Re: [Caml-list] ANN: Chess III Arena 0.5

[Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com>]

On Tuesday 03 July 2007 22:48:40 Grant Olson wrote:
> Chess III Arena 0.5 is my first (allegedly) non-trivial app in OCaml.  It
> is a fully functional chess game, although it lacks some desirable features
> such as a computer opponent and network play at this point in time.  It
> uses Quake III player models as the pieces.
>
> Binaries for windows and source for other platforms are available at:
>
> http://members.verizon.net/~olsongt/c3a/
>
> I've also detailed some of the things I like about OCaml on that page,
> since I don't write enough to have a blog, but I imagine I'm preaching to
> the choir on this list.

ROTFLMAO. Wow! That is absolutely amazing! Love the name. =8-)

Here's a quick patch, if you put this right after your definition of draw_md3 
in md3.ml then the whole program runs an order of magnitude faster:

let draw_md3 =
  let m = Hashtbl.create 1 in
  fun x y ->
    try GlList.call(Hashtbl.find m (x, y)) with Not_found ->
      let list = GlList.create `compile in
      draw_md3 x y;
      GlList.ends();
      GlList.call list;
      Hashtbl.add m (x, y) list

This simply memoizes the rendering of each frame of animation for each model 
in a display list. The result is that your geometry is stored on the graphics 
card and rendered directly, hence the gratuitous speedup.

This is a wonderful idea for a first project in OCaml. I've taken a quick look 
at your code to give you some constructive criticism but your coding style is 
already excellent. Keep posting!

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
The OCaml Journal
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_journal/?e