KX_GameObject.getVelocity() would set an error but nor return an error value when an non vector argument was given.
KX_PythonSeq_Type was not initialized with PyType_Ready which could crash blender when inspecting the type.
scene.active_camera can now be set so you can more easily set the current camera from python scripts without using an actuator.
ConvertPythonToCamera utility function to get a camera from a python string or KX_Camera type.
This commit extends the technique of dynamic linked list to the logic
system to eliminate as much as possible temporaries, map lookup or
full scan. The logic engine is now free of memory allocation, which is
an important stability factor.
The overhead of the logic system is reduced by a factor between 3 and 6
depending on the logic setup. This is the speed-up you can expect on
a logic setup using simple bricks. Heavy bricks like python controllers
and ray sensors will still take about the same time to execute so the
speed up will be less important.
The core of the logic engine has been much reworked but the functionality
is still the same except for one thing: the priority system on the
execution of controllers. The exact same remark applies to actuators but
I'll explain for controllers only:
Previously, it was possible, with the "executePriority" attribute to set
a controller to run before any other controllers in the game. Other than
that, the sequential execution of controllers, as defined in Blender was
guaranteed by default.
With the new system, the sequential execution of controllers is still
guaranteed but only within the controllers of one object. the user can
no longer set a controller to run before any other controllers in the
game. The "executePriority" attribute controls the execution of controllers
within one object. The priority is a small number starting from 0 for the
first controller and incrementing for each controller.
If this missing feature is a must, a special method can be implemented
to set a controller to run before all other controllers.
Other improvements:
- Systematic use of reference in parameter passing to avoid unnecessary data copy
- Use pre increment in iterator instead of post increment to avoid temporary allocation
- Use const char* instead of STR_String whenever possible to avoid temporary allocation
- Fix reference counting bugs (memory leak)
- Fix a crash in certain cases of state switching and object deletion
- Minor speed up in property sensor
- Removal of objects during the game is a lot faster
controller.actuators[name] and controller.sensors[name]
Made a read-only sequence type for logic brick sensors and actuators which can access single items or be used like a list or dictionary.
We could use a python dictionary or CValueList but that would be slower to create.
So you can do...
for s in controller.sensors: print s
print controller.sensors["Sensor"]
print controller.sensors[0]
sensors = list(controller.sensors)
This sequence type keeps a reference to the proxy it came from and will raise an error on access if the proxy has been removed.
not fixed but the problem is now less bad when projection painting, bilinear interpolation was rounding down.
- added gameOb.attrDict to get the internal gameObject dict.
- mesh.getVertex wasnt setting an exception.
This commit extend the technique of dynamic linked list to the mesh
slots so as to eliminate dumb scan or map lookup. It provides massive
performance improvement in the culling and in the rasterizer when
the majority of objects are static.
Other improvements:
- Compute the opengl matrix only for objects that are visible.
- Simplify hash function for GEN_HasedPtr
- Scan light list instead of general object list to render shadows
- Remove redundant opengl calls to set specularity, shinyness and diffuse
between each mesh slots.
- Cache GPU material to avoid frequent call to GPU_material_from_blender
- Only set once the fixed elements of mesh slot
- Use more inline function
The following table shows the performance increase between 2.48, 1st round
and this round of improvement. The test was done with a scene containing
40000 objects, of which 1000 are in the view frustrum approximately. The
object are simple textured cube to make sure the GPU is not the bottleneck.
As some of the rasterizer processing time has moved under culling, I present
the sum of scenegraph(includes culling)+rasterizer time
Scenegraph+rasterizer(ms) 2.48 1st round 3rd round
All objects static, 323.0 86.0 7.2
all visible, 1000 in
the view frustrum
All objects static, 219.0 49.7 N/A(*)
all invisible.
All objects moving, 323.0 105.6 34.7
all visible, 1000 in
the view frustrum
Scene destruction 40min 40min 4s
(*) : this time is not representative because the frame rate was at 60fps.
