I am currently working on a Rts game and I want to draw at least a few hundred figures on the screen. Trees terrain and units. For the moment I am using “for” loops, but when I draw hundred trees the frame rate slows down to 30fps. I just want to know if someone knows a better way to draw a bunch of meshes at once?
Keep the number of meshes down to a minimum by using a sprite sheet approach. Here’s a demo which draws 2000 objects as a single mesh. Each object is one of four possible images (the four corners of the Codea icon)
-- spritemesh
-- Use this function to perform your initial setup
function setup()
displayMode(FULLSCREEN)
m=mesh()
img=readImage("Cargo Bot:Codea Icon")
m.texture=img
obj={}
for i=1,2000 do
table.insert(obj,{x=math.random(WIDTH),y=math.random(HEIGHT),a=math.random(360),size=10+math.random(30),spin=-5+math.random(100)/10,xspd=-3+math.random(7),yspd=-3+math.random(7),xcoord=(math.random(2)-1)/2,ycoord=(math.random(2)-1)/2})
end
end
-- This function gets called once every frame
function draw()
m:clear()
-- This sets a dark background color
background(40, 40, 50)
for i,s in pairs(obj) do
local id=m:addRect(s.x,s.y,s.size,s.size,math.rad(s.a))
m:setRectTex(id,s.xcoord,s.ycoord,0.5,0.5)
s.a = s.a + s.spin
s.x = s.x + s.xspd
s.y = s.y + s.yspd
if s.x>WIDTH then s.x=0 end
if s.x<0 then s.x=WIDTH end
if s.y>HEIGHT then s.y=0 end
if s.y<0 then s.y=HEIGHT end
end
m:draw()
end
Don’t know what the FPS is but I believe there is a bug in the current release of codea which may slow things down
Sprite sheets (upto 2048 pixels square) are definitely the way to go - texture changes are about the slowest thing you can do in OpenGL
@dave1707 - that speed is linear, it says Codea can draw (this sprite) on your iPad, about 55,000 times a second.
On my iPad3, I get an FPS of 17 for 2000 meshes (NB I am using a beta with the intended speed fix, which may give me an advantage).
@West I added frame rate code to your code and on my iPad Air, 2,000 meshes ran at 28. I upped it to 5,000 and that ran at 11. I upped it again to 10,000 and it ran at 5. Curious to see how it runs when we get the next version that fixes the speed drop.
@dave1707, @Ignatz thanks for the info. You both talk about 2000 meshes - I thought it was 2000 objects/Rects (4000 triangles) in a single mesh but maybe my terminology is off.
Thank you everybody. This will help my game along quite a bit. :)>-
@West Is it possible to move a single figur using the translate function, without moving all of them?
The easiest way to do it with the above code would be something like:
obj[17].x=obj[17].x+1
which would move the 17th object to the right.
Do this outside the loop and you’ll probably want to remove the other movement by deleting the following lines
s.a = s.a + s.spin
s.x = s.x + s.xspd
s.y = s.y + s.yspd
Not got my IPad at the moment so can’t check
@West - sorry to come late to the party… but… looking at your demo above, I think it would be a lot faster if you create the mesh once in the setup function instead of recreating it every frame and then storing the id returned from mesh:addRect in a table so that you can update the individual rectangles each frame instead (in fact you probably don’t even need to do that if all your doing is adding rectangles - just use the required index in the mesh:setRect() call
Also replace the
for i,s in pairs(obj) do
with
local s
for i=1,2000 do
s = obj[i]
...
...
m:setRect(i,...)
As you’ll have the overhead of 2000 function calls as lua calls the pairs iterator which is also quite slow.
If you’re worried about adding and deleting objects on the fly during your game, just add enough rects to the mesh at the start for your worst case scenario and then use the rects as a pool and just set unused ones to 1x1 pixels and move them off screen.
That way your frame rate should be consistent regardless of how many objects you have moving around.
