Hey stranger!
If you are new or following the project for some time, I would ask for an honest review or a comment on the project, it really means a lot!
Since last update, I have been working hard on performance optimisation with a goal of DAWG running smoothly even on older mobiles and Steam Deck.
For the optimisation I decided to lean into Unity DOTS system, mainly on Burst compiler and workers. Burst is Unity equivalent of high performance code that gets translated to the native machine code. Trick is in manual memory control of bits, similar like Rust and Assembly.
This system works perfectly for number crunching and DSP - Digital Signal Processing (what actually makes the audio), is basically loads of number crunching=)
The initial results are really impressive! For example for full on stress test (full patterns in all instruments with 8th rows of multiple stabs and sustained notes), the result was up to 180% of DSP CPU usage on the PC. This meant lots of audio dropouts, glitches and similar when stress testing, but still okay for "normal" use. Of course this was not acceptable, so after the DSP has solidified enough I started the work on implementing the Burst compiler to DAWG.
Just the Burst compiler alone lowered the DSP CPU usage from 180% to 62% on the PC and for Android it fell to 110%. In practice that meant even one high performance core is enough to run audio stress test without any issues or dropouts. Older hardware on other hand (S20 - 2.7 & 2.5 GHz cores) still has hiccups and too slow single core performance to run DAWG smoothly on one core.
On the image below you can check the diff. between normal C# code and Burst compiler on PC. Numbers are from the editor, so build should be even better. I have yet to fully finish the workers/jobs addition, but initial tests showed CPU usage on the PC fell for another 30%.
If Android gains are on similar levels, that should be green light to start developing the more fun stuff - Story mode and editions.
Since Story mode deserves same amount of attention as the DAW core.....would anyone like to help in development? Looking for visuals & artistic help or even potential co-founders?
Drop a comment below :D