Framerate Drop

[ChrisBurrows]

I am experiencing a severe drop in framerate when displaying around 1000 instances of the same object. Each object has it's animation forced to stop and is displaying one of 91 different frames.

After some testing I found that framerate resumed when the characters are forced to display the same frame. The amount of objects is not effecting the framerate, rather the amount of objects displaying different frames is effecting the frame rate.

I've made an example to show what I mean: http://www.whenthereisnoroominhellth...ateproblem.mfa

Has anybody else noticed this and/or found a work around? Thank you in advance

[Corlen]

Yes I experience the same problem with your example, but it's only about a drop of 5 in FPS, and this is on a netbook. I suspect it has something to do with how MMF handles drawing active objects. Your example makes the active objects look like text characters, perhaps you could use Text Blitter instead of active objects? I don't know what you're trying to accomplish though.

[ChrisBurrows]

The Text Blitter object is not supported by the various exporters; flash, java etc.

The Character Image Object however, is supported. But suffers INSANE framerate drops when used in HWA.

I have created a text blitting method that uses no extensions. It supports wordwrapping and blitting speed is easily customised. Only problem is the framerate drop when displaying over 400 or so characters.

Here it is if you are interested: http://www.whenthereisnoroominhellth...blitmethod.mfa

I too suspect my framerate issues to be a problem deeply embedded within MMF itself and I am doubtful a solution or work around exists.

Somebody please prove me wrong!

[ChrisBurrows]

Sorry to BUMP my own ****.

This lag must be a major problem for any serious MMF user. Has nobody else experienced it?

this: http://www.whenthereisnoroominhellth...ateproblem.mfa

[Jeff]

I only have build 253 on this laptop but it never drops below 50 on the example MFA?
This laptop isn't that great ... so its odd .... seems fine.

I will try it on a few other machines tomorrow.

[Yves]

The HWA modes don't like switching between hundreds of images plus some cards hate very small images. To optimize this we would have to group the images in large textures. I don't think we'll do that before MMF3, we are too busy currently.

PS: last time I discussed with Ross he was trying to optimize the Character Image object for HWA. Not sure when he'll have completed it though...

[ChrisBurrows]

OldLongDragon,

If you check my example:http://www.whenthereisnoroominhellth...blitmethod.mfa, you will see it is a text blitting example.

There are 91 separate frames to the animation because there are 91 separate characters.

These being: !"#$%&'()*+,-./01234567890:;<=>?@\^_`ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZab cdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

There are 2 animations because there are two different coloured fonts. I don't see how this is an overkill.

********

I ran my mfa on a few other computers and the framerate drop was only a couple of frames, compared to my laptop dropping from 50 to 15. Seems my laptop is a piece of **** haha. In my particular project, I never display 1000 characters at once anyway so this is not a problem. I was just seeing the limitations of my method. Thank you all for your help.

[Corlen]

If you're talking about the Text Blitter extension, it allows you to write stuff with a bitmap font. It can also have unconventional uses, like I use it for the tiles in my games with level editors embedded into them. I'm finding it's great to use for games of NES style when you want writing to be on the screen in 8x8 tiles like the NES had.

[ChrisBurrows]

I did see the text blitter item on the latest update patch of MMFD2.

I am NOT talking about the text blitter extension. My example is an alternate way of text blitting, using only active objects and no extensions.

But! the number of active objects displaying different frames at the same time is effecting the framerate and that is the topic of this thread.

Quit hijacking and rambling nonsense!

[Corlen]

I always thought that ninety-one frames was overkill when a smooth animation such as Ken's dragon punch in Super Street Fighter II consisted of only fourteen frames at most. I can cram something that looks good to me into about six frames.

You're missing the point OldLongDragon. He needs 91 frames of animation to do a graphical text display, he can't cram it down into something like six frames.