[overkill] How's the framerate?

http://www.birchlabs.co.uk/Invasion-5.swf

Long time no see! :) am still working on Invasion 5; just wondering if the ripple effect that the red magus casts slows down the game too much. It kills the framerate on my virtual machine, but my host machine is fine, so I don't know how it'll run on a general computer. Needs to work on school computers, which nowadays are Core 2 Duos with mid-range graphics cards (like my Mac, which copes okay).

Btw the dragon doesn't do anything yet, but feel free to kill it. :yarr:

approx 25 fps for me on my work machine...

16-10 fps here. 2.3 CPU/3GB DDR RAM, nothing fancy.

Also, you probably already know, but if you clear the stage while the warped effect is going, all future screens are effectively "frozen" in a distorted state.

I'm getting a good 30/31 FPS on normal speed.

~30FPS with firefox on vista machine w. 3gbRAM

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Originally Posted by ImprisonedPride

16-10 fps here. 2.3 CPU/3GB DDR RAM, nothing fancy.

Also, you probably already know, but if you clear the stage while the warped effect is going, all future screens are effectively "frozen" in a distorted state.

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16-10? that's worrying. is that the framerate you get when the ripple's not happening?

and actually, I didn't know about that bug. :shhh: thanks for pointing it out!

I had 30 fps at all times, Win7, 6gb ram, i7 920 cpu.

Yessir Venge, it's just when the ripple happens. All other times it's 29-30 consistently.

phew.

still, 10 fps is unacceptable. I'm wondering what I can do to tone down the ripple (cause I don't want to get rid of it). could probably reduce the area it has to plot if I get rid of the clouds or find a way to crop them to the stage's limits (maybe scrollRect).

What about blitting? Or maybe you already do blitting.
It might help with frame rates a lot.

If you already do this with blitting I don't know what could help.

Hey Vengeance, it looks great! :)

But, my least favourite part is actually that ripple effect, which I found a bit distracting. The game might actually be better without it?

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Originally Posted by dandylion13

Hey Vengeance, it looks great! :)

But, my least favourite part is actually that ripple effect, which I found a bit distracting. The game might actually be better without it?

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yeah. I've been feeling that myself. it hurts me to have to take it out, 'cause nobody's ever used DisplacementMapFilter in a game before, but it is really distracting, it's causing framerate issues, it doesn't add anything to the game... hm.

guess I'll take it out. :( keeping it in would be like putting drop shadows on everything because 'it looks cool'.

"'cause nobody's ever used DisplacementMapFilter in a game before"

That's quite a sweeping statement :)

Also change the fps text colour to something that shows up better mate, I couldn't really tell what it was, looked like 20 something.

Squize.

No worries Veng... I don't think anyone uses displacement maps for anything anyway ;)

It's a sweeping generalisation, I'll grant you, but I have honestly never seen it used in anything other than experiments.

As for the font colour... the background's random, but most of the time black text is legible. Adding a stroke or shadow to the text is a lot harder for me in AS3 than it is in AS2 (my code's a bloody mess), so if it's not something relevant to the gameplay, I'm happy to ignore it. :)

Check out Ionic when you open the menus :)
( Although I do pause the game when running it 'cause they aren't quick ).

Can't put a white glow around the black text ? Never mind then, I got 20 something fps.

Squize.

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Needs to work on school computers, which nowadays are Core 2 Duos with mid-range graphics cards

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You're joking aren't you? I worked in a school a couple of years ago that was still using BBC Micros (no, seriously), and the PC's they did have weren't that much newer. Mind you - that was in Wales, they are a bit backward there.

Oh - hi Squize. ;)

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Originally Posted by Squize

Check out Ionic when you open the menus :)
( Although I do pause the game when running it 'cause they aren't quick ).

Can't put a white glow around the black text ? Never mind then, I got 20 something fps.

Squize.

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Blimey. I've been away from Flash longer than I realized. Thought this stuff would still be new to people. :P

I didn't plan the class structure very well, so I ended up with almost all the code on one frame, like in AS1. Adding a glow or shadow to text becomes a pain when you have to scroll back and forth a thousand lines to declare new variables. I know what I'd do next time, just wish I'd done it back then.