In that case, the GPU holds down the GE by frame sync. By design, the
overhead of the rasterizer is 0 when the the objects are invisible.
This table shows a global speed up between 9x and 45x compared to 2.48a
for scenegraph, culling and rasterizer overhead. The speed up goes much
higher when objects are invisible.
An additional 2-4x speed up is possible in the scenegraph by upgrading
the Moto library to use Eigen2 BLAS library instead of C++ classes but
the scenegraph is already so fast that it is not a priority right now.
Next speed up in logic: many things to do there...
- Vast performance increase when removing scene containing large number of
objects: the sensor/controller map was updated for each deleted object,
causing massive slow down when the number of objects was large (O(n^2)).
- Use reference when scanning the sensor map => avoid useless copy.
- Remove dynamically the object bounding box from the DBVT when the object
is invisible => faster culling.
- renamed generic attribute "isValid" to "invalid" since BL_Shader already uses isValid.
- Moved deprecation warnings from CValue
- removed unused KX_Scene::SetProjectionMatrix and KX_Scene::GetViewMatrix
- Added KX_Scene attributes "lights", "cameras", "objects_inactive", to allow access to objects in unseen layers (before the AddObject actuator adds them)
- KX_Camera deprecated cam.enableViewport(bool) for cam.isViewport which can be read as well.
Own bug, conversion function to get an orientation from python - PyOrientationTo() ignored user input completely :| (breaking the orientation attribute)
Also made KX_GameObject worldOrientation writable and minor doc fixes.
CListValue fixes
- Disable changing CValueLists that the BGE uses internally (scene.objects.append(1) would crash when drawing)
- val=clist+list would modify clist in place, now return a new value.
- clist.append([....]), was working like extend.
- clist.append(val) didnt work for most CValue types like KX_GameObjects.
Other changes
- "isValid" was always returning True.
- Set all errors for invalid proxy access to PyExc_SystemError (was using a mix of error types)
- Added PyObjectPlus::InvalidateProxy() to manually invalidate, though if python ever gains access again, it will make a new valid proxy. This is so removing an object from a scene can invalidate the object even if its stored elsewhere in a CValueList for eg.
PyObjectPlus::ProcessReplica() is now called when any of its subclasses are replicated.
This is important because PyObjectPlus::ProcessReplica() NULL's the 'm_proxy' python pointer I added recently.
Without this a replicated subclass of PyObjectPlus could have an invalid pointer (crashing the BGE).
This change also means CValue::AddDataToReplica() can be moved into CValue::ProcessReplica() since ProcessReplica is always called.
Some functions used
ProcessReplica(replica);
others
replica->ProcessReplica()
Use the second method everywhere so the PyObjectPlus's ProcessReplica() can be called from its subclasses.
Note that PyObjectPlus's ProcessReplica isnt used yet.
improved how attribute errors are set so each classes py_getattro function dosnt need to set an error if the attribute doesn't exist.
Now py_base_getattro sets an error on a NULL return value when no errors are set to avoid setting errors at multiple levels.
Separate getting a normal attribute and getting __dict__, was having to do too a check for __dict__ on each class (multiple times per getattro call from python) when its not used that often.
- initialize pythons sys.argv in the blenderplayer
- ignore all arguments after a single " - " in the blenderplayer (like in blender), so args can be passed to the game.
- add a utility function PyOrientationTo() - to take a Py euler, quat or 3x3 matrix and convert into a C++ MT_Matrix3x3.
- add utility function ConvertPythonToMesh to get a RAS_MeshObject from a KX_MeshProxy or a name.
- Added error prefix arguments to ConvertPythonToGameObject, ConvertPythonToMesh and PyOrientationTo so the error messages can include what function they came from.
- deprecated brick.getOwner() for the "owner" attribute.
- More verbose error messages.
- BL_Shader wasnt setting error messages on some errors
- FilterNormal depth attribute was checking for float which is bad because scripts often expect ints assigned to float attributes.
