Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

A whole new world of stats addiction

I’m a statistics addict. They say the first step is acknowledging that you have a problem. I used to spend a disproportionate time studying google analytics data. (I don’t do it so much now, but I do check it around game releases etc.) I also spend a disproportionate amount of time studying exchange rates and share prices. (how do i know this? well i have stats showing me…). I also keep banging on about my favorite profiler, aqtime, or pix. And of course if you have played my games, you may be aware of the fact that I’m the guy who turned just ‘being in your twenties’ into a game of statistics management.

Clearly I have that sort of sheldon-cooperesque geeky mind. I also have a scary memory for some things (not for all stuff, sadly).

So it is with fear, and excitement and mixed emotions that I discover I can get the latest nvidia nsight profiling stuff running for GSB2. Now I can have an entire new program full of charts and graphs and stats and data about what each atom in the video card is doing at each picosecond of every frame in my game…

IO really need to chill out about performance and just work on the game. I tend to work in debug build, which is very slow, and panic a lot, and then (as I just did) toggle to release, detonate an entire fleet of cruisers in 2560 res, and realize the frame rate is still just dandy, and then relax a bit.

Of course, I’ll still be blogging about performance and code a lot, as I love it. i just need to hit my rescuetime targets for the day first, as the stats say I need to get back to my code now…


2 thoughts on A whole new world of stats addiction

  1. It’s only a problem until your obsessive nature reveals what exactly is causing that 30% slow down frame when you have precisely 19 cruisers with 103 particle effects running at 1024 x 768 on a windows 7 machine. And yes, it has to be 19 cruisers with 103 particle effects active. Then, you are not obsessive, you are prepared. :)

  2. you do realize that all stats lie and all people who use them are liars :) and that there is a 100% loss of productivity when you glance at them :)

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