Will we ever have a tilemap extension?

We already have one made by looki named “Tile Map & Tile Map viewport”, you can download it from darkwire, not sure if it is uploaded to the extension manager.
This extension works with tiled, but somehow it is outdated, doesn’t support new features of tiled. And it has a performance issue when you have a transparent layer in tiled.

I just noticed that the Tile Map Viewport won't display any tiles if you have your application set to Direct3D 11. Direct3D 9 does work though. Is there a version of this extension updated for D3D 11 and later?

I checked the Extension Manager, and it said it was "up to date", but I know that sometimes newer versions of extensions don't always make it into the Manager.

There is a DX11 version. Pretty sure it's on the forum.

Yves did this port, but for some reason DX9 gets a bit of a downgrade with this one I believe...
If you want to be safe, just rename the extension, add a 2 in front of the name and you'll have the two versions.

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Oops, I forgot to check back on this thread.

I downloaded the DX11 version, and performance with this seems significantly worse. If I set my Fusion game to DX9 mode, even very simple tile maps bog down the whole engine to 30 fps. Even in DX11 mode, I get significant lag and poor performance (40 fps, slow down, etc).

So my only option is to use the old version made by Looki, and stick to DX9. With Looki's old version (last updated 2016) I get solid 60fps with large tile maps at 1080p. No stuttering, no dipping, no lagging.

I'm not even sure what to say.

Yeah you have to use them separately
Dx11 should be 2x faster though FPS drops from 1000 to 500 when adding a second tileset to the tile map object
Also using the tiled map loader ext it drops to 140 fps for some reason

Hmm, that's really disappointing.

I guess I'll just downgrade the extension then. No real point to using the newer one with performance that bad. I mean, the whole point of the Tile Map Viewport is that its super fast and efficient. With the older version, it performs much better than any alternative methods of rendering a tile map in Fusion ("add backdrop" method, using hundreds of Actives, Active Picture object, Surface Object, etc).

I'm not sure if it has that issue on dx9 version also
maybe if you combine all your tilesets into a single image it might still run at 1000fps
I also haven't tested using multiple tile map objects
DX11 is 2x faster at most things

I've been using the older version of the TileMap & Viewport extensions for years (the one that had installed before today says copyright 2016 Looki in the description box), and I've never had any issue with it. So I'm 100% certain that the older version does not have these performance issues.

The extension is open source tho, so it would be nice if the community helped fixing and optimizing it...

Oh I didn't know it was open source. I was having trouble finding any info on it through google.
For anyone interested in developing the extensions, I found the Github pages.

The TileMap object: Please login to see this link.
The Tilemap Viewport: Please login to see this link.

TiledMapLoader object: Please login to see this link.

From my experience, the slow down doesn't seem to be due to the TileMap or TiledMapLoader objects, but specifically from the Viewport object. So that might be a good place to focus.

I don't really know anything about C++, so fixing GPU-level optimizations would be way beyond my knowledge.

I did some tests
if you use multiple tilemap objects (single tilemap for each) and multiple viewports you get 1000fps
also app properties > machine independent speed makes a huge difference

Quote from fnkycoldmadeanr

I did some tests
if you use multiple tilemap objects (single tilemap for each) and multiple viewports you get 1000fps
also app properties > machine independent speed makes a huge difference

Interesting. I tried some of your suggestions. I'm writing this as I test things. Here's what I got:

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I checked Machine Independent Speed ON, and that alone seemed to increase frame rate. But in a sort of odd way. Fusion's debugger reports a pretty consistent 60 fps, but visually the screen looks like its dropping frames (the game appears stuttery). So I don't think that's a real solution. So it seems the underlying game engine is running at a smooth 60 fps, but the screen refresh rate is stuttering around maybe 40 fps (my best guess).

If I bump up the FPS on my game to 1000, I get around 100 fps on my frames with the Tile objects in it. I have one level in my game where the FPS drops down to 40 (when its set to 1000). This only seems to happen when I move the player to a particular underground section of my map (so the slow down must have something to do with scrolling + multiple tilesets overlapping)

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UPDATE: If I turn "VSync" on, it seems to lock the game at a maximum 60 fps, even if the Framerate is set to 1000. It also appears very smooth and consistent. But if I change the Framerate back down to 60, I get stutters and drops down into the 40s again.

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I can't test the "multiple tilemap objects (single tilemap for each)" right now, because that would require completely redesigning how I setup my game. But even if that does work, it feels like a sad work-around -- one of the main benefits of the TileMap object is the ability to store multiple layers, tilesets, and basically all your level's map data in one object. Having to use multiple objects feels hacky, and probably increases RAM usage too.

But I'll try to test this out later if I can.

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ANOTHER UPDATE:
I tried testing out a "mixed installation" of the TileMap.mfx and TileMapView.mfx files. What I mean by this is:

- I installed the old version of TileMapView.mfx, which has a "Date Modified" value of "11/19/2016 5:48 PM"
- This date matches up exactly with the last commit Looki made on 11/19/2016: Please login to see this link.
- I installed the newer version of TileMap.mfx, which has a modified date of "4/6/2019 11:51 PM"

Interestingly, when I run my game now (with the new TileMap.mfx, and old TileMapView.mfx) the frame rate is perfect, smooth, and stable... BUT... The Tilemap viewport won't render any other tilesets except the first one it finds. The parts of my level that used a second tileset are now just blank.

This confirms what I originally suspected: There's nothing wrong with the TileMap.mfx extension, it is the TileMap Viewport extension that is bugged. This makes sense since if you consider that the TileMap object is basically just a specialized data array -- it doesn't have any built-in graphical components.

The TileMap Viewport object is the one that is rendering the graphics to the screen (and thus is the extension interacting with your GPU).

Now the odd thing is, that the GitHub for the TileMap object has a last commit of 4/7/2019 (which lines up with the file date on the mfx extension):
- Please login to see this link.

But the TileMap Viewport's GitHub page says the last commit was by Looki in 2016... but the newer MFX file does have a modified date of "4/6/2019"

Conclusion:
If Yves was the one to update the TileMap and TileMap Viewport extensions, it appears that he forgot to commit/push the source code to the GitHub page (but only forgot for the TileMap Viewport extension). So we (as a community) have no clue what was changed in that extension that is causing this bug, therefore we can't really fix it.

On top of that, the bug causing frame drops, lag, and issues with more than 1 tileset seems to be related to this TileMap Viewport object specifically. My guess is that it may be some small inefficiency when the object tries to load/access a second image texture.

Yves Could you please push the TileMap Viewport changes you made to the public GitHub, so maybe someone can spot the bug and fix it? Without being able to see that source, we're in the dark.