[overkill] How's the framerate?

[VENGEANCE MX]

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.

[ivorsmallun]

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

[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.

[Osteel]

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

[ChaseNYC]

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

[VENGEANCE MX]

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.

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. thanks for pointing it out!

[MattiasJow]

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

[ImprisonedPride]

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

[VENGEANCE MX]

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).

[MattiasJow]

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.

[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?

[VENGEANCE MX]

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?

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'.

[Squize]

"'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.

[dandylion13]

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

[VENGEANCE MX]

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.

[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.

[_Ric_]

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

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.

[VENGEANCE MX]

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.

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. ¬_¬

[ImprisonedPride]

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 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. Thank god for AS3's better debug analysis.

[VENGEANCE MX]

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.