Re: trying Chickadee

[Zelphir Kaltstahl]

Adding (add-hook! quit-hook abort-game) worked flawlessly, thanks.

Can I do anything to help Chickadee to recognize my monitor refresh rate?


On 04.09.2018 21:22, Thompson, David wrote:
> Hello Zelphir,
>
> First, thanks for trying Chickadee!
>
> On Tue, Sep 4, 2018 at 2:34 PM, Zelphir Kaltstahl
> <address@hidden> wrote:
>> On my system Chickadee seems to build fine with the usual configure,
>> make, make install. However I want to mention something, which might
>> indicate a problem.
>>
>> When I run the example code:
>>
>> ~~~~~
>> (use-modules (chickadee)
>>              (chickadee math vector)
>>              (chickadee render sprite)
>>              (chickadee render texture))
>>
>> (define sprite #f)
>>
>> (define (load)
>>   (set! sprite (load-image "logo.png")))
>>
>> (define (draw alpha)
>>   (draw-sprite sprite (vec2 256.0 176.0)))
>>
>> (add-hook! load-hook load)
>> (add-hook! draw-hook draw)
>>
>> (run-game)
>> ~~~~~
> (Just a heads up: Chickadee 0.3.0 will be released soon and it will
> remove the add-hook! stuff. It's an easy change, but be sure to refer
> to the updated example code when 0.3.0 is released!)
>
>> It works and the sprite is rendered, however, one core is used to 100%.
>> I guess the game loop is rendering the sprite over and over again in a
>> non-updated position.
> Correct, the game loop doesn't stop because you're not moving
> anything. Chickadee's game loop renders frames as often as possible.
> If 100% of one CPU core is being used, the likely culprit is that
> Chickadee was unable to sync it's drawing with the monitor's refresh
> rate, which could cause it to pause a bit after rendering each frame.
> Perhaps I could automatically factor in a small usleep call when vsync
> is unavailable in order to avoid this situation.
>
>> Another thing is, that I cannot click the close button of the window
>> that renders the sprite. I guess because I do not handle the closing
>> event in this example code. I need to close it by C-c C-c in my Eshell.
> Yes, that's exactly why.  The quit hook is run when the close button
> is pressed, but you haven't added anything to handle that hook.  If
> you eval (add-hook! quit-hook abort-game) then the game will close
> when you click the window's close button.
>
>> Aside from that it seems to work fine. I would like to see development
>> in 2D game engines for Guile. I imagine minimalistic libraries / game
>> engines and Guile to be a powerful combination! I always wanted to make
>> a game (like probably most people in CS :D). Maybe with Guile and
>> Chickadee or similar I can grab some new motivation. So far I have not
>> tried to build anything complex with Chickadee, but maybe it is already
>> possible. I think it would be cool to have a page listing projects using
>> Chickadee, even if those projects are not done or only proofs of concepts.
> I don't know of anyone that has built anything particularly complex
> with Chickadee, but if anyone has that is reading this please let me
> know!
>
> I call Chickadee a "game toolkit" rather than an "engine" because it's
> simply a collection of handy building blocks that you need to piece
> together on your own, whereas an engine has already made major
> architecture decisions for you. It's more like building your own
> furniture than assembling something from IKEA.  It's a lot easier to
> make a collection of essential game utilities that almost every game
> developer needs than it is to design an entire engine, so that's why
> Chickadee is what it is.  I mentioned elsewhere in this thread that
> I'm working on a somewhat minimal game engine built on top of
> Chickadee called Starling (sticking with the bird theme) that I think
> will help people go from nothing to playable game in much less time.
> However, you may not like the abstractions I chose for Starling, but
> Chickadee's building blocks will always be there to assemble however
> you wish.
>
> - Dave