Weird Framerate Drops

[Blue66]

Hi guys!

I don't know why, but I'm experiencing some weird framerate drops almost exactly after 1:30min are over. It starts to drop from 60 to 55 about every 5 seconds. This wouldn't be so bad, but it also freezes the application for a fraction of a second when that happens.

I've removed almost all groups of the events to track down the problem and it seems to be related to the window control object.

When I run the application in full screen, the framerate is constantly 60.

My events for the window control object are:

If <Object WindowResize == "0">
- set horizontal size to "480+winXsize(Windowcontrolobject)-clientwidth(windowcontrolobject)"

same for height

it also sets the window to the center of the screen with set vertical and horizontal position.

I think this is quite common to use windowcontrol object like this, is it not?

Also when I have the debugger window on top of the application window, I also notice frame drops.

Is there a way to fix this? Is there some better way for resizing or handling the window control object?

I'm sorry if those questions seem stupid, but I have never worked with window resize before. How do you handle window resize in your applications?

Thanks for help!

[Jeff]

Perhaps add "Only one action when events loop"
Its possible you are causing this event to run over and over when not needed.

[Blue66]

I've tried that, but it didn't help.

It seems that its not exactly time based because in some frames these framerate drops start sooner and in some frames they start later. Also these framerate issues don't appear for a long period of time only for a minute or something.

[Jeff]

Perhaps compile the game with build 252 and the HWA runtimes. You should be able to get some more performance out of that.

Other then than that you might need to upload the MFA file so people can take a look and suggest what to change.

[Blue66]

Hi again!
It seems that I was looking at the wrong place for this issue.

I have played around with my events and I was able to intensify this problem a lot, so I think this time I know where the problem lies.

To make objects count as obstacles, I use two events
<always>
- Delete all created backdrops on Layer x

<if Alterable Value A of "DestroyableBlock" = 0>
- Paste object into background as obstacle

As long as the objects are in the visible area of the frame, there is no framerate drop. But when I run around with the player and an object comes into or leaves the visible area of the frame, there is a noticable lag for a fraction of a second. I was able to intensify this framerate drop by using transparent objects that paste itself into the background, overlapping itself.

I was able to almost eliminate the framerate drops in my game by not using <always> (delete all created backdrops) but instead only delete created backdrops whenever an object gets destroyed or it is currently not an obstacle.

Is is possible that these functions of creating and deleting backdrops might be the cause for the performance drops?

[Jeff]

You do realize those events will trigger over and over and over and use up some CPU so perhaps re-event this part so they only run 1 time when needed.

[Blue66]

Thanks, I've done that and made seperate events for each pasting and deleting of certain obstacles and now the problem seems to be gone.

I only wanted to know if this method I use takes up that much performance and can the frame drops really come from this? Because with GunGirl 2 I had over 1700 global events and even with 500+ enemies on screen I never experienced such a drop in the frame rate.

[Blue66]

The problem is still there and I don't know what causes it to be honest. I've made an example with only the most basic events (move left / right, scroll screen) and still I have random frame skips.

Take a look:
http://www.gungirl2.com/stuff/FrameSkipTest.mfa
(if it wants to save as .tiff just rename it back to .mfa)

Hold left / right to scroll around for a few minutes (or close and restart) to see random frame drops/skips.

PLEASE HELP this problem is driving me crazy!

[ASD]

Why don't you use HWA? I tried this example with HWA (D3D 9 mode) and that's very smoothly.

P.S. You should set the timer-based movements option in frame property to 60 or disable it.

[Blue66]

I just forgot to turn it on in this example (uploaded the file again with D3D 9). Still the frames start skipping for me. As I've said it's random so sometimes I have to go back and forth for about 2 minutes until it starts skipping frames noticably, sometimes it's right from the start when I test the frame for a couple of times.

PS: Other users have reported that they have the same frame skipping as I have, so I assume it's not a problem of my computer.