PixelPerfectEngine v0.11.0-alpha release

solidstate1991 laszloszeremi at outlook.com
Sun Jan 21 01:24:22 UTC 2024


https://github.com/ZILtoid1991/pixelperfectengine/releases/tag/v0.11.0-alpha

Two major changes are:

1) Implementation of the M2 format. Due to the lack of any proper 
MIDI2.0 formats, I decided to implement my own, and also added 
some additional function which allows it to be used for adaptive 
soundtracks via scripting. Sometimes I call it a "Turing-complete 
MIDI file" as a joke. Some functions are missing, such as most of 
the macros that would allow it to function as a de-facto 
high-level scripting language, with a syntax similar to Lua, 
alongside with a lot of assembly-like instructions.

2) Removal of the Lua scripting engine. It had hard-to-debug 
errors, issues I resolved previously reappearing even though the 
fix were still in place, etc. It'll be replaced with something 
better, likely a VM that will allow it to execute scripts written 
in various languages. I'd prefer to use a preexiting VM, with 
QScript's VM being a potential candidate, especially since I have 
other things to work on. M2 technically has a VM, and reusing the 
experiences with it would be useful for implementing my own, but 
I have limited time and other more important features to 
implement.

The final 0.11.0 version will have:
* A better file dialog (a major headache inducing bug were 
already fixed).
* Resizable windows.
* Resampling to higher sample rates.
* Better path handling (currently it's very fragile, and tries to 
look for assets in whatever folder the user runs the engine from).
* Logging.
* I'll try to replace SDL with my own solution, iota. It already 
has some preliminary x11 support, legacy Windows IO works, but 
it's really hard to look up stuff, and many instead suggest 
people to use either some bloated libraries that feature stuff 
even the C standard library has, and/or has a very legacy-style 
input/output handling (DirectInput and not rarely DirectAudio use 
instead of their more modern counterparts, etc). SDL has a lot of 
issues with documentation, bloat, etc.
* I'll also try to finally get the file compression for assets 
working. I created the format DataPak, with has some tricks to 
both speed up and lower the size compared to other solutions, by 
using the dictionary compression mode of ZStandard (requires the 
use of uncompressed bitmaps: compressing PNGs would be really 
slow and ineffective, since they're already compressed with the 
older ZLib algorithm).


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