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Offline Michael Koch  
#1 Posted : Wednesday, January 1, 2014 11:01:54 PM(UTC)
Michael Koch

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Hey there,

I have been playing with the engine again - slowly getting a grip on things. Some questions arose today - which I'd like to list here (instead of making a post for each single one; hope that is ok).

- I'm using ConsoleLogger for Debug output to VS. Although, I noted this is also going remote (can be seen in my profile's log area). How can I switch this off? There is no real sense in spamming remote servers when I start my test program over and over. Or are the built-in loggers meant to be used for different purposes?

- I read there is a ProfilingMode enum. Could I - by any chance - show memory usage, fps etc. in-app by switching on such a profiling mode (without writing own stuff)?

- After some fiddling with my current app (named "DEApp1"), I wanted to use the App Builder. But while content download and all worked, I could not find the app's name in the Builder's drop-down list. Is this a known issue that can happen - or did I break stuff?

- I noticed that in the samples, there are bitmap fonts like Verdana12Font (xml+bitmap) and Vector text things like JewelBlocks_VectorText (xml file only). I have only used the Verdana so far. Are we supposed to rather use the Vector text ones (somehow)?

- Trying out "ContentLoader.Use<DiskContentLoader>", I noticed that materials I created online could not be found anymore. The ContentMetaData.xml in the project's dir does not contain material, while the one in ...\DeltaEngine.1.0\OpenTK\Content\DEApp1\ does. Should I just copy over the latter one? What is the reason for these two versions anyway?

That is enough for today, I think BigGrin

Thanks All,

miko

PS: Ah, I see internetfreak's tutorials are online again. Great stuff, Sir!

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Offline internetfreak  
#2 Posted : Thursday, January 2, 2014 2:25:13 AM(UTC)
internetfreak

Joined: 12/19/2011(UTC)
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Hi Miko93,
I see you are from germany as well :D
Thanks for the nice words regarding my tutorials, as I wrote in a post, they were off because of an unexpected server fault :(

About your questions:

1. I didn't really use the logger yet so I can only assume but the use of the logger would probably be to log useful things for example when the app crashes or something else. For this reason the logs are also visible online so you can see what got logged. I don't know why the ConsoleLogger also sync its log to the page so here we have to wait for Benjamin or someone else to answer

2. Regarding the ProfilingMode enum I also don't know exactly what it is but maybe you can find an answer if you search through the source code of delta (I often found some details about using something in the source)

3. Which dropdown do you mean? When you created the project with the editor, you should have an content project (you said the content works so you have one) which you can choose at the builder. Then you also have to point to the sln file from your project so the projects could be loaded. You should then see your apps entry point. After you selected the platform you normally should be able to build so I cannot imagine the error right now.
Maybe you can give us more details? :)

4. For Fonts we also have to wait for the DE staff as I don't know much about fonts yet

5. The DiskContentLoader is meant to be completely offline. When you use it, just throw your content into the Content folder and delete the ContentMetaData.xml if it exists. When you want to use content, you just load it normally as you're used to and the ContentLoader will automatically build a new ContentMetaData.xml. You see, everything is locally now so it doesn't download anything from the server. If you want to use materials you still can copy it over and use it. You can also use the appropriate constructor for loading materials without creating one, just specify the image name and the Shader (Hint: look in the shader class, it contains all the shader names as constants ;) )
The folder you named is the local content cache for the editor so normally you can use that content even when you are using the normal ContentLoader which loads everything from th server.


I hope my answers are clear enough (sometimes I fail with that and create some text which is hardly understandable :D) and can help you at least a bit
If you have more answers feel free to ask, if the topic is good enough I could also write some tutorials about it (I need more tutorials to help delta :))
Mein Blog: www.internetfreak.net

- Inoffizieller DeltaEngine-Supporter und Tutorialschreiber -
Offline Benjamin  
#3 Posted : Thursday, January 2, 2014 9:07:31 AM(UTC)
Benjamin

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Originally Posted by: miko93 Go to Quoted Post

- I'm using ConsoleLogger for Debug output to VS. Although, I noted this is also going remote (can be seen in my profile's log area). How can I switch this off? There is no real sense in spamming remote servers when I start my test program over and over. Or are the built-in loggers meant to be used for different purposes?


The ConsoleLogger is really only logging to the Console as the name implies. There is also the TextFileLogger, which is used by default (the ConsoleLogger is only used in Debug mode), which will log into your C:\Users\<UserName>\Documents\DeltaEngine\<ProjectName>\ folder. NetworkLogger is defined in DeltaEngine.Loggers too and will be created by default in AppRunner.CreateDefaultLoggers (only in developer versions), this way all developer issues can be collected in the profile of the project owners. Once you build your App with the AppBuilder this feature goes away. If you want to disable it yourself just comment out that line in CreateDefaultLoggers or point the online service to a different IP (which would also disable online content). Do you maybe want an extra option in Settings for customizing this?

