Questions regarding making a sellable game.

[Dines]

I don't know what kind of effects your trying to pull off, but have you used all the possible workarounds?

Is it sheer volume of objects that's the problem? Do all the rotations have to be high quality? Can some less important ones be replaced with animations (i think those are quicker to run than runtime rotations)?

Perhaps you can replace alpha explosions with ADD filtered ones? And maybe you're using more layers than you need?

Perhaps there are ways that you can salvage CPU power from other aspects of the game. Like if you have AI routines, only loop thru visible objects (so if u have 10,000 enemies and can only see 3 of them, you're only looping those 3). And perhaps you can divide enemies into groups of, say, 50 and loop them at a rate of 50 objects per frame?

With particles, make sure they're not overlapping exactly. It's not uncommon to see 1 particle on screen, and then realise there are 10 particles - all in the same place, at the same speed, and in the same direction.

You may well have thought of all this, but it's worth mentioning. Until MMF gets Hardware Acceleration, which seems some way off yet judging from the to-do-list, we'll have to either use something else for the ambitious projects, or simply tone the project down.

[Nifflas]

If there's one lession I learnt from music creation with music software, is to always begin thinking within the limitations of the tools I use, rather than deciding what the product should be like first and then expect the tools to allow me to do that.

Either you'll have to wait for a new version of MMF2 - or plan your game from the limitations.

[JoKa]

Either you'll have to wait for a new version of MMF2 - or plan your game from the limitations.

And depending on the game you could already prepare it for later enhancements. A good game requires much other work and should be fun even without special fx. And only a good one is worth the efforts of polishing.

[00J]

Konjak, I don't know what you want, but I think that is possible in 640x480.
What are you trying to make, something like [color:#FF0000]Geometry[/color] [color:#3333FF]warz?[/color]
and not to get personal, but it seems that whenever people offer insight and realistic ideas they are ignored.

So will Konjak's game ever come to fruition?

to be continued...

:whistle:

[00J]

Konjak, we're still waiting for you to show a screenshot or give us some idea what your having problems with.

You're obviously frustrated because you posted the question.
We've all been stumped at one time or another on how to beat an idea into submission. So lets get your game down a selling path.

There are a lot of super smart people ready to help.

Not that you don't know what you want to do, but sometimes you need a few different approaches.

I noticed that with the new version of MMF, there is slow down with certain coding, but this is a GOOD THING! That means MMF 2.0 is processing EVERYTHING!

You might not think this is good, but from a coding stand point this is very good! No skipping of code! Animations etc etc. That means you just need to tweak your game, do fast loops for the heavy elements maybe? There are lots of ways to speed up your game.

Maybe destroy bullets immediately, that are not on a trajectory to hit a target?

[Bibin]

320x240 is the win. It's great for making fun 2D games that have a great 2D feel.

[JoKa]

It depends, for commercial games you should use at least 640x480. You need an option to switch to fullscreen and since most users have a display size of 1024x768 or higher, 320x240 will look terrible.

Like OOJ said, it would help to have more details about the problem. You can definitely make sellable games with MMF, so I guess it's specifically related to slow performance caused by special fx or scrolling technique?!?