@_Ric_:

I was surprised when I checked the specs, too. My school converted to a state school a while ago because it ran out of money, and now we have funding again, we get proper computers. I think we upgraded from Pentium IIIs to Core 2 Duos.

Of course it's bloody ridiculous. We don't need computers that good. All anyone uses them for is Powerpoint and restricted web browsing. They should've saved the money and bought us textbooks instead. I miss learning from books. ¬_¬

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Originally Posted by VENGEANCE MX

Adding a glow or shadow to text becomes a pain when you have to scroll back and forth a thousand lines to declare new variables.

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I feel your pain. I just finished writing a standalone AIR application for a client that was 19 classes deep and over 5k lines of code. The display class, apart from being where all the interaction was taking place, wound up being just over 2k lines long. Try to imagine if you will having a tiny subtle bug in your code... yeah. :crazy: Thank god for AS3's better debug analysis.

Auuugh~ 19 classes deep? But that sounds like you designed it pretty well. Mine only ever goes about 2 deep, and that's in extreme situations.

19 classes "deep" or 19 classes "wide"?

If "deep"... can we help you out with your OOP a bit, IP? ;) Like Vengeance mentioned, I can't imagine the need for any depth greater than 2 or possibly 3 at the utmost extreme. Start a new thread if you like about it and I'll be happy to help :)

Yeah, displacement maps can be a pain. I know what you mean as well about getting bull headed about how cool they are and not taking them out when not needed.

I am using displacement maps in 2 of my work in progress games (one is ready for beta if I get off my but and make the sounds and halfway decent levels), but as they are as2 games, the hit is pretty heavy.

One is using a perlin noise filter and a displacement map to make fire (nice effect) but really hurts as2 speeds even if I go out of my way to reduce the size of the filters. As a firefighting game, the screen can easily become FULL of fire at times.

The other is wrapping projected planetary maps around a sphere. This one I ended up having to essentially cache at the start of the .swf. I just run the filter for all the planet types and copy 50 bitmaps for each into an array as they rotate, animate it ingame with copy pixels, and just grin and bear any quality loss due to resizing.

I really need to go back and do the same thing with the fire game. Just make one fire instance and grab X bitmaps of it before the game starts. Just have to set it up so that the filter ends where it started so there is no twitch in the loop.

Unfortunately, this concept wont work for you, having to warp unknown scenes. I agree the effect is not really fitting in this game, although I will give you credit for it being cool, and I understand your pain with removing it ;) Just be glad you are not me, or you would make a new game based entirely around this ripple gimmick to throw on your pile of never finished games, heh.

I get around 21fps average.

As a suggestion, I've had good success with implementing dynamic eye candy-- if there's a feature that looks good, but costs a lot of cpu, I turn it off (or use a "cheaper" version) if I detect that the game is running slow.

Frame rate is 25 fps on the standard speed and between 15 - 20 for the other two. Running on a dual core. It still seemed like it was running great at 15 fps. Looked smooth.

Between 21 and 28 fps on the rippled version, 30 on the new version. This is on a Core Duo.

Personally I thought the ripple looked out of place, I much prefer the new one with just scattered arrows.

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Originally Posted by dandylion13

19 classes "deep" or 19 classes "wide"?

If "deep"... can we help you out with your OOP a bit, IP? ;) Like Vengeance mentioned, I can't imagine the need for any depth greater than 2 or possibly 3 at the utmost extreme. Start a new thread if you like about it and I'll be happy to help :)

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I can assure you they're all very much needed and crucially placed, thank you very much. :cap: If your "wide" means my "deep" then take it that way; I simply stated that my project had 19 (which was a miscount, it's 17) classes in the hierarchy and had several thousand lines of code:
http://img693.imageshack.us/img693/5...shierarchy.png

Anyhow, enough hijacking. Back to Venge's OT. I have to agree with rumble a bit here; I do like the ripple effect, though it seems out of the place. However, the reflection orb from other special character seems much more fitting for the theme. Definitely keep that one.

Looks good, i like the hero effects :) Mine runs steady at 31 fps

Yup, your "deep" is my "wide".. looks good :)