Dev update #18: 1.3.0 - Lighting

[__Mine__ 1.9k]

21 minutes ago, moniker said:

The problem is Gamemaker is garbage. If Mineimator was ported into a proper engine we wouldn't have to deal with this nonsense. My computer should be able to move 20 blocky models running at 60fps in any reasonable software. Blender is unfortunately too complex to use. I like the ease of use of Mineimator and the fact that it looks like Vanilla Minecraft, however, the performance is just terrible. Throw in a couple schematics, 15 or 20 models, animate for 10 minutes and you can't no longer have smooth playback in a high end 2020 CPU. Nuts.

Don't like it? Stop wasting your time whining about it and instead look for a program better suited to your needs, because you've been non-stop whining about this for a long time now and frankly it's making you look bad.

Edited April 19, 2020 by __Mine__

[moniker 67]

12 minutes ago, __Mine__ said:

Don't like it? Stop wasting your time whining about it and instead look for a program better suited to your needs, because you've been non-stop whining about this for a long time now and frankly it's making you look bad.

I had a hope that the bad performance was due me having a 10 year old computer. However, after buying a computer that can run next gen games at 3 figure FPS but fails to run 15 villagers running at 60 fps the conclusion is obvious: GameMaker is an abomination of a software, and Nimi's hard work feels wasted.

[Dr. Nexil 1.4k]

1 hour ago, moniker said:

GameMaker is an abomination of a software, and Nimi's hard work feels wasted.

And yet this hasn't stopped creators from making godlike renders and animations. If you feel limited then it's your fault. Nobody is stopping you from taking the time to learn "complex" softwares like blender, or adjust with Mine-imator.

[moniker 67]

14 minutes ago, Dr. Nexil said:

And yet this hasn't stopped creators from making godlike renders and animations. If you feel limited then it's your fault. Nobody is stopping you from taking the time to learn "complex" softwares like blender, or adjust with Mine-imator.

Renders are irrelevant because it isn't moving. Animations... most are like 1 minute long and don't have many characters at once. I'll still keep using it because I like the vanilla look and simplicity, can't be bothered to learn other software. Doesn't change the fact that performance is a joke.

Edited April 19, 2020 by moniker

[CRAZYKOKEBROZ 64]

23 minutes ago, moniker said:

Renders are irrelevant because it isn't moving. Animations... most are like 1 minute long and don't have many characters at once.

Are you sure about that? (Its a little cheap, but I'm getting better at it by the day)

[Frost 3.3k]

19 minutes ago, moniker said:

Renders are irrelevant because it isn't moving. Animations... most are like 1 minute long and don't have many characters at once. I'll still keep using it because I like the vanilla look and simplicity, can't be bothered to learn other software. Doesn't change the fact that performance is a joke.

1. Common animations created by users are irrelevant to this topic.

2. MI will not be switched from using GM anywhere in the near future, because that would take more work than Nimi is willing to do for a free software.

3. You say you don't like MI because of it's performance, so you have been advised to look into other softwares. You stated that you do not want to move to them because you like the simplicity of MI. If MI doesn't have and cannot have what you want in it, yet you are not willing to learn any other software, then isn't this your own problem? None of us here on the forums can help you, and the devs aren't going to switch engines anytime soon, so why are you complaining? Stop bugging the devs with all your unfixable problems.

Either push yourself to learn a professional software or deal with MI's limited capabilities.

Edited April 19, 2020 by Frost

[moniker 67]

1 hour ago, CRAZYKOKEBROZ said:

Are you sure about that? (Its a little cheap, but I'm getting better at it by the day)

Don't mark it as made for kids or else people can't comment. If your animation is smooth when working, then probably you didn't use as many keyframes as I did. Im not saying it cant be done, im saying that it's annoying to work with crippled FPS.

54 minutes ago, Frost said:

1. Common animations created by users are irrelevant to this topic.

2. MI will not be switched from using GM anywhere in the near future, because that would take more work than Nimi is willing to do for a free software.