- Added a check to PyVecTo for a tuple rather then always using a generic python sequence. On my system this is over 2x faster with an optmized build.
- comments to PyObjectPlus.h
- remove unused/commented junk.
- renamed PyDestructor to py_base_dealloc for consistency
- all the PyTypeObject's were still using the sizeof() their class, can use sizeof(PyObjectPlus_Proxy) now which is smaller too.
This changes how the BGE classes and Python work together, which hasnt changed since blender went opensource.
The main difference is PyObjectPlus - the base class for most game engine classes, no longer inherit from PyObject, and cannot be cast to a PyObject.
This has the advantage that the BGE does not have to keep 2 reference counts valid for C++ and Python.
Previously C++ classes would never be freed while python held a reference, however this reference could be problematic eg: a GameObject that isnt in a scene anymore should not be used by python, doing so could even crash blender in some cases.
Instead PyObjectPlus has a member "PyObject *m_proxy" which is lazily initialized when python needs it. m_proxy reference counts are managed by python, though it should never be freed while the C++ class exists since it holds a reference to avoid making and freeing it all the time.
When the C++ class is free'd it sets the m_proxy reference to NULL, If python accesses this variable it will raise a RuntimeError, (check the isValid attribute to see if its valid without raising an error).
- This replaces the m_zombie bool and IsZombie() tests added recently.
In python return values that used to be..
return value->AddRef();
Are now
return value->GetProxy();
or...
return value->NewProxy(true); // true means python owns this C++ value which will be deleted when the PyObject is freed
Other small changes...
- KX_Camera and KX_Light didnt have get/setitem access in their PyType definition.
- CList.from_id() error checking for a long was checking for -1 against an unsigned value (own fault)
- CValue::SpecialRelease was incrementing an int for no reason.
- renamed m_attrlist to m_attr_dict since its a PyDict type.
- removed custom getattro/setattro functions for KX_Scene and KX_GameObject, use py_base_getattro, py_base_setattro for all subclasses of PyObjectPlus.
- lowercase windows.h in VideoBase.cpp for cross compiling.
Common cases of this are when python references an object from the AddObject actuator that has ended, or a scene has been loaded and the old objects freed.
This means some scripts will raise errors now in certain cases but better give the error early rather then failing silently with strange hard to track down behavior & crashes.
Added "isValid" attribute for checking objects are in a scene.
At the moment it uses the SceneGraph Node to check of the objects valid but it might be better to do this in a more generic way so scenes, meshes etc also have this check.
There is a problem importing 3ds files where I cant find a way to check if the transforms are applied to the vertex locations or not.
Since 2.44 I made the importer assume they were not since you can manually remove transformations, but not reverse.
Nevertheless most 3ds files have the matrix applied, better not give a bad import by default.
Did some research and other 3ds importers (lib3ds for eg), have the same problem and just assume the transformations applied.
3dsMax imports both correctly so there must be a way to tell but I could not link it to the 3ds version or other mesh options.
Added an option to workaround this problem in rare cases where its needed.
- KX_GameObject.cpp & KX_Scene.cpp, clear the dict before removing the reference in case there is a circular reference.
Clamp objects min/max velocity.
Accessed with bullet physics from the advanced button with dynamic and rigid body objects.
- useful for preventing unstable physics in cases where objects move too fast.
- can add linear velocity with the motion actuator to give smooth motion transitions, without moving too fast.
- minimum velocity means objects don't stop moving.
- python scripts can adjust these values speedup or throttle velocity in the existing direction.
Also made copy properties from an object with no properties work (in case you want to clear all props)
Added occlusion culling capability in the BGE.
More info: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.49/Game_Engine#BGE_Scenegraph_improvement
MSVC, scons, cmake, Makefile updated.
