As noted before, I am using my engine which I have used on multiple app's in the past. It really does pay off to think about how you will create new app's and link them in with your engine when you are designing it. It took all of about 1 hour to have a simple window up and running with full 2D/3D acceleration and scene graph support. It really feels good to know that you did something correct the first time! [grin]
A Note On PerformanceWith the beginning of a project I always like to benchmark things from the beginning and monitor how various resources of the computer are consumed as a project progresses. This helps enormously with understanding the impact of each set of changes that are made, plus it helps you understand what the compiler/EXE, monitor, CPU, GPU, memory, and hard drive are all doing with respect to your game.
With that said, my development machine is a P4 2.8 GHz, 512 mb of memory, and a GoForce 5200 FX (its a laptop). Here is a basic list of the application parameters at this point in the project:
1. Resolution: 640x480 with no vsync
2. ARGB 32-bit framebuffer
3. Windowed mode
4. D24X8-bit z-buffer (no-stencil)
And all the application is doing right now:
1. Update scenegraph (its only a camera right now)
2. Clear the back buffer/z-buffer
3. Render all nodes of scene graph (so nothing right now)
4. Present the framebuffer
This produces a debug executable that is 1,406 KB, uses 16 MB of system memory, and renders at 899 frames per second. This doesn't seem like too fast, but my video card is substantially slower than a desktop one (my old GF3 spanks it in most normal app's), so I accept this as a good test bed.
So, it seems that the frame rate is pretty good, the exe size is mainly due to being a debug build, and 16 MB of memory is more or less the foot-print of an EXE built from my engine.
Now that we have a starting point, we can measure what is really going on from here on out. More to come for sure!