3. You say you don't like MI because of it's performance, so you have been advised to look into other softwares. You stated that you do not want to move to them because you like the simplicity of MI. If MI doesn't have and cannot have what you want in it, yet you are not willing to learn any other software, then isn't this your own problem? None of us here on the forums can help you, and the devs aren't going to switch engines anytime soon, so why are you complaining? Stop bugging the devs with all your unfixable problems.

Either push yourself to learn a professional software or deal with MI's limited capabilities.

 

There's things that could be done. For instance,  a way to toggle the work camera to be disabled while you press play and watch the active camera window and you want to look at the end result so you don't need the render to work x2 having the work camera enabled. This would be toggled with a keyboard shortcut to quickly switch between it. It would make playblack way smoother.

Edited April 19, 2020 by moniker

[Frost 3.3k]

10 minutes ago, moniker said:

There's things that could be done. For instance,  a way to toggle the work camera to be disabled while you press play and watch the active camera window and you want to look at the end result so you don't need the render to work x2 having the work camera enabled. This would be toggled with a keyboard shortcut to quickly switch between it. It would make playblack way smoother.

This random feature idea you came up with isn't going to solve nearly all the lag problems. Make a topic or something, but you ignored basically my entire comment.

[CRAZYKOKEBROZ 64]

29 minutes ago, moniker said:

Don't mark it as made for kids or else people can't comment.

Wan’t me to risk a $20,000-$42,350 fine?

(but I will disable it temporarily)

[Vei The One 17]

Personally, I cannot wait for this update!

[moniker 67]

14 hours ago, Frost said:

This random feature idea you came up with isn't going to solve nearly all the lag problems. Make a topic or something, but you ignored basically my entire comment.

Not random, i've talked about it before. It would help a lot when you are watching the end result in the active window. There's no need to have the render working twice, work camera should be able to be disabled. Compare how smooth the program is when you disable active camera and disable "toggle controls, wireframes etc".

 

The rest of your comment is "just use blender because there's no way to fix it". I know MI is doomed as long as its stuck in GameMaker but at least we can come up with workarounds such as the aforementioned one.

 

13 hours ago, CRAZYKOKEBROZ said:

Wan’t me to risk a $20,000-$42,350 fine?

(but I will disable it temporarily)

Minecraft is fine from the COPPA nonsense.

 

[Voxy 7.3k]

To be fair, they have a point. Being able to toggle between cameras without having to open a second viewport would definitely help with lag.

But... the whole "just rewrite MI in another language/engine"? Nah. Won't happen. I don't see the point in doing so when the vast majority of users are just kids making dumb short animations for fun. And I think Nimi would agree with me. Besides, let's not forget he's all alone working on this shit and that he gets a laughable amount of revenue for the work he puts in.

[moniker 67]

On 4/20/2020 at 5:22 PM, Voxy said:

To be fair, they have a point. Being able to toggle between cameras without having to open a second viewport would definitely help with lag.

But... the whole "just rewrite MI in another language/engine"? Nah. Won't happen. I don't see the point in doing so when the vast majority of users are just kids making dumb short animations for fun. And I think Nimi would agree with me. Besides, let's not forget he's all alone working on this shit and that he gets a laughable amount of revenue for the work he puts in.

Precisely, if you want a more mature userbase than early teens and kids you would need to port it into a more competent engine. Chicken and egg problem.
But im basically a millenial near to boomer and I like the idea of using this software rather than more complicated stuff, it's just that for certain things it falls short. I know a lot of people that would use this software if the engine wasn't GameMaker and you had XYZ control over stuff.

[Voxy 7.3k]

5 minutes ago, moniker said:

Precisely, if you want a more mature userbase than early teens and kids you would need to port it into a more competent engine. Chicken and egg problem.
But im basically a millenial near to boomer and I like the idea of using this software rather than more complicated stuff, it's just that for certain things it falls short. I know a lot of people that would use this software if the engine wasn't GameMaker and you had XYZ control over stuff.

