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Keeping you updated!

PostPosted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 7:43 am
by Karl G.
I'm sorry to anyone whose problems I haven't addressed with the game yet; I promise I'm trying to get to them. Richard will be helping me keep track of what needs to be done using the new Issues & Solutions forum.

In other news, I did some play testing yesterday and found that Evidyon was only running at about 15 FPS on my machine--a far cry from the solid 60 that I used to get. Since I'm not doing anything incredibly graphically intensive, I figured something had to be wrong. I did some digging and found this:

Code: Select all
PROFILER: total app time 49.97
8.16% - renderActors, renderMap, updateSpecialEffects, updateProjectiles, updateMap, readNetwork
>>>> 78.60% - updateActors <<<<
(... misc ...)


Updating the actors animations was taking SEVENTY EIGHT PERCENT of the computer's processing time! Wtf?! So I looked into it. Turns out I forgot to limit how frequently the actors were animated--it only needs to happen once per *rendered* frame, and not once per main loop (the main loop does things like reading input, handling network, etc. and executes about 1000 times as much as the rendered frames). As soon as I moved the updates into the main loop:

Code: Select all
  PROFILER: total app time 61.44
80.56% - renderActors, renderMap, updateSpecialEffects, updateProjectiles, updateMap, readNetwork
>>>> 3.60% - updateActors <<<<
(... misc ...)



The game should be MUCH more responsive in the next update :)

Re: Keeping you updated!

PostPosted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 7:48 am
by kelchy
You're doing an awesome job man. The recent upgrade is very good too :).

Re: Keeping you updated!

PostPosted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 8:48 am
by Sankt Pauli
If monsters are considered to be 'actors' aswell that also explains why there is still sometimes the visual lag when you run into a big mob.
Good work man. :J

Re: Keeping you updated!

PostPosted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 9:38 am
by speed3b
Something that could help us help you, would be to add a fps toggle for us. Set a key to turn on and off a fps ticker in the corner of our screen (an f key or something?). If we find areas or times that fps dips or drops a lot we could let you know.

Re: Keeping you updated!

PostPosted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 11:06 am
by Karl G.
Sankt Pauli wrote:If monsters are considered to be 'actors' aswell that also explains why there is still sometimes the visual lag when you run into a big mob.
Good work man. :J


Haha yeah it probably would have been good to tell you what "actors" are...actors are anything that is animated.

speed3b wrote:Something that could help us help you, would be to add a fps toggle for us. Set a key to turn on and off a fps ticker in the corner of our screen (an f key or something?). If we find areas or times that fps dips or drops a lot we could let you know.


I'm adding a more comprehensive FPS manager in the next update, so I'll see if I can do that.

Re: Keeping you updated!

PostPosted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 12:26 pm
by Ashlar
(not to pester, it comes out when it comes out!) But the new update sounds awesome! Any idea when your going to be able to put it out? No rush!

Re: Keeping you updated!

PostPosted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 2:50 pm
by Karl G.
Ashlar wrote:(not to pester, it comes out when it comes out!) But the new update sounds awesome! Any idea when your going to be able to put it out? No rush!


I hope to put it out late week, classes and such allowing.