STK Version Numbers

[charlie]

In Brazil, laptops with Intel i3/i5 are among the cheapest (equivalent to 600,00 to 1,000 Dollars) and are almost all are out of stock, since the worker class bought all. Afaik, Intel i3 or i5 runs - easily - games that need much more graphic capacity tha STK. BTW: My comment about less powerful computers didn't include Brazil, but other areas in the Eastern hemisphere.

I mean, is this board willfully ignorant of poverty or what?!?

In some countries $1000 is closer to the average annual wage than a monthly income. I mean, this is not a small population, I'm talking about half the world's population will not be able to afford a $600 PC. Do you think projects like Raspberry Pi and OLPC exist just for kicks? Poverty isn't going away any time soon.

Sheesh, just because you and your family has that kind of money, I can't believe you project that on to the rest of society. There are billions of poor people.

[Tiger]

I know that MOST in the world can't afford a laptop for 1,000 Dollars and I know, too that this "MOST" live in the other part of the world where MOST humans were born (there's no need to mention specific countries). But, this "most" never heard about STK. Their countrymen who play STK are those who have internet acess and better life. But, In places like Brazil, Russia, Hungary, etc. most (or, at least 50% of the locals) can afford these modern laptops and yes sir: newer laptops with Intel i3, i5 and i7 can load and run heavy games. I mean, most STK players are from places where modern laptops with enough graphic power are common. I mean Western and Eastern Europe, Americas, Oceania and some parts of Africa and Middle East.

I know too that most in USA or Europe don't have strong desktops or laptops due to the simply reason most don't have the minimum idea about hardware and graphic requirements. Most in USA and Europe buy PCs to read e-mails, watch youtube and use social networks. A minor part buy a desktop to play "heavy"games. In other words, the average Joe in Western Europe or USA buy the same laptops (or equivalent in graphic capability) bought by people in the so called developing countries.

The average Joe in Western/Northern Europe and USA are as ignorant in hardware as any Polish, Russian, Romanian, Argentinian or Brazilian. There's no such thing like "they have more information because their countries are more developed". The average computer user, anywhere, don't know that he/she need to install a graphic card to play Battlefield.They know only when they becomes a wannabe gamer and start browsing foruns looking for information and people over 45 are not used to be one of those. People over 45 are the majority in Europe. Then, no matter where they lives, the commom men and women buy laptops with Intel i3 or i5/i7 (or stronger), and, for those who claim that these graphic hardware are weak to run STK, here you see that Intel "i" and HD 4400 can run games (by far) heavier than STK.

Diverse games - Settings from medium to high
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9GqF9jhY-o

Mafia 2 on medium settings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef4_hB94j4A

Team Fortress 2 on High setttings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBsDMzxifMA

Metro 2033:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c9_9KWusJU

CRYSIS 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJM9bmhhWDE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l01hJvlPQMc


Batman: Arkham Asylum:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtxrcwoK2I0

Batman Arkham Asylum/City is so heavy that just a screenshot is heavier than STK at level 5.

AFAIK, the games linked above use textures in 1024x1024 since ever, while STK started using 1024 with the cocoa temple. These games are all hi-poly, meanwhile, STK is low poly. If Intel i3, i5 and i7 can run Batman, Battlefield and Metro 2033, they can run (or should run easier) STK in level 5, and the "Intel i" are common chips in the so called developing countries.

Anon have mentioned NVidia graphic cards. Ok, but even powerful graphic cards like GefOrce GTX 750 keep between 40 and 50 fps playing Batman (http://us.hardware.info/reviews/5271/6/ ... rkham-city) , but, why do I need 200 fps in a game if in the movie itself, they film in 30 or48 (Avatar) fps and everybody pay to watch? Why do I need200 fps if the display frequency is 60Hz? Then Intel HD 400/4400 are enough.

I see no problem in going ahead in graphic requirements, because most STK players have already or can afford computers with the minimum graphic requirements. I know that most in the world still can't afford, but they can play older versions od this game and have fun if nobody shut down the addon site

[vlj]

Do you think projects like Raspberry Pi and OLPC exist just for kicks?

Actually Raspberry Pi isn't really targeted at the developping country. Maybe it was the initial plan but most buyer are from rich countries.
The thing is, it doesnt come with any internal storage and thus OS so to use it you need at least an internet connexion.
Besides being able to install an OS is not something that everyone is especially in country where people never saw a computer before.
Reality is that Raspberry Pi is more a geek's toy than anything else.

[Anon]

Amon have mentioned NVidia graphic cards. Ok, but even powerful graphic cards like GefOrce GTX 750 keep between 40 and 50 fps playing Batman (http://us.hardware.info/reviews/5271/6/ ... rkham-city) , but, why do I need 200 fps in a game if in the movie itself, they film in 30 or48 (Avatar) fps and everybody pay to watch? Why do I need200 fps if the display frequency is 60Hz? Then Intel HD 400/4400 are enough.

