Under what situations is HWA slower then Standard?

I've noticed that sometimes, in complex games, HWA mode will inexplicably run much more slowly than standard mode (particularly when scrolling, but it may simply be most noticeable while scrolling).

It's nearly impossible for me to reproduce this. If I copy/paste my current project into a new MFA file, I get 45 FPS using Direct3D 8 (but in its current form, its a smooth 60 FPS for me. One of my friends gets a low framerate on it, though). I get even more frequent problems with Direct3D 9.

What would possibly make an application run slower with HWA on?

Edit: This one runs at a very jerky 40 FPS for me under Direct3D 8. http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/760507/chuckM.mfa

Edit 2: Seems like setting it to 70 FPS up from 60 FPS fixes the example I posted... for some reason.

yeah i've noticed that this beta seems to have framerate problems compared to the previous one

i've never had speed issues with HWA before but now they're showing up at random

EDIT: vsync may be responsible for some of it, actually, because that would always drop my apps' framerates down to about 40-ish for some reason (even if it had no problem holding 60)

Even without vsync, it fluctuates as a "jittery" 57-63 FPS instead of 59-60 smooth.

Your file under DirectX8 is a bit jerky for me too, but under DirectX9 it is smooth on my PC. Have you got recent graphics card drivers installed?

Ah - found a work around. If you set the FPS to 100 in DX8 it runs smooth for me. Also, if you leave the FPS to 60 and untick V-sync it runs a lot smoother than with it on (FPS around 57-59). It runs better with the FPS set to a higher value.

I have noticed this in general with MMF. I think what is happening is that MMF is trying to make your game run at the FPS value you have entered. If you set this to 60, which is the refresh rate of LCD's and CRT's (by default) then I have seen the screen gets a bit jerky with vsync on. I think this is because the timing in the FPS and the waiting for the vertical blank (v-sync) are not in perfect synchronisation.

Increasing the FPS means that MMF tries to run the game faster however with v-sync on it caps each frame update to the monitor refresh (unless you forcibly switch this off in your gfx card settings) and this gives a perfectly smooth refresh. This always works for me (in Software mode too). In Hardware accelerated mode, particularly DX8, this seems to cause more jerky-ness of the animation/scrolling/screen updates when the FPS is set at 60FPS or below with v-sync on.

Actually I have found 66 FPS setting with v-sync on for DX8 mode works good too. Worse case scenario is that if a user has forcibly disabled the reporting of their v-sync in their gfx card and MMF is unable to detect it then your game will attempt to run at 66fps which is still reasonable.

What about setting the fps to 1 more than the monitor refresh and turning on vsync?

I thinks that should correct for any jitter you're getting without you needing to set the fps as extreme as 100.

try what works, I've found 66 (+6 above) works well on a range of PC's I have to test with.

Not tested 61FPS with HWA but it doesn't work as well for me in software mode. Try it and see what works best for you :)

I said in my original post that increasing the FPS fixed it :p

However, the odd thing is that this only -sometimes- happens. My current project (that this example was based on) runs at 60 FPS, vsync, Direct3D 8 completely fine. All I did was copy/paste the frame into another application to get this example.

There are two other oddities that I've noticed. Direct3D 9 runs VERY slowly in my project, and in many of my more complex "not just an example" projects. It runs well in simple tests I make from blank frames, but that's about it. Yes, my drivers are up to date.

The other is that two of my friends (who have good gaming rigs, quad core 2.4 ghz, GeForce 8800 GTX and Vista) have major slowdown when attempting to play games that use Direct3D 8. They run fine in Standard mode. I made sure their drivers and everything else is up to date, that nothing else was taking system resources, etc... Meanwhile, my inferior computer (and about 15 other peoples' that I tested) runs it totally fine.

Strange, I seem to be having absolutely none of these slow downs what so ever... and my projects have gotten very complex (over 1000 events), I'm running GeForce 7900gs 256MB; 2GB RAM, Vista Home Premium.

Me neither. My specs are even worse: Geforce 6600 GT with only 128 MB, and only 1 GB RAM (I used to have 2... sad story ;) ).

attempting to have more than 1 layer in any of my projects causes unacceptable slowdown, HWA or not. but thats an issue for another day, even if it is mostly graphical

I wonder if these people having all these issues, have tried downloading the latest versions of DirectX?

Just because you have DirectX 9.0c doesn't mean you have the latest version. Microsoft likes to release more than one update under the same version number, in the form of patches I guess.

Yeah, I think they are up to revision 47 of DX9 now.
This seems to be the installer: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2DA43D38-DB71-4C1B-BC6A-9B6652CD92A3&displaylang=en

Yeah layers are even SLOWER with Direct3D on (for me), but I've learned to just stay away from layers.

Did you try downloading the revisions for DX9?

I found layers not only to be very fast, but also very stable and just a down right amazing way to avert a ton of unnecessary work. They're perfect for things like HUD's, dialogs, parallaxing backgrounds, day and night, etc. It's a shame they don't seem to work well for everyone.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Taofeld

Yeah layers are even SLOWER with Direct3D on (for me), but I've learned to just stay away from layers.

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If you have an example that shows the difference with and without layers I'll be happy to test them and see if the same happens here. I've got slowdowns sometimes, not sure if they're layers related but never got slowdown with HWA, except with many thousands objects bouncing like crazy or huge amount of big objects animated with 20 frames.

I'd prefer to be overly protective of my projects and not post them, but I did get it working with Direct3D 9.

-Direct3D 9 would only work well in my game if I had MULTIPLE layers, the opposite problem of Direct3D 8.
-One loop I had going on an "always" event slowed the game down in Direct3D 9 mode (ran 50 iterations), although it did not slow them down in Standard and Direct3D 8 mode
-Deleting this one random String object (with no events associated with it) also gave a good FPS boost.

Yeah, not a lot of things making sense. But through some manner of trial and error, I've got things working so I'm just gonna leave it alone for the moment :)

If I finish this project and release it into the internet wilderness, I might post the problematic version here sometime in May or June.

Buddy, I have no interest on your project, the code of your project, your idea or your artwork. When I said uploading an example I meant an example just like you posted in first place, just a file narrowed down to a couple events that clearly shows the issue. If you can do this we can test here to the best benefit of all HWA users, like happened with the first, one workaround was found. Now, if you can't reproduce in a small file even in your computer, there is a chance that the problem is with your code and/or computer. That's why it's a good idea to check on different computer and isolate events. ;)

What size are your graphics? I remember people saying you shouldn't have graphics larger than a certain size (can't remember the exact number) for HWA.

The size of the graphics from personal experience, has no impact on the performance for me. However it is true, you shouldn't have images bigger then a specific size, because videocards have a maximum texture size and if you go above this then the object wont disappear.

This works because if I'm not mistaken, all the objects in MMF2 HWA are just polygons now, with textures. That's why you can get thousands on the screen with little performance impact, but just like any big 3D game where high quality textures cause a decline in game performance, so too could such a thing happen in MMF2 now.

iirc the maximum texture size is 1024x1024 by default for most cards. Not a problem for most games that run in 640x480, tops.

Its all down to Computer-Processor-Unit Speed & Graphics-Card Speed, I have an Athlon 3500 & a GeForce 6150 (Yeah I know my computer is Ancient), so it would certainly be a lot faster in Direct3D on my machine.

You can only get so much out of processes though. The newer processes are all multiple cores, which MMF2 can't actually utilize.