Originally Posted by: miko93 Go to Quoted Post

- I read there is a ProfilingMode enum. Could I - by any chance - show memory usage, fps etc. in-app by switching on such a profiling mode (without writing own stuff)?


Yes, you can use it together with Scenes to show a realtime on screen profiling overview at a high level. For micro-profiling you should use a profiler like Ants Profiler or dotTrace. For details see DeltaEngine\Profiling\Tests\

Originally Posted by: miko93 Go to Quoted Post

- After some fiddling with my current app (named "DEApp1"), I wanted to use the App Builder. But while content download and all worked, I could not find the app's name in the Builder's drop-down list. Is this a known issue that can happen - or did I break stuff?


That sounds very strange, could you please just zip up your project and write an email to Bugs@DeltaEngine.net with the zip attachment so we can try to reproduce this. The AppBuilder is a new feature that is only 1.5 months old, there might be unsupported scenarios. Usually you will find some output in the console output window of the Editor if there is anything wrong.

Originally Posted by: miko93 Go to Quoted Post

- I noticed that in the samples, there are bitmap fonts like Verdana12Font (xml+bitmap) and Vector text things like JewelBlocks_VectorText (xml file only). I have only used the Verdana so far. Are we supposed to rather use the Vector text ones (somehow)?


In the nightly builds version you can find the Font Editor, which allows you to create bitmap fonts yourself from any font with any settings. The VectorText is just a fallback system in case no font was found, but font display is needed to show some issues on screen. It is rarely used (except in some fanzy samples or tests with zooming or 3D font lines display).

Originally Posted by: miko93 Go to Quoted Post

- Trying out "ContentLoader.Use<DiskContentLoader>", I noticed that materials I created online could not be found anymore. The ContentMetaData.xml in the project's dir does not contain material, while the one in ...\DeltaEngine.1.0\OpenTK\Content\DEApp1\ does. Should I just copy over the latter one? What is the reason for these two versions anyway?


DiskContentLoader is the offline version for loading content. As Internetfreak already has described it is best if you just copy your content folder there manually. There are some scenarios, which are not supported if you put new files in. Basically anything that needs to be converted in the cloud is not going to work locally (3D models like .fbx files, font generation, image or audio format conversions, etc.)

About the tutorials, we have around 60 already, but many were outdated and not material for v1.0, so they are excluded from the tutorials website right now, but we will bring them back in the upcoming weeks to help with some things you asked about.
Offline Michael Koch  
#4 Posted : Friday, January 3, 2014 11:17:02 PM(UTC)
Michael Koch

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Thank you both for the detailed explanations. Very much appreciated.

(ConsoleLogger:) Yeah, I'd definitely vote for an option to disable the default logging to remote (and it should be off by default, imho). Besides the spamming of remote servers, it has some "phoning home" smell. Might be good for a professional production group, but the average hobby home user wouldn't want that initially (again: imho). Of course, this does not apply for the remote app builder. Storing those logs makes always sense.
Ah, and the online log profile should be erasable by the user, I believe. What if I compile ..err.. my secret 'nude girl app v1' and forgot to turn remote logging off? BigGrin

(Profiling:) Uhm, I searched 1.0 and nightly for "Profiling" namespace (the docs talk about DeltaEngine.Profiling and Delta.Scenes.Profiling at some place), but couldn't find anything. Could it be profiling isn't in the current releases - or am I just too blind to see?

(BuilderIssue:) Ok, bug report sent. Note that a new project created today worked well - just the "old one" won't do. Btw, on a separate submission, I felt free to report an issue with Systeminformation

(DiskContentLoader:) Ok, got it (I think).

Today, I subscribed to the Basic plan - wanted to see how the remote creation of Web and Android would work with (another crappy) test app I made.

Web finally compiled, but the automatically invoked web page didn't show anything (also, FireBug didn't show any errors. Something gets loaded, DOM properties are there, but thats it...). WebGL and such is enabled.
How can I access the created files anyway, to e.g. put onto an own server? See yourself (not) here: https://deltaengine.net/...l%20Koch/RunningManTest/

Android brought up some compiler errors - which might or might not be caused by my coding style, dunno. Details could be seen in my online logs (I take it makes no sense to post those here, right?)

On an unrelated note, is it "safe" to use DeltaEngineCpp, in terms of new releases? I mean, will there usually be a (major?) delay for new releases, compared to C# ? I might go for Cpp (didn't play with it yet, tho).