You don't need a constant 200 fps, but it's not hard to feel the difference between 30 and 60 FPS when the scene is interactive. Plus, one benefit of having a higher mean framerate than your monitor's refresh rate is that there's room for the framerate to drop in intense scenes.

Of course, 200 FPS is a bit overkill. What I was trying to do by mentioning the nVidia cards is show that 1) dedicated GPU's are significantly faster than Intel's HD lineup (since they score +4X in Xonotic), and that 2) STK is sufficiently demanding on resources to benefit from the speedup (since my powerful cards only reach 16 and 30 FPS).

[Tiger]

What I was trying to do by mentioning the nVidia cards is show that 1) dedicated GPU's are significantly faster than Intel's HD lineup (since they score +4X in Xonotic), and that 2) STK is sufficiently demanding on resources to benefit from the speedup (since my powerful cards only reach 16 and 30 FPS).

1) Yes, of course, but INTEL are nice too.
2) I'm not a programmer; much less in C++ and similars, but I would like if somebody explain me what makes STK so "heavy"? Two or three new effects added takedown many players why, if many of them play other games with "heavy" graphic requirements?

[Anon]

I'm not sure if this is actually the case, but I think my binaries might be compiled in debug mode. The beta's are. If this is true, then part of the low performance might be due to it.

[Tiger]

Makes sense.

[deve]

I'm not sure if this is actually the case, but I think my binaries might be compiled in debug mode. The beta's are. If this is true, then part of the low performance might be due to it.

Binaries are compiled in release mode. In debug mode package would have almost 800 MB.

[onpon4]

Pardon my skepticism, but why would compiling in debug mode almost double the size of the package? Why would it increase the size much at all? All debug mode typically does is sacrifice performance optimizations to provide useful information to the developers. Unless STK's debug mode strips it of support for image and sound compression for some reason, the file sizes should be very similar.

[samuncle]

well you have more data in the executable (like debug messages) but also function names, etc. You can quickly get an enormous amount of data in debug mode.

[onpon4]

So you're telling me that it's not unreasonable to expect SuperTuxKart to have 400 MB, about four million lines, of unique debug strings?

I just downloaded the STK source code; it's less than 50 MB, so now I have little doubt that "800 MB" is an extreme exaggeration. How can you get 400 MB of added data to the binary from only 50 MB of source code, unless you're deliberately doing so (e.g. by uncompressing already compressed data, or duplicating data)?

[Akien]

I just downloaded the STK source code; it's less than 50 MB, so now I know for a fact you're exaggerating. There's no way you can get 400 MB of added data to the binary from only 50 MB of source code, unless you're deliberately doing so (e.g. by uncompressing already compressed data, or duplicating data).

Well I didn't check for STK, but here are some facts about OpenDungeons:
- source folder: 2.3 MB
- binary built as "release with debug info": 50 MB
- binary stripped of debug info using GNU binutils' "strip": 3.2 MB

So I can very well imagine that a debug or release with debug info build of STK would be 400 MB based on 50 MB, especially when building a whole game engine.

[deve]

STK binary compiled in release mode has about 10 MB (depending on compiler version). When we compile it in debug mode it has about 120-130 MB. Linux package contains 32-bit and 64-bit binaries. Package would be ~250 MB larger.

Though compressed debug binary isn't that big... It has about 45 MB.

It means about 850 MB uncompressed package and probably ~540 MB compressed.

[hiker]

So you're telling me that it's not unreasonable to expect SuperTuxKart to have 400 MB, about four million lines, of unique debug strings?

No. it's not the debug strings. It's the name of symbols, and line number information (which is typically a table mapping addresses to line numbers - though I would expect it to be larger in release mode, since optimisation allows for more reordering instructions, so more entries are needed because of interleaving of instructions from several lines). Also in debug mode a lot more write/read instructionsare needed in the binary (since values can't be kept in registers, they must be read and written back all the time to allow debuggers to see the values).

I just downloaded the STK source code; it's less than 50 MB, so now I have little doubt that "800 MB" is an extreme exaggeration. How can you get 400 MB of added data to the binary from only 50 MB of source code, unless you're deliberately doing so (e.g. by uncompressing already compressed data, or duplicating data)?

Source code sizes might not be that much an indicator of overall binary size (e.g. amount of comments will not impact the binary), but there's also the libaries from the lib directory, not to mention all the system libraries that will be linked in (and if there are special debug versions of those libs, they will be added as well).

And for the record, all our betas are compiled in release mode (though typically with debug symbols) - especially for Visual Studio it's actually illegal to distribute a debug binary.

Cheers,
Joerg

[hiker]

I'm not sure if this is actually the case, but I think my binaries might be compiled in debug mode. The beta's are. If this is true, then part of the low performance might be due to it.

No, none of our binaries is 'compiled in debug mode'. We tend to include debug symbols (so we can get more details in case of a crash), but still with optimisations.

Cheers,
Joerg