Flamethrower needs hardware acceleration?

Just a quick question, how long until MMF2 gets hardware acceleration? I could use it now, because I've got a flamethrower weapon in my game. It is really graphic intensive because it is basicly a bunch of big balls that get bigger (in their animation) and they have alpha channels. Right now, it gets down to about 20fps, and I can't make the flames spawn any slower and still have it look good. Not to mention the flame 'balls' are rotated around (quality 0) to face forwards so the blue fire part in the animation comes from the gun.

Try using different animation directions to show more then 1 fireball in a frame, that way you can create less active objects and still have the same visual look. It wont be as fluent as you might want, but it'll boost the speed and look more decent then slowing the amount created without any methods to restore it's former beauty. ;-)

I've thought about doing that but it won't work if there are obstacles, I would look really wierd...

im might be the always-creating of the flame objects, thats slowing it down a bit, but judging by your amount of posts, i'm sure you've considered it

Yea, I add the flames every .10 seconds. That's as slow as I'm willing to go.

The key is to use a bit of cunning when designing your sprites. If you draw quite a bit of detail into your sprites, then you will need less of them to create a good looking effect.

For an example of this, just check out the MMF2 file archive back near MMF2's release. Loads of people posted fire effects that were really slow. I posted one that looked just as good and used a fraction of the CPU power, because I put some thought into my sprites.

Also, use the ADD ink effect instead of alpha channels. It is much faster and more suitable for flames, since flames do not ever darken the background (smoke does, but most flamethrowers burn cleanly).

My fire effects are not the crappy little orange balls that use the add ink effect. It actually looks like a flame, with the yellow white and orange patches swarming around inside it. I'll post it up in a sec.

EDIT: Argggg, it won't let me upload it. I'm gonna' try something else.

Here's the link: http://savefile.com/files/481912

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Originally Posted by LazyCoder

Just a quick question, how long until MMF2 gets hardware acceleration? I could use it now, because I've got a flamethrower weapon in my game. It is really graphic intensive because it is basicly a bunch of big balls that get bigger (in their animation) and they have alpha channels. Right now, it gets down to about 20fps, and I can't make the flames spawn any slower and still have it look good. Not to mention the flame 'balls' are rotated around (quality 0) to face forwards so the blue fire part in the animation comes from the gun.

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I just tried your example, and I could not get the frame rate to drop below 55. What are your system specs besdies the graphics card?

When checking for the FrameRate disable machine independent speed or otherwise it will always be 45-50.

It dropped to below 28 for me.

Ive got a
Sempron 2800+ 64-bit
Windows XP (up to date)
1GB of Generic RAM
GeForce 7600GS

I always have MIS disabled. It still ran at a smooth 55 FPS for me - constantly.

I think it's a matter of RAM more than anything else. I have 2 GB of RAM, but besides that, my computer's a few years old and doesn't have any other major upgrades. P4 2.8 GHz. No dual-core or 64-bit or what have you.

gets does to 11 fps with MIS off for me,
athlon 2700+
512 ram
otherwise with MIS on, it runs at the set max fps.

Speaking of Hardware Acceleration, would it speed up games where there are many actives? (Like around 400) or will it only speed up alpha channels and stuff?

It doesn't even go down 1 fps for me. Stays at a constant 56 fps. And I have another MMF2, Photoshop, Winamp, GoogleDesktop, Firewall, Norton, Opera, etc. running in background. Can't see a problem at all.

Oh, and 52 constant with MIS off (funny that it never sticks to the 50 it should be restricted to).

Athlon 64, 3000+ (2GHz)
1024 MB RAM

Here's a little flame thrower. Would be interesting so hear how it impacts your FPS (probably harder). (the explosion sucks, don't tell me)

Solid 50fps for me, I couldn't download your example, I was getting cannot display webpage (though it could be just my internet): For Random's example-

Athlon 64, 3200+
Radeon 9600 128 MB
1024 MB RAM

No slowdowns whatsoever (btw: AWSOME flame thrower Random!)

No you missed the point entirely. I'm not "dissing" your sprites, I'm suggesting that you design them a certain way. There was no need to take offense.

That said, I've looked at your flamethrower, and the sprites are cool, but they are not suitable for use as particles and definitely not as a flamethrower. Having your flamethrower shoot huge a/cd balls out at a rate of knots will eat up your CPU, no doubt about it.

I suggest you go for smaller sprites, more irregular fire sprites (not just balls of fire, like a radial flame kind of thing), and use the Add effect. Also you could do with adding a little randomness to the spray of the flames. If you really want to use alpha channels then use them for smoke particles that spray out a bit with the flames.

There is one thing to remember when making fire particle effects. Flames NEVER (I mean NEVER) darken their background. Smoke does, however, so if you want a dirty looking flame chuck in some smoke particles as well as your flame particles.

Constant 49-50FPS and I only have 768mb RAM.

Doesn't drop with a single frame. Both MIS on and off.

AMD Athlon64 3200+ (2.0Ghz)
1024mb RAM