Experiments with the container layerMode and Animation Engine

[Derek Bump]

Hello List,

I hope all of you have been well. It's been a while since I've 
experimented with Animation Engine--or LiveCode in general--and the 
recent addition of the "container" layerMode in 9.5 had me thinking that 
it might be a good time to revisit animation and gaming. However, I've 
been rooted in the world of LAMPP stacks for the past decade and my 
grasp of math-heavy concepts is pretty bad.

So with that in mind, I was hoping I could get some feedback on my 
scrapbook? I have two different machines that I've been testing on and 
the results have been pretty interesting. Especially on the Linux side, 
which is where I saw the fastest rendering. I assumed that Windows would 
have had a commanding lead, but rendering with Linux on the same 
hardware was nearly twice as fast. Which makes me suspicious I may have 
overlooked something.

https://speedbump.io/shared/yage/YAGE_Sketchbook_v1.zip (37.4 MB)
https://speedbump.io/shared/yage/YAGE_Sketchbook_v1_without_builds.zip 
(134.2 KB)

Platform binaries are located in ./builds, Windowed at 1024 x 576 pixels...

4 cores, 4 Threads @3.2 GHz, i5-4570 (2013)

     Linux Mint 19.1
         Random Movement 1x1: 85-95 fps
         Polygonal: 68-90 fps

     Windows 10
         Random Movement 1x1: 37-41 fps
         Polygonal:29-41 fps

4 cores, 8 Threads @2.3 GHz, i7-3615QM (2013)

     macOS 10.14.5
         Random Movement 1x1: 12-15 fps
         Polygonal: 15-25 fps

One suspicion in particular is whether my implementation of Animation 
Engine is efficient or not? My sketches are largely just a continuous 
loop, but I know my rendering will decline significantly once I start 
adding more logic, collisions, media, and anything else I've overlooked. 
I'm still making my way through the documentation though.

My plans for the future are some mini-games in a simplified style. 
Top-down racing with basic collision detection, maybe a fishing game, or 
something even more basic like skydiving into rings. To be honest, I get 
most of my ideas from the mini-games my spouse loves to play so I'll 
probably glean a few since I have a live-in play tester. Gotta be 
careful with that. ;-)

So anyways, I'm looking forward to hearing what you folks have to say.

I hope everyone has a great weekend. Cheers!

--

Derek Bump
Henderson, NV