Other minor performance improvements:
- The rasterizer was computing the openGL model matrix of the objects too many times
- DBVT view frustrum culling was not properly culling behind the near plane:
Large objects behind the camera were sent to the GPU
- Remove all references to mesh split/join feature as it is not yet functional
Support for assigning any Type to a KX_GameObject
so you can do...
gameOb.follow = otherGameOb
gameOb[otherGameOb] = distanceTo
gameOb["path"] = [(x,y,x), (x,y,x)]
del gameOb[mesh]
* types that cannot be converted into CValue types are written into the KX_GameObject dict
* the KX_GameObject dict is only initialized when needed
* Python properties in this dict cannot be accessed by logic bricks
* dir(ob) and ob.getPropertyNames() return items from both CValue and Py dictionary properties.
Also found that CType was converting python lists to CType Lists but very buggy, would crash after printing the list most times.
Use python lists instead since logic bricks dont deal with lists.
There were also some problems with int to python conversion
- assigning a PyLong to a KX_GameObject from python would raise an error
- PyLong were coerced into floats when used with internal CValue arithmetic
Changes...
- PyLong is converted into CIntValue for coercing and assigning from python
- CValue's generic GetNumber() function returns a double rather then a float.
- Print an error when a PyType cant be coerced into a CValue
Tested with python, expressions and property sensor.
- Only try and remove light objects from the light list.
- Only loop over mesh verts once when getting the bounding box
- dont return None from python attribute localInertia when theres no physics objects. better return a vector still.
- add names to send message PyArg_ParseTuple functions.
This commit contains a number of performance improvements for the
BGE in the Scenegraph (parent relation between objects in the
scene) and view frustrum culling.
The scenegraph improvement consists in avoiding position update
if the object has not moved since last update and the removal
of redundant updates and synchronization with the physics engine.
The view frustrum culling improvement consists in using the DBVT
broadphase facility of Bullet to build a tree of graphical objects
in the scene. The elements of the tree are Aabb boxes (Aligned
Axis Bounding Boxes) enclosing the objects. This provides good
precision in closed and opened scenes. This new culling system
is enabled by default but just in case, it can be disabled with
a button in the World settings. There is no do_version in this
commit but it will be added before the 2.49 release. For now you
must manually enable the DBVT culling option in World settings
when you open an old file.
The above improvements speed up scenegraph and culling up to 5x.
However, this performance improvement is only visible when
you have hundreds or thousands of objects.
The main interest of the DBVT tree is to allow easy occlusion
culling and automatic LOD system. This will be the object of further
improvements.
- Make BGE's ListValue types convert to python lists for printing since the CValue GetText() function didnt work well- printing lists as [,,,,,] for scene objects and mesh materials for eg.
- Check attributes are descriptor types before casting.
- py_getattr_dict use the Type dict rather then Method and Attribute array.
Use each types dictionary to store attributes PyAttributeDef's so it uses pythons hash lookup (which it was already doing for methods) rather then doing a string lookup on the array each time.
This also means attributes can be found in the type without having to do a dir() on the instance.
KX_PolygonMaterial and KX_BlenderMaterial - Added a print function (would raise a python error on printing)
* Crashes *
KX_GameObject SetParent - Disallowed setting a parent to its self, caused a recursion crash.
KX_MeshProxy "materials" attribute was segfaulting because of my recent change - I was wrong, you do need to check material types (no idea why since they are both PyObject * at the base)
KX_VisibilityActuator - Wasn't initialized with PyType_Ready() making it crash on access (own fault)
* Crashes because of missing NULL checks *
KX_PolygonMaterial's "gl_texture" attribute wasnt checking for a valid m_tface
KX_GameObject - added checks for GetPhysicsController()
KX_RayCast::RayTest - didnt check for a valid physics_environment
KX_SceneActuator's getCamera python function wasnt checking if there was a camera.
- made camera use PyAttributeDef's
- removed unneeded duplicate matrix type checks
- fixed own bug (added since 2.48a) that broke a converting 4x4 matrix to a PyObject
