We are proud to announce the release of ADOM R72 as a Steam beta. This release should be another very big step forward in our quest improving the ADOM/NotEye performance, the biggest change being the introduction of a JIT (just in time) compiler for the LUA scripting language which is used by major parts of the NotEye engine (which in turn drives all our output stuff for both ASCII and tiled modes on Steam). LUA is a scripting language that normally is interpreted at runtime (and thus slower than compiled languages). With the integration of LuaJIT we now combine the advantages of a scripting language with the performance of compiled languages - on some older test systems of ours we have seen a performance increase of up to 1500% (!) (but don't expect that as a general case... it's more of a special case for older systems... although many cases should see at least a doubling). Additionally the UI output now seems to behave less erratic and provides more constant frame rates.
Since this is our first experience with LuaJIT we again decided to go for a Steam beta release. To use it follow these instructions:
- Go to your Steam games library.
- Right-click on the ADOM entry.
- Click on "Properties".
- Select the "Betas" tab.
- Select "Beta - public beta test" in the dropdown box.
- Close the dialog.
- Play.
As usual you can find the changelog here (there are some more internal performance improvements and minor bugfixes).
And now enjoy playing!
Thomas & Team ADOM
Hi there, you've got a typo: it's Lua, not LUA (those are not initials, it's a word)
ReplyDeleteOooh, didn't know this! From wiki:
DeleteLua (/ˈluːə/ loo-ə, from Portuguese: lua [ˈlu.(w)ɐ] meaning moon;
explicitly not "LUA"[1] because it is not an acronym)