You're asking Nimi (whose job is already thankless enough that 1.3.0 is probably gonna be his last contribution to the community) to throw all the work he's done in the trash, learn a new programming language and rewrite 8 years worth of development from scratch.

Do you not realize how much work that is? It's not worth it. You want better software? Just... use better software. It's not that hard to understand. 

[__Mine__ 1.9k]

28 minutes ago, moniker said:

Precisely, if you want a more mature userbase than early teens and kids you would need to port it into a more competent engine.

...what?
The engine MI uses has absolutely nothing to do with the userbase. If it was ported to a different engine, it'll still have the same community because MI's simplicity would still be there. For a more mature userbase (not age-related, might I add), MI would need to have loads more complex features, which goes against the whole point of MI's existence; to be a free, easy-to-use Minecraft animation program.

2 minutes ago, moniker said:

I know a lot of people that would use this software if the engine wasn't GameMaker and you had XYZ control over stuff.

Do you, now? Because I haven't seen anyone outright complaining constantly about MI using GameMaker except you. Because, unlike you, everyone else actually has a shred of respect for the one person who's worked tirelessly in his free time to create this program for us all, completely free of charge.

Literally all you've done is constantly spit on his hard work. Grow up.

[Spontaneous Explosions 1.2k]

@moniker Mineinator is open source. If you feel its lacking in something not likely to be added by Nimi, you are free to add it yourself.

If its gamemaker you have a problem with, what the heck are you doing here??

[Cryptic Runner 2.3k]

4 hours ago, moniker said:

and you had XYZ control over stuff.

...what's the problem with XYZ? you want 4D or something? mine imator already has XYZ stuff if you somehow weren't aware during your 5 years of constant complaining.

Edited April 21, 2020 by Cubic Ralsei

[moniker 67]

9 minutes ago, __Mine__ said:

...what?
The engine MI uses has absolutely nothing to do with the userbase. If it was ported to a different engine, it'll still have the same community because MI's simplicity would still be there. For a more mature userbase (not age-related, might I add), MI would need to have loads more complex features, which goes against the whole point of MI's existence; to be a free, easy-to-use Minecraft animation program.

Do you, now? Because I haven't seen anyone outright complaining constantly about MI using GameMaker except you. Because, unlike you, everyone else actually has a shred of respect for the one person who's worked tirelessly in his free time to create this program for us all, completely free of charge.

Literally all you've done is constantly spit on his hard work. Grow up.

That's like saying FLStudio is only used by kids because it's a very easy to use DAW compared to alternatives. As long as the software is powerful and works, if it's easy to use, you'll find a bigger userbase with the right marketing stategies and by organic growth too, because noob animators of all ages will use it before starting right away with Cinema4d or Blender. As of right now, GameMaker is too limiting. It cannot even do proper alpha rendering besides the program struggling past a certain amount of keyframes used. Im not saying Nimi has to do anything, im just commenting my opinion and suggesting things. Sure, im saying GameMaker is a joke, but im also proposing useful stuff like disabling work camera render when you click play and want to watch the end result in the active camera, that's something useful.

Edited April 21, 2020 by moniker

[Cryptic Runner 2.3k]

On 4/21/2020 at 2:10 PM, moniker said:

GameMaker is a joke

i would say you're actually the joke here

Edited April 22, 2020 by Cubic Ralsei
hmm i wonder who could've possibly downvoted... hmmm

[Voxy 7.3k]

Yeah, GameMaker is a joke and I also wish we didn't have to deal how unoptimized it is for 3D but a complete rewrite is just way too much work to be worth it at this stage.

If you want more out of it, just use another program that's more capable.

