Popular Post david 8.4k Posted April 17, 2022 Popular Post Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 Greetings! With the 10 year anniversary of Mine-imator coming up, I’ve decided to temporarily rejoin the developer team and add some long requested features you will soon be able to download in an upcoming version 2.0 pre-release arriving late May/early June! @Nimi has done some phenomenal work on new features (many not even announced yet!), however the graphics engine used (GameMaker) has been a big obstacle towards optimizing the software and ensuring good framerates and memory usage with all the new additions. Therefore I have jumped in to lend a hand and I've finally been able to successfully migrate Mine-imator to a new graphics engine using the C++ programming language for added performance, optimized memory (x64) and multi-platform support. For all the technical details see the bottom of the post. In order to facilitate the development we have greatly appreciated your support throughout the years, creating and sharing content, giving suggestions, reporting bugs and especially with donations! Mine-imator has for the past decade been completely free and will remain so, but your donations have helped keep it alive with webserver costs and directly funded the development of version 2.0 (for instance, I had to get a MacBook for this update ). If you have not donated yet to the development team or wish to continue supporting, see the link below: Donate to Mine-imator development ($5+ one-time or recurring) With all that aside, let’s get to the new features found in the first 2.0 pre-release, later followed by additional releases with Nimi’s UI changes, animation improvements and rendering features (See Dev Update #21)! Let’s get HYPED! Starting off small yet useful, an actually working Cancel option when clicking the program’s X! Next up something for the multi-monitor animators: No more crammed workspaces, simply detach your timeline or camera view into a second window and drag it to another screen! Scenery/.schematic file loading has been multi-threaded and optimized to be around 10 times faster as well as taking up less memory, allowing much bigger regions than before! In addition, the scenery is cached and instantly loaded upon re-opening your project (with no loading bar). Mine-imator will soon be able to handle much more complex projects with a speedup between 3-5 times compared to earlier versions when rendering many objects. This is made possible with CPU optimizations and combining objects into batches before sending them to the GPU for rendering (Mine-imator will not be allocating more CPU resources compared to current versions, just using them more efficiently). Linux users have been left out of using Mine-imator for 10 years, but no more! Version 2.0 will run smoothly on Debian/Ubuntu operating systems with all the same features! (P.S. If you have another favorite Linux distribution let us know) Same goes for Mac OS users after countless requests! Finally, the “Import from World” option has been completely reworked to have a 3D interface for more easily selecting a section of your world to animate. Despite being 3D and having more options, it will also load worlds much more quickly compared to the current version and in general be more stable. It will also be integrated into the software rather than opening a pop-up window, and accessed with a shortcut in the toolbar. Behind the scenes of the 2.0 C++ port: (Things will get technical and nerdy, you have been warned!!) Spoiler Porting Mine-imator away from GameMaker has been attempted several times in the past and was known for being an extremely laborious and complex task, sure to take years if attempted manually. For reference, the current codebase is well over 90,000 lines of code (think of each line as an instruction, each feature consisting of an intertwined network of thousands of lines) making it a huge task for anyone to tackle, given all the features added over 10 years by multiple developers. This is not to mention the extra code needed to fill in the gaps of the GameMaker functionality used, such as drawing the GUI, handling keyboard/mouse input and rendering geometry using shaders. The end goal would be to switch from GameMaker Language (GML) into a new chosen programming language with more performance, memory management and multi-platform capabilities, where C++ was chosen as the best option. Given the nature of the task, I decided roughly 3 months ago to try a new approach for 2.0 and automatically have a script read the files in the codebase, figure out the functions and variables used and convert it line-by-line to working (and heavily optimized) C++ code. Having a program to act as a compiler of-sorts and convert from GML to C++ would also allow the team to keep using GameMaker as the development tool (IDE) for testing, while having the benefits of C++ for the final build released to the public. After some experimentation I was able to convert the entire codebase into C++ using a C# script, taking no less than 20 seconds (compared to the years it would take manually). The problem still persisted of filling in said gaps of the GameMaker functionality which is where the majority of the remaining work was, along with making sure the converted code was bug-free and achieved the exact same behavior as the GML by carefully comparing the behavior of 1.2.9 and the C++ version of 1.2.9. See below for a snippet of GML code on the left and the converted C++ counterpart on the right (created automatically in a few milliseconds by the script). Doing this manually and testing it to make sure it works and fixing the resulting bugs introduced by common mistakes would potentially take hours. After the code was ported, I started looking into new features that could be added in this new C++ environment that were previously impossible in GameMaker, including optimizing the performance further, adding multi-threading, multl-monitor support, more advanced 3D rendering (such batch rendering and boosting the world importer) and the heavily requested Mac OS/Linux support. To conclude, after many years I’ve been able to port Mine-imator to C++, which has without doubt been the most challenging programming task I’ve done but has taught me a lot and I hope the resulting improvements and features will be appreciated by countless animators for another 10 years ahead! Be sure to keep an eye out for the upcoming pre-releases, following our Twitter page or joining our Discord chat might be a good idea. Once again thank you for all the support through the years and keep on animating our favorite block game! /David 紅羊qwq, FOXY TOONS, Yellowz and 98 others 69 5 1 26 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