Hi @TechDojo - thanks for the pointers - will try it later. The example was butchered from a previous test of sprites vs meshes I had kicking about
@Holger_gott - I’ll see if I can dig some out later but in the mean time, I’ll make the changes to @West’s above although I’m not able to test it… 
Here goes…
-- spritemesh
-- Use this function to perform your initial setup
local numObjs = 2000
local obj
local objIDs = {}
function setup()
displayMode(FULLSCREEN)
m=mesh()
img=readImage("Cargo Bot:Codea Icon")
m.texture=img
obj={}
local id
for i=1,numObjs do
obj[i] = {x=math.random(WIDTH),y=math.random(HEIGHT),a=math.random(360),size=10+math.random(30),spin=-5+math.random(100)/10,xspd=-3+math.random(7),yspd=-3+math.random(7),xcoord=(math.random(2)-1)/2,ycoord=(math.random(2)-1)/2})
id=m:addRect(s.x,s.y,s.size,s.size,math.rad(s.a))
m:setRectTex(id,s.xcoord,s.ycoord,0.5,0.5)
objIDs[i] = id -- not sure if this is required
end
end
-- This function gets called once every frame
function draw()
-- This sets a dark background color
background(40, 40, 50)
local s
for i=1,numObjs do
s = obj[i]
s.a = s.a + s.spin
s.x = s.x + s.xspd
s.y = s.y + s.yspd
if s.x>WIDTH then s.x=0 end
if s.x<0 then s.x=WIDTH end
if s.y>HEIGHT then s.y=0 end
if s.y<0 then s.y=HEIGHT end
m:setRect(objIDs[i],s.x,s.y,s.size,s.size)
-- m:setRect(i,s.x,s.y,s.size,s.size) -- this *may* also work, not sure ????
end
m:draw()
end
This is the basic idea. Be interesting to see what kind of speed difference this makes especially as the number of objects ramps up. @dave1707 any chance of you putting your FPS code in this and posting some stats?
Here’s a working version
-- spritemesh
-- Use this function to perform your initial setup
local numObjs = 2000
local obj
local objIDs = {}
function setup()
displayMode(FULLSCREEN)
m=mesh()
img=readImage("Cargo Bot:Codea Icon")
m.texture=img
obj={}
local id
for i=1,numObjs do
obj[i] = {x=math.random(WIDTH),y=math.random(HEIGHT),a=math.random(360),size=10+math.random(30),spin=-5+math.random(100)/10,xspd=-3+math.random(7),yspd=-3+math.random(7),xcoord=(math.random(2)-1)/2,ycoord=(math.random(2)-1)/2}
id=m:addRect(obj[i].x,obj[i].y,obj[i].size,obj[i].size,math.rad(obj[i].a))
m:setRectTex(id,obj[i].xcoord,obj[i].ycoord,0.5,0.5)
objIDs[i] = id -- not sure if this is required
end
end
-- This function gets called once every frame
function draw()
-- This sets a dark background color
background(40, 40, 50)
for i=1,numObjs do
local s
s = obj[i]
s.a = s.a + s.spin
s.x = s.x + s.xspd
s.y = s.y + s.yspd
if s.x>WIDTH then s.x=0 end
if s.x<0 then s.x=WIDTH end
if s.y>HEIGHT then s.y=0 end
if s.y<0 then s.y=HEIGHT end
m:setRect(objIDs[i],s.x,s.y,s.size,s.size,math.rad(s.a))
end
m:draw()
end
I added my frame rate code and got the same values. 2,000 was 28, 5,000 was 11, 10,000 was 5. I tried 55,000 as @Ignatz suggested above and the frame rate was 1.
@dave1707, @West - thanks for fixing the code, I wasn’t near my iPad so I was coding blond. Although personally I’d still move the ‘local s’ outside of the for loop.
To be honest, im surprised at the speed timings I’m assuming you’re using the new fixed beta. So recreating a mesh every frame takes the same time as updating each text?? When I get five minutes I’m going to try and create a kind of profiling framework so we can time these functions to get a better understanding of what’s happening.