[Nimi 8.3k]

I don't think GameMaker is a joke at all, some great games have been made with it. It's just not built to be a base for a fully functional 3D animation software, let alone to the ambitious scale that Mine-imator is. Admittedly the joke here, is that Mine-imator (and Modelbench, even in the complete rewrite!) continues be developed with it. GML (GameMaker language) is the only real language I know to a proficient level other than GLSL ES for writing shaders for Mine-imator, so it's stuck in GameMaker for the foreseeable future. I plan on leaving development whether there's another dev or not after 1.3.0 or following bugfix patches as I would like to move onto other endeavors following the possible next year of development for the next major update.

 

In the meantime, I'll be looking into possible optimizations throughout development since there are a handful of opportunities. So far, Mine-imator 1.3.0 has been updated to the latest GameMaker runtime (Was held off, as newer runtimes would usually break stuff due to possible runtime bugs.) which has given Mine-imator a somewhat-noticeable performance boost, which is very present on startup as it's been reduced by about 20 seconds on my computer.

 

On 4/18/2020 at 2:21 PM, moniker said:

I have one of the most powerful CPUs on the market (the new Threadrippers) with a 1080 ti and 64 megs of ram and still refuses to work smoothly...

...CPU usage is at like 5%. RAM and GPU usage are always pretty small, yet the program becomes unsmooth and yes im talking about work mode, im not working with the render on.

Mine-imator a single-threaded x32 application, as with almost all games made with GameMaker. Rendering all but one core on your CPU and anymore than 4GB of RAM useless in terms of performance. All mesh generation for objects, including bending body parts is done in the same thread as everything else in Mine-imator, causing a slow-down between rendering frames, ultimately dropping performance.

[moniker 67]

12 hours ago, Nimi said:

I don't think GameMaker is a joke at all, some great games have been made with it. It's just not built to be a base for a fully functional 3D animation software, let alone to the ambitious scale that Mine-imator is. Admittedly the joke here, is that Mine-imator (and Modelbench, even in the complete rewrite!) continues be developed with it. GML (GameMaker language) is the only real language I know to a proficient level other than GLSL ES for writing shaders for Mine-imator, so it's stuck in GameMaker for the foreseeable future. I plan on leaving development whether there's another dev or not after 1.3.0 or following bugfix patches as I would like to move onto other endeavors following the possible next year of development for the next major update.

 

In the meantime, I'll be looking into possible optimizations throughout development since there are a handful of opportunities. So far, Mine-imator 1.3.0 has been updated to the latest GameMaker runtime (Was held off, as newer runtimes would usually break stuff due to possible runtime bugs.) which has given Mine-imator a somewhat-noticeable performance boost, which is very present on startup as it's been reduced by about 20 seconds on my computer.

 

Mine-imator a single-threaded x32 application, as with almost all games made with GameMaker. Rendering all but one core on your CPU and anymore than 4GB of RAM useless in terms of performance. All mesh generation for objects, including bending body parts is done in the same thread as everything else in Mine-imator, causing a slow-down between rendering frames, ultimately dropping performance.

Did you look into what I said? Disabling the work camera when you press play to watch the end result in the active camera would make things way better. Makes this option ofc, and allow a key shortcut to toggle "work camera on/off during playback" and another that simply toggles work camera on/off.

 

So after 1.3.0 the program is basically abandonware? thats pretty sad... I hope someone keeps updating it. Eventually someone will port it into a proper engine and make a lot of money.

[Cryptic Runner 2.3k]

Just now, moniker said:

Did you look into what I said? Disabling the work camera when you press play to watch the end result in the active camera would make things way better. Makes this option ofc, and allow a key shortcut to toggle "work camera on/off during playback" and another that simply toggles work camera on/off.

 

[Voxy 7.3k]

7 minutes ago, Cubic Ralsei said:

[snip]

I don't think you understand the issue.

[Hozq 2.4k]

Just now, Voxy said:

I don't think you understand the issue.

[snip]