WinnythailandFX 96 Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 Hmm... interesting Lyzander Mixers 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mckristiyan28 3 Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 When is Mine imator 2.0 out? Cant wait to see it JoeFly 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
LacaMenDRY 1.3k Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 BRO! This is Awesome Dude!!! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
FOXY TOONS 2.8k Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 (edited) Mine Imator, IT's starting to get real dudes! Edited April 17, 2022 by FOXY TOONS justin_ and AllenBiTs 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MCPA Team 163 Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 I can't wait for 2.0!! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
An Engie Main 239 Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 (edited) nice, anyway android support when (jk) Hype is at max level Edited April 17, 2022 by An Engie Main justin_ 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoundsDotZip 394 Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 Thank you David, and everyone else on the Dev team for putting so much time and effort into Mine-imator! It's going to become a truly amazing program! 9redwoods and david 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
9redwoods 3.8k Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 This is amazing news. Keep up the great work! LordKillo 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
GbStudio 1.6k Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 (edited) This is sick, awesome job! As someone working on their CS major, I can’t imagine the work to port the game maker code to C++. Major respect! Edited April 17, 2022 by GbStudio david 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordKillo 42 Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 BANGER11!1111!!11 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheXKing360 223 Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 the man is back On 4/17/2022 at 7:08 PM, david said: With the 10 year anniversary of Mine-imator coming up, I’ve decided to temporarily rejoin the developer team temporarily ... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
funnydusto 36 Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 I love it.. I LOVE IT! I LOVE IT!!! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
KevinAnimatez 180 Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 WOOO YAAAAA Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeioceraYT 0 Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 yay kool Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
FOXY TOONS 2.8k Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 On 4/17/2022 at 11:23 AM, An Engie Main said: android support Em Z PH, Ghatos, Zed and 5 others 2 1 5 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Em Z PH 61 Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 On 4/18/2022 at 12:17 AM, mckristiyan28 said: When is Mine imator 2.0 out? Cant wait to see it it will come out when 1.19 releases probably You guys have done a lot and we appreciate all of it and now we wait for the update oh yeah you guys should definitely add IK- (this is a joke please don't send anyone to assasinate me for asking) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotChris 2.8k Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 Holy- This is insane. April the 17th be with you Aric Horn 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Floofy 1.9k Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 (edited) Like I said in the discord, I just donated 10 dollars to the MI page, the work done on this program is phenomenal and its looking to be the greatest update ever come to MI! From what i heard, this will probably be the last major update for a long time so we highly appreciate all the work put in and I wish the team luck in future projects of their own. Can't wait to use the pre-releases soon, but i will be sure to be patient! Edited April 17, 2022 by Floofy david and Jossamations 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
DearFox 13 Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 How about free rotation? And the ability to choose relative to what you want to rotate the object at the moment or move it. LacaMenDRY and Webber 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwoToRule 505 Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 You are insane I love it david 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
普通青年 0 Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 Pretty good. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turbulated 26 Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 This is looking pretty damn good, and I could defiantly benefit greatly from the increased memory and optimizations that would allow me to tackle much greater projects. Donated 4 dollars and 50 cents to help out on the development. Cheers. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
tutibrave 433 Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 The fact that importing from worlds will be integrated into the program itself is a great benefit for portable devices! (iPhone, iPad, and Android phones and tablets) justin_ 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daphral 2 Posted April 17, 2022 Report Share Posted April 17, 2022 POG Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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