Hi @TechDojo,
We wrote a profiler for Codea, I cant get on to GitHub at the moment to create a gist, so code included below…
It works on an ‘object’ level, e.g. a table that contains functions, or a class instance…
Basically it swaps out every function it finds into a wrapper that does timing and counts of calls and calculates averages etc. It’s a little clunky as it allows a maximum of 10 parameters per function, could probably do some cleverer arg unpacking…
Usage is as follows, when game is running (from the console), or in code if you like:
startProfiling(obj, delay)
stopProfiling()
If you add a delay time in seconds then profiling will automatically stop and halt the game and report to the console…
Here are the helper functions, class definition is below:
-- ------------------
-- Profiler Functions
-- ------------------
local profiler = nil
function startProfiling(obj, delay)
if (profiler) then
profiler:stop()
end
profiler = Profiler4Codea(obj)
profiler:start()
if(delay) then
tween.delay(delay, function()
stopProfiling()
error("Stopping game for profiler results")
end)
end
end
function stopProfiling()
if (profiler) then
profiler:stop()
local report
print("TOTAL\\r\
")
report = profiler:report(Profiler4Codea.TotalTime)
print(report)
print("AVERAGE\\r\
")
report = profiler:report(Profiler4Codea.AvgTime)
print(report)
print("#INVOKED\\r\
")
report = profiler:report(Profiler4Codea.TimesInvoked)
print(report)
end
end
Class definition:
Profiler4Codea = class()
Profiler4Codea.TimesInvoked = "timesInvoked"
Profiler4Codea.TotalTime = "totalTime"
Profiler4Codea.AvgTime = "avgTime"
Profiler4Codea.Descending = "descending"
Profiler4Codea.Ascending = "ascending"
local table_insert = table.insert
local globalMetaData = {}
function Profiler4Codea:init(obj, name)
assert(obj, "No object supplied")
self.obj = obj
if (type(obj) ~= "table") then
error("Profiler4Codea:init: obj must be table or class: " .. tostring(self.obj))
end
local metaTable = getmetatable(self.obj)
if (metaTable) then
self.obj = metaTable
end
self.metaData = {}
if (name) then
if (not globalMetaData[name]) then
globalMetaData[name] = {}
end
table_insert(globalMetaData[name], self)
end
end
function Profiler4Codea:start()
self.clockTime = os.clock()
for name, member in pairs(self.obj) do
local mType = type(member)
if (mType == "function" and name ~= "init" and name ~= "draw") then
if (not self.metaData[name]) then
self.metaData[name] = {
totalTime = 0,
timesInvoked = 0,
func = name
}
end
self.metaData[name].origFunction = member
self.obj[name] = function(p1, p2, p3, p4, p5, p6, p7, p8, p9, p10)
local elapsedTime = os.clock()
local r1, r2, r3, r4, r5, r6, r7, r8, r9, r10 =
self.metaData[name].origFunction(p1, p2, p3, p4, p5, p6, p7, p8, p9, p10)
self.metaData[name].totalTime = self.metaData[name].totalTime +
(os.clock() - elapsedTime)
self.metaData[name].timesInvoked = self.metaData[name].timesInvoked + 1
return r1, r2, r3, r4, r5, r6, r7, r8, r9, r10
end
end
end
end
function Profiler4Codea:stop()
-- Restore function pointers
for name, meta in pairs(self.metaData) do
self.obj[name] = meta.origFunction
end
return self:report()
end
function Profiler4Codea:report(sortKey, ascDesc, stringify)
if (not self.clockTime) then
return "No data"
end
sortKey = sortKey or Profiler4Codea.TimesInvoked
ascDesc = ascDesc or Profiler4Codea.Descending
if (stringify == nil) then stringify = true end
local data = {}
for name, meta in pairs(self.metaData) do
-- Calculate average time so we can sort by if required