Have a nice weekend all,
miko
Offline Benjamin  
#5 Posted : Saturday, January 4, 2014 9:22:01 AM(UTC)
Benjamin

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Hi Miko,

New feature for turning off the NetworkLogger has been written, you will be notified in this thread once it is implemented.
Another feature (will probably take a bit more time) to clear the log history (maybe by app) is also written down.

Profiling is part of the nightly releases (and prior to v1.0).

Your web app seems to be have been converted correctly, all files are working, however the main project RunningManTest.js file is missing. Probably some solution/project setup did not work correctly. I have forwarded a bug to the AppBuilder developer, he will get back to you if he needs additional information.

You should be able to see all web files in your local AppBuilder folder, we will however also include a download button on your profile (like you can download the windows, android, etc. versions from there right now).

For the compiler errors on Android the developer has been notified already and will try to fix the issues.

DeltaEngineCpp has not been updated for a long time. We have an internal build we use for Windows, Android and iOS as the basis, but we have to spend some time cleaning it up and making it work. The release is planned as soon as that work is done (hopefully January/February, but it all depends if we are actually working on it, which we did not for most of 2013). Btw: DeltaEngineJava release is also planned shortly in the next months. Once all three languages are available in 2014 it will help people understand what the DeltaEngine is about, it is not just a framework for one language on one platform, but instead a much bigger tool.

Thanks for subscribing to the Basic plan, very much appreciated ThumpUp
Offline Michael Koch  
#6 Posted : Saturday, January 4, 2014 5:11:02 PM(UTC)
Michael Koch

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Ben, thanks again for the fast response and advised actions.

As for _Cpp: Yes, I understand. Can't be done all at once anyway. Personally, I believe that having a 3D stable release with one language ist probably most imminent. And this would be C# then, obviously.

Btw, this is a small leaflet I made to better understand the DE workings. If anyone can make use of this, please do: http://www.mikoweb.eu/tmp/DE_Relations.PNG (not saying it is overall correct nor complete. Just for me to understand better).
Offline Benjamin  
#7 Posted : Sunday, January 5, 2014 7:55:12 AM(UTC)
Benjamin

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Yes of course. However C++ and Java support as well as supporting many frameworks (Xna, DirectX, OpenGL, ES, WebGL, etc.) is basically just a side effect of our converters because we have to do these conversions anyway to support as many platforms as possible. A pure C# Xna engine like many other engines do it is not very useful these days with many platforms not supporting it directly (well, MonoGame kind of does this, but it is a very different approach and too low level for our taste).

Thanks for the cool overview diagram you created, I will put it here: http://deltaengine.net/learn/startingwithcsharp BigGrin
Offline mc-kay  
#8 Posted : Wednesday, January 8, 2014 1:54:20 PM(UTC)
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The is now a menu point "DELETE LOGS" on the account page where you can delete log collections of projects.
Offline Benedict  
#9 Posted : Monday, January 13, 2014 12:33:01 PM(UTC)
Benedict

Joined: 5/15/2013(UTC)
Posts: 4

By now it is also possible to deactivate the networked logging completely so new logs will not be created.

For deactivating network logging from your application, set or add the following to your settings.xml, which can be found in /DeltaEngine/[yourProject]/ within your "Documents" directory:
Quote:
<UseOnlineLogging>false</UseOnlineLogging>

The default, which is used if no setting is found, is true.

If you would like to change during a running application, for example by a developer mode command, you can use (C#):
It is saved to your local file when closing the application.
Quote:
Settings.Current.UseOnlineLogging = false;


Obviously up to here this is just a thing set locally, so in case you would like to change the defaults for your project such that you have consistent defaults across several systems running it, add a DefaultSettings.xml to your project's content (usually done via the Editor) - It shall be used instead of the default settings initially provided!

Edited by user Monday, January 13, 2014 12:37:48 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Offline Michael Koch  
#10 Posted : Monday, January 13, 2014 8:48:43 PM(UTC)
Michael Koch

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Very useful change, Benedict, thanks ThumpUp

I understand this will publicly be available with an upcoming release, right?
IIRC, next one is planned around end of january or so (note I'm not pushing, just asking).
Offline Judge  
#11 Posted : Tuesday, January 14, 2014 10:42:08 PM(UTC)
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Hi Miko,

I just want to let you now that the problem with the Project selection at the AppBuilder should now be fixed (Btw. thanks a lot for your bug report ThumpUp ),
so you can check it out with the next nightly release the next days Cool .

We also have an idea about your problem with building a Web version of your app but this will probably take some time.


PS: If there should be still some issues or questions, just feel free to ask Smile .
Offline Michael Koch  
#12 Posted : Wednesday, January 15, 2014 9:51:42 PM(UTC)
Michael Koch

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Aye Judge, thanks! Looking forward to lay my filthy hands on the next nightly BigGrin
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