One of my games slows down when scrolling. It seems obvious that HWA would fix this problem, but using HWA has no effect at all. Do I have to build the application or do something special to get results?
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One of my games slows down when scrolling. It seems obvious that HWA would fix this problem, but using HWA has no effect at all. Do I have to build the application or do something special to get results?
You're definitely on one of the "DirectX" display modes?
They make the game really slow down, much more than otherwise. I also noticed that shaders don't seem to work.
What type of computer are you using/what is your hardware? What extensions are you using? If you upload an mfa to filedropper.com that we can look at we can probably tell you what's wrong.
Windows XP Service Pack 2.
I agree with Pkeod... There are lot's of things that could cause the slowdown... Also shaders only work if you use the hardware display modes and if you're graphics card supports it!
The DirectX display mode uses DirectDraw, which is slow.Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidN
Are you using "Direct3D 9"?
Ah. Yes.
How could I find out if my graphics card supports HWA and shaders?
Press Win+R, enter dxdiag.
Check for "System->System information->Direct X"
If it's below DirectX 8, you're screwed.
It says 9.0c or something like that.
If you don't upload the app or a file showing it's slow... will be hard for us to test and try to find what's wrong.
What he said. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruto_Memo
stephen1980
That's wrong.Quote:
Originally Posted by Looki
You can have Direct-X 9c installed (and probably do, as it comes with Windows XP and above) on a graphics card that doesn't support it.
The only real way to find out is to go to the display page of dxdiag and run the Direct3D tests. I think the "DDI version" on that page could be your graphics card's hardware Direct-X version support, but I'm not sure. The tests will definitely say.
even so, as pointed out, theres a million possible reasons for slowdown while scrolling aside from lacking directx support.
if your game is something ridiculous like a 100000x100000 area level size, I would expect it to run slowly. We'd need to know more about how it works or what kind of limits it is pushing, like large amounts of backdrops or active objects
Ugh... I knew it. It had to be wrong. Whatever.
I don't think the size of the frame impacts the scrolling speed. For example, you can create infinite sized frames and the scrolling will still be smooth (it's how ijiwaru works).Quote:
Originally Posted by Pixelthief
The maximum size is 32767x32767, I think.
Yes the maximum defined size of a frame is like you said but you can set the Virtual Width and Virtual Height to -1 and you'll have an infinite sized frame. ;)
yes but what I'm saying is if you stretch every ability of MMF2 to its limits, there will be slowdowns. For example, if it has thousands upon thousands of objects, loops, extensions, etc. And things like giant play areas or ridiculous collision mask arrays only serve to exacerbate this; after all, a 32767x32767 area that had obstactle data filled in for every pixel separate would take 500 megabytes, wouldn't it?
I did the tests. They displayed a spinning cube perfectly without lag or apparent glitches. So if these tests work, why don't shaders work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dynasoft
As for what you say about the play area: The games with the most slowdown have sizes 10000x600 and 1980x3000.
Are you sure to have set your game to "Direct3D 9" Display mode?
Yes.
If I just create a blank project (with Direct3D 9 display mode), add an active object, and give it a shader, the shader is never displayed. I also downloaded Looki's ShaderPack, and the example file just displayed an image a bunch of times.
That's probably a bug... Yves should have a look at it.
Any card can display a spinning cube, shaders are a different thing. Does your card support shaders? Create a new application (with the latest HWA version), add a counter, in the event editor add : Start of frame / Set counter to PixelShaderVersion and then run your application. If it displays 0, then your card doesn't support shaders. If it displays 104, that means it supports shaders v1 and not shaders v2 (the required version is displayed for each shader in the Effect list in MMF2).Quote:
I did the tests. They displayed a spinning cube perfectly without lag or apparent glitches. So if these tests work, why don't shaders work.