if (meta.timesInvoked > 0) then
meta.avgTime = meta.totalTime / meta.timesInvoked
else
meta.avgTime = 0
end
table_insert(data, meta)
end
if (ascDesc == Profiler4Codea.Descending) then
table.sort(data, function(a, b) return b[sortKey] < a[sortKey] end)
elseif (ascDesc == Profiler4Codea.Ascending) then
table.sort(data, function(a, b) return a[sortKey] < b[sortKey] end)
else
error("Unknown sort key")
end
if (stringify) then
local sb = {}
table_insert(sb, "Profiler4Codea: Sample time: ")
table_insert(sb, os.clock() - self.clockTime)
table_insert(sb, "\\r\
")
table_insert(sb, "Sort key: ")
table_insert(sb, sortKey)
table_insert(sb, "\\r\
")
table_insert(sb, "Asc/Desc: ")
table_insert(sb, ascDesc)
table_insert(sb, "\\r\
")
for k = 1, #data do
local meta = data[k]
if (meta.timesInvoked > 0) then
table_insert(sb, "[")
table_insert(sb, meta.func)
table_insert(sb, ",")
table_insert(sb, tostring(meta.totalTime))
table_insert(sb, ",")
table_insert(sb, string.format("%d", meta.timesInvoked))
table_insert(sb, ",")
table_insert(sb, string.format("%.6f", meta.avgTime))
table_insert(sb, "]\\r\
")
end
end
return table.concat(sb)
end
return data
end
function Profiler4Codea.globalStop()
for name, profilerList in pairs(globalMetaData) do
for k = 1, #profilerList do
local profiler = profilerList[k]
profiler:stop()
end
end
end
function Profiler4Codea.globalReport(sortKey, ascDesc)
-- Iterate over all object types
local result = {}
local instances = {}
for name, profilerList in pairs(globalMetaData) do
-- Iterate over each instance
instances[name] = #profilerList
for k = 1, #profilerList do
local profiler = profilerList[k]
-- Get data for instance
local data = profiler:report(sortKey, ascDesc, false)
-- Iterate over instance functions
for k = 1, #data do
local meta = data[k]
if (not result[name .. "." .. meta.func]) then
result[name .. "." .. meta.func] = {
totalTime = 0,
timesInvoked = 0,
avgTime = 0
}
end
result[name .. "." .. meta.func].totalTime =
result[name .. "." .. meta.func].totalTime + meta.totalTime
result[name .. "." .. meta.func].timesInvoked =
result[name .. "." .. meta.func].timesInvoked + meta.timesInvoked
end
end
end
-- Calculate average
local final = {}
for k, data in pairs(result) do
if (data.timesInvoked > 0) then
data.avgTime = data.totalTime / data.timesInvoked
data.id = k
table_insert(final, data)
end
end
sortKey = sortKey or Profiler4Codea.TotalTime
ascDesc = ascDesc or Profiler4Codea.Descending
if (ascDesc == Profiler4Codea.Descending) then
table.sort(final, function(a, b) return b[sortKey] < a[sortKey] end)
elseif (ascDesc == Profiler4Codea.Ascending) then
table.sort(final, function(a, b) return a[sortKey] < b[sortKey] end)
else
error("Unknown sort key")
end
local sb = {}
table_insert(sb, "Profiler4Codea: ")
table_insert(sb, "\\r\
")
for name, count in pairs(instances) do
table_insert(sb, "Class: ")
table_insert(sb, tostring(count))
table_insert(sb, "\\r\
")
end
table_insert(sb, "Sort key: ")
table_insert(sb, sortKey)
table_insert(sb, "\\r\
")
table_insert(sb, "Asc/Desc: ")
table_insert(sb, ascDesc)
table_insert(sb, "\\r\
")
for k = 1, #final do
local meta = final[k]
if (meta.timesInvoked > 0) then
table_insert(sb, meta.id)
table_insert(sb, ",")
table_insert(sb, tostring(meta.totalTime))
table_insert(sb, ",")
table_insert(sb, string.format("%d", meta.timesInvoked))
table_insert(sb, ",")
table_insert(sb, string.format("%.6f", meta.avgTime))
table_insert(sb, "\\r\
")
end
end
return table.concat(sb)
end
@brooksie and this is why I love this forum! Thanks