Windows 7 and MMF layers

[Tiles]

Not sure if i have posted this before here. But in case i have, then i have got no answer.

I have a odd behaviour here. I have two layers in my game. Sometimes when i test it the whole game starts to stutter. This is sometimes this strong that my felt FPS rate is around 1 or 2 FPS. Unplayable. And then i can be sure that a few moments later my Windows turns off parts of the Aero theme. The FPS counter stays at maximum the whole time though. Once the Aero parts are turned off the game goes on without problems, and without stuttering.

When i delete the layer then the game doesn`t stutter anymore too. But i have the layers in my game for good reason. And would be very unhappy when i couldn`t use them. On the other hand, i cannot really expect my users to be happy with a game that stutters and turns off their Aero theme.

Is this a known issue? What can i do against it?

[Dynasoft]

Are you using MMF HWA? If so you should be in the HWA forum. If not, checking what build you're using might be a good idea, IIRC a bunch of Vista/7 fixes were in build 249.

Otherwise, I suspect you're running out of video ram. Do you have a particularly poor graphics card or integrated graphics in your pc?

[Tiles]

Thanks Dynasoft. I would`ve of course posted it in HWA when i would use HWA. But i use the normal version and the flash version. The flash version shows this behaviour too, but not this dramatic than the exe.

My system is state of the art. Bought it before four weeks. Win 7, 64 Bit, AMD Athlon 2 X4 Quadcore, 8 Gigs of ram, Geforce GTX 460 with a gig of ram. And the game is pretty small. The frames are not bigger than 4000x4000 pixels, and the biggest graphics piece is not bigger than 288x288. I`ve made bigger games in the last millenium with my old AMD k6-2/450 with 128 MB ram and a 64MB graphics card. In fact the frame rate is at constant maximum all the time, even in the flash version.

I´ve converted an earlier Alpha build to an exe so that we know what we talk about here. Maybe some of you have Win 7 installed, and Aero activated. I would be interested if it starts to act up for you too

http://reinerstileset.4players.de/ext/transporter_build_80.rar

[Fanotherpg]

It starts for me fine - 64b Win7U, 4GB, Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 2GHz, NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT 256MB (laptop)

[Tiles]

Thanks Fano

[Tiles]

I think i have it. It is the string object that tells you to use CTRL for accelleration and Shift for decelleration. It has Display as background unticked. And is a bit large with its 400x70 pixels. The game runs nearly double as fast when i remove the string. Processor useage goes down from around 20% to around 12% then. Means one single core goes from around 80% useage down to below 50% useage.

Most probably removing the second layer leaded to the fact that the useage dropped below the point where Windows decides to turn off Aero to free some resources. That`s why i thougth it is the layers.

Nevertheless curious that the FPS counter seems to be nailed at maximum speed, heh. That would`ve given me a hint. Mhkay, so it is a performance issue. This means i will remove this string, and everything will be fine when i do the final optimizations then.

Thanks for help everybody

[Kamochi]

I also have a question about layers...

I have two layers set up; background and gameplay. The background is on a parallax of 0.6, and I may add more layers.

For some reason, when my character gets to a certain point, it becomes invisible, and this has only started happening after I added the layers.

Any ideas? I can provide more information if needed.

-Using Multimedia Fusion 2
-Using Custom Platform Object

[Tiles]

I think you should open your own thread. This thread is answered. And chances that people answer you your problem here is much lower than in a new thread.

Regarding your question, i have no clue what happens to you. Can you provide an example maybe?

[Kamochi]

I'll try to tomorrow. It's a bit late over here at the moment.

Thanks for the reply and advice!

[Tiles]

Nope, that one was another wrong lane it seems. I had again the switch of Aero. My next guess would be the Windows Media player. I have it running aside. And when i turned it off my game ran fine. But i give up, because that was the case with removing the string too. I have no clue